Architecture

The architects redesigning death

28 June 2025 9:00 am

Unesco doesn’t hand out world-heritage status to absences, but if it did, there would be memorials all over the western…

The fragility of the modern city reflects humanity’s vulnerability

14 June 2025 9:00 am

The more complex the infrastructure, the more liable it is to break down – as was recently apparent in the blackout that brought Madrid and Lisbon to a standstill in April

V&A’s new museum is a defiant stand against the vandals

7 June 2025 9:00 am

In last week’s Spectator, Richard Morris lamented museum collections languishing in storage, pleading to ‘get these works out’. There’s an…

Architecture has hit a nadir at the Venice Biennale

24 May 2025 9:00 am

Much of Venice’s Giardini this year was as boarded up as a British high street. The Israeli pavilion was empty,…

Decent redesign, ravishing rehang: the new-look National Gallery reviewed

17 May 2025 9:00 am

A little under a year ago, it emerged that builders working on the redevelopment of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing…

Art deco gave veneer and frivolity a bad name

10 May 2025 9:00 am

The jazz style was the blowsy filling between the noxious crusts of two world wars. More than 30 years passed…

Was Sir John Soane one of the first modernists?

19 April 2025 9:00 am

Sir John Soane’s story is a good one. Born in 1753 to a bricklayer, at 15 he was apprenticed to…

The National Trust’s plans for Clandon Park are a travesty

5 April 2025 9:00 am

In April 2015, a fire raged through Clandon Park, destroying much of the 18th-century Palladian mansion’s prized interiors. Contrary to…

Britain’s shopfronts are a national embarrassment

15 February 2025 9:00 am

A few weeks ago, a couple of men with ladders started work on a former bridal boutique at the end…

It’s no Citizen Kane: The Brutalist reviewed

25 January 2025 9:00 am

The Brutalist, which is a fictional account of a Jewish-Hungarian architect in postwar America, has attracted a great deal of…

The architectural provocations of I.M. Pei

11 January 2025 9:00 am

When first considering architects for the new Louvre in 1981, Emile Biasini, the project’s head, liked that I.M. Pei was…

Letters: Where to find the best negroni

4 January 2025 9:00 am

Free thinking Sir: Your leading article (‘Article of faith’, 14 December) appears to have forgotten the connection between rationalism and…

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre contains terrible art – but is filled with magic

14 December 2024 9:00 am

For a press tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – the Church of the Resurrection, the…

What will the cities of the future look like?

16 November 2024 9:00 am

Will they be subterranean, to escape extreme heat; or float in the sky, to avoid overcrowding; or abolish streets entirely, like the Line, now under construction in Saudi Arabia?

Could AI lead to a revival of decorative beauty?

26 October 2024 9:00 am

In front of me is what appears to be an authentic Delft tile. The surface of the tile is mottled,…

Who should win the Stirling Prize?

21 September 2024 9:00 am

The Stirling Prize is the Baftas for architects, a moment for auto-erotic self-congratulation. Awarded by the Royal Institute of British…

Why are Chinese students giving up on architecture?

14 September 2024 9:00 am

I recently convened an urban studies summer school in a top university in Shanghai and asked the assembled class of…

Never pour scorn on Croydon

7 September 2024 9:00 am

Much derided as a philistine wasteland, the borough has an extremely distinguished history and could serve as a microcosm of Britain itself, says Will Noble

India radiates kindly light across the East

31 August 2024 9:00 am

William Dalrymple describes how, from the 3rd century BC to 1200 AD, India illuminated the rest of Asia with its philosophies and artistic forms through unforced cultural conquest

The beauty of pollution

13 July 2024 9:00 am

On the back of the British £20 note, J.M.W. Turner appears against the backdrop of his most iconic image. Voted…

Forget monetary policy, the Bank of England’s greatest crime was architectural

6 July 2024 9:00 am

In 1916 the Bank of England committed what Nikolaus Pevsner was to call the greatest architectural crime to befall London…

Jam-packed with treasures: the eccentric Sir John Soane’s Museum

15 June 2024 9:00 am

The delightfully higgledy-piggledy display of antiquities, filling walls from floor to ceiling, may have been inspired by the Piranesi prints Soane also collected

The proposed cities of the future look anything but modern

13 January 2024 9:00 am

The vision for California Forever, an American utopian city still at planning stage, is pure picture-book nostalgia of bicycles, rowing boats and tree-lined streets

Mother’s always angry: Jungle House, by Julianne Pachino, reviewed

9 December 2023 9:00 am

But who – or what – is Mother? And are her exasperated warnings about ever-present danger exaggerated?

I’m not convinced Thomas Heatherwick is the best person to be discussing boring buildings

28 October 2023 9:00 am

Architects are often snobby about – and no doubt jealous of – the designer Thomas Heatherwick, who isn’t an actual…