Architecture
The Pompidou Centre, Paris’s great blemish
The hideous Pompidou Centre bothers me every time I see it
Modernist architecture only worked for the wealthy
It was Le Corbusier who famously wrote that ‘A house is a machine for living in’ (‘Une maison est une…
The problem with British mosques
Britain is crying out for mosques that reflect the reality of the modern West, says Ed Husain
How lucky we are to have the Royal Academy
What is the Royal Academy? This question set me thinking as I wandered through the crowds that celebrated the opening…
The real stars of Kew's newly restored Temperate House
Kew’s newly restored Temperate House is undoubtedly awe-inspiring, says Isabel Hardman, but it’s the plants that are the real stars of the show
The public are quite right to love Monet
Think of the work of Claude Monet and water lilies come to mind, so do reflections in rippling rivers, and…
From Stansted to corporate swank: superstructuralism has a lot to answer for
Foster and Rogers wanted to save the planet – in fact, their high-tech architecture did the opposite, says Phineas Harper
Mission statement: the importance of a fine British embassy
At first blush this looks like one of those run-of-the-mill coffee-table books published just for the Christmas market — expensively…
A love letter to Turkey’s lost past
Patricia Daunt’s collection of essays is a fascinating exploration of some of Turkey’s most beautiful and evocative places, from the…
More secrets, symbols and awesome truths from Dan Brown
Being reflexively snotty about Dan Brown’s writing is like slagging off Donald Trump’s spelling: it just entrenches everyone’s position. In…
The architectural trads are back – we should celebrate
I’m sitting across a café table from a young man with a sheaf of drawings that have an archive look…
Cultural regeneration is a racket
Twenty years ago I wrote of the otherwise slaveringly praised Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: I’m in a minority of, apparently,…
When it comes to politics, perception is more important than ‘truth’
I hate to tell you this, but every time you watch television you are being duped. In fact there are…
Art nouveau owes a lot to this dodgy German biologist and his dazzling illustrations
Over the winter of 1859–60, a handsome young man could be seen patrolling the shores of the Gulf of Messina…
Capital dramas on and off the stage
Theatre buildings are seriously interesting – as I ought to have appreciated sooner in the course of 25 years writing…
The newly refurbished Natural History Museum is glorious
Sometimes, it pays to rediscover what’s already under your nose. I’ve been umpteen times to the Natural History Museum but…
The Shard: a vast, unnecessary financial speculation
The Shard is an unnecessary building. Nobody apart from its developer asked for it to be built. Nobody was crying…
Leave epiphanies to the poets and mystics
‘I love the pumping station,’ said my husband, waving a copy of the Docklands and East London Advertiser which reported…
Why our Robert Adam flat is worth scarcely more than a boring one
Of the 375,000 listed buildings in England only 2.5 per cent are Grade I. Half are churches; many are otherwise…
The greatest buildings Liverpool never built
Liverpool has not treated its architects well. Stephen Bayley takes a tour of the bits of the city that were – regrettably – never built
My part in the expensive calamity that was the Millennium Dome
Stephen Bayley, creative director (briefly) for the Millennium Dome, lifts the lid on an expensive calamity
With no planning controls and owners craving the new, Japan is a Disneyland for architecture
The house in which I lived in Tokyo was built by my landlady, a former geisha. It stood on a…
London’s lost modernist masterpiece
What a strange affair it now seems, the Mansion House Square brouhaha. How very revealing of the battle for the…
There is no one Istanbul, but a series of competing, clashing, coexisting cities
I was a young, aspiring writer when I decided to leave everything behind and move to Istanbul more than two…
If Trump were to build it, what sort of wall would the Wall be?
Any impressively long wall is bound to cause us to recall the midfield dynamo and philosopher John Trewick. In 1978…
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