Architecture
The Heckler: architecture would be better off without Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid is the most famous woman architect in the world. Would women or, indeed, architecture, be better off without…
The new adventures of the adventure playground
Are adventure playgrounds set to make a comeback, asks Maisie Rowe
The moral case for gentrification
To gentrify or not to gentrify. That is the question, says Stephen Bayley
On the cusp: a cliche with a hidden astrological side
‘A stalker who dressed a pillow “mannequin” in his ex’s nurse’s uniform, then sent her a picture, has been told…
Fenchurch in the Sky Garden – like going for dinner in Total Recall
Fenchurch is a restaurant that is scared of terrorists. It cowers at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper…
Should Euston Arch be raised from the dead?
Yes William Cook Rejoice! Rejoice! Fifty-four years after its destruction, Euston Arch has returned to Euston. Well, after a fashion.…
Welcome to Japan’s best kept cultural secret: an art island with an underground museum
In his introductory remarks to the Afro–Eurasian Eclipse, one of his later suites for jazz orchestra, Duke Ellington remarked —…
Renzo Piano’s new Whitney Museum is very good news - for the Met
About six years ago the first section of the now celebrated High Line was opened in New York and made…
How dedicated a fascist was Le Corbusier?
The ‘revelations’, 50 years after he drowned, that Le Corbusier was a ‘fascist’ and an anti-Semite are neither fresh nor…
The Spectator declares war on bad public art
Stephen Bayley announces the launch of What’s That Thing?, The Spectator’s award for bad public art
The long ordeal of Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art
I was working on the final edit of my book — a fictionalised account of the year Charles Rennie Mackintosh…
Letters: Why Ofsted should be disbanded
Disband Ofsted Sir: Dennis Sewell’s damning indictment of Ofsted (‘Ofsted in the dock’, 13 December) stopped short of the logical…
Dallas, city of culture
Dallas has reinvented itself as a major arts destination, says Hugh Graham
Cambridge, showcase for modernism (and how costly it is to fix)
The Pevsner architectural guides are around halfway through their revisions — though it is like the Forth Bridge, and soon…
Le French bashing has spread to France. Are things really that bad?
The popular sport has spread to France. Are things really that bad, wonders Jonathan Meades
To call this offering a book is an abuse of language
I picked up this book with real enthusiasm. Who cannot be entranced by those 20 years after the second world…
How Londoners can reclaim the River Thames
The current redevelopment of the city’s riverside is a lost opportunity to reclaim the Thames for Londoners, says Ellis Woodman
The only way is Essex University
Stephen Bayley revisits the ambitious, and for its day visionary, campus that is Essex University for its 50th birthday celebrations
Why prefabs really were fab
Sir Winston Churchill did not invent the prefab, but on 26 March 1944 he made an important broadcast promising to…
It’s not easy for a middle-aged woman to get inside the head of a 12-year-old innkeeper’s son in 1914
Esther Freud wrote dazzlingly in the first person through the eyes of a five-year-old child in her first novel, Hideous…
Michelangelo’s vision was greater even than Shakespeare’s
Alasdair Palmer reveals the monstrous egomaniac behind Michelangelo’s artistic genius
We need more opinionated English eccentrics making documentaries like, ahem, me...
Is it just me or are almost all TV documentaries completely unwatchable these days? I remember when I first started…
The ultimate guide to Cornwall
Before writing this review I spent an hour looking for my original Pevsner paperback on Cornwall, published in 1951 (the…
A Labour MP defends the Empire – and only quotes Lenin twice
In a grand history of the British empire — because that is what this book really is — you might…
