Design

The best radio at the moment is on the BBC World Service

31 May 2025 9:00 am

Online viewings of Conclave increased threefold following the death of Pope Francis last month. At least some of the traffic…

A dreamy, if overly ambitious show: Silk Roads, at the British Museum, reviewed

4 January 2025 9:00 am

Towards the end of the British Museum’s Silk Roads show, there is a selection of treasures found in England. Among…

How French absolutism powered a techno-progressive revolution

4 January 2025 9:00 am

The Enlightenment is back. Despite the best efforts of the past decade of handwringing about cultural imperialism and wailing over…

William Morris’s debt to Islam

16 November 2024 9:00 am

When William Morris was born in Walthamstow, in 1834, it was little more than a clump of marshland at the…

At Japan House humanity has arrived at the perfect future: food for ogling, not eating

26 October 2024 9:00 am

There is a popular Japanese television show that features a segment called ‘Candy Or Not Candy?’. Contestants are presented with…

Immersive and spectacular: Piet Oudolf’s new borders at RHS Wisley reviewed

17 August 2024 9:00 am

Piet Oudolf’s long borders at Wisley were worn out. The famous designer had in fact become a bit embarrassed by…

The craft renaissance

8 June 2024 9:00 am

As long ago as the 1960s, the poet Edward James was worried that traditional crafts were dying out. Having frittered…

How flabby our ideas of draughtsmanship have become

20 April 2024 9:00 am

The term drawing is a broad umbrella, so in an exhibition of 120 works it helps to outline some distinctions.…

The art of menus

1 October 2022 9:00 am

Jonathan Meades on the art of menus

The art of the Christmas card

18 December 2021 9:00 am

It’s the thin end of the wedge, the slippery slope, the beginning of the end of a civilised Christmas. It…

Absurd and amusing, solemn and scholarly: Charles Jencks's Cosmic House reviewed

2 October 2021 9:00 am

An editor once told me: always look at the loos. It was remarkable, she said, how many grand cultural projets,…

Meet the woman who designed Britain's revolutionary road signs

21 November 2020 9:00 am

Laura Gascoigne meets Margaret Calvert, the designer who dragged British signposting into the modern era

The rise of blocked-off design

3 October 2020 9:00 am

Plexiglass bubbles hover over diners’ heads in restaurants. Plastic pods, spaced six feet apart, separate weightlifters in gyms. Partitions of…

The art of street furniture

29 August 2020 9:00 am

On his lockdown rambles, Christopher Howse finds beauty and solace in London’s street furniture

The weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets

11 July 2020 9:00 am

Sophie Haigney on the weird and wonderful world of hotel carpets

The history, power and beauty of infographics

24 January 2020 10:00 pm

on the history, power and beauty of infographics

Enchanting – but don’t fall for the mummified rubber duck in the gift shop: Tutankhamun reviewed

18 January 2020 9:00 am

Like Elton John, though less ravaged, Tutankhamun’s treasures are on their final world tour. Soon these 150 artefacts will return…

Meet Congo, the Leonardo of chimps, whose paintings sell for £14,500

21 December 2019 9:00 am

Three million years ago one of our ancestors, Australopithecus africanus, picked up a pebble and took it home to its…

A museum-quality car-boot sale: V&A’s Cars reviewed

7 December 2019 9:00 am

We were looking at a 1956 Fiat Multipla, a charming ergonomic marvel that predicted today’s popular MPVs. Rather grandly, I…

‘The Yucca Motel’, 1995, by Fred Sigman

Geoff Dyer on the poetry of motels

22 June 2019 9:00 am

It’s to be expected. You take photographs in order to document things — Paris in the case of Eugène Atget…

Toy theatres on the stage: the set designs of Maurice Sendak

1 June 2019 9:00 am

I must have seen hundreds of opera productions in my time. Out of these, hardly any made a lasting impression…

Plastic fantastic: British Industried Fair, 1948

How plastic saved the elephant and tortoise

1 June 2019 9:00 am

Plastics — even venerable, historically eloquent plastics — hardly draw the eye. As this show’s insightful accompanying publication (a snip…

Mary, Mary, quite contrary: Mary Quant and fellow-revolutionary Vidal Sassoon in 1964

My ringside seat on the Mary Quant revolution

30 March 2019 9:00 am

I think I probably qualify as the oldest fashion editor in the world, because in spite of my advanced age…

‘Wonderground Map of London Town’, 1914, by Max Gill

Not as good as his immoral brother Eric but still wonderful: Max Gill at Ditchling reviewed

16 February 2019 9:00 am

MacDonald ‘Max’ Gill (1884–1947) is less well known than his notorious brother, Eric. But was he less of a designer,…

Twiggy photographed by Justin de Villeneuve in the Rainbow Room at Big Biba, early 1970s. [JUSTIN DE VILLENEUVE]

A short history of art deco – from high art to two-tone shoes, garden gates to Twiggy

1 December 2018 9:00 am

On 10 September 1973 the 1930s Kensington High Street department store formerly known as Derry & Toms reopened as Big…