Architecture
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…
Milton Keynes is 50 years old. Should we celebrate?
We may snigger at Milton Keynes but let’s not forget its utopian spirit, says Stephen Bayley
Where the ‘garden village’ really comes from
Village people The government announced plans for 14 ‘garden villages’. The concept of a garden city or village is attributed…
There is a dangerous new snobbery – but it’s not from Remainers
Yet another kind of snob Sir: May I offer another definition of a ‘snob’ to the one described by Bryan…
There’s a revolution on Britain’s streets that newspapers never mention
‘Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers,’ remarked the journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht,…
Donald Trump's interiors: make America crass again
Donald Trump’s taste is as revealing of the man as any of his outbursts, says Stephen Bayley
Three cheers for stucco – which The Spectator once called 'immoral'
Whenever the words ‘stucco house’ appear in the newspapers, you can be certain the occupiers have been up to no…
Why cathedrals are soaring
The Church of England’s unexpected success story
The rise and fall of Les Halles – centre of Paris’s demi-monde
Depending on your point de vue, Haussmann’s imperial scheme for Paris created townscape of thrilling regularity or boring uniformity. Whatever;…
Stay amid the stones of Rievaulx
We’re so used to looking at the abbeys smashed up by Henry VIII — particularly Rievaulx and Byland, in north…
Estuarial towns are an architectural utopia, says Jonathan Meades
Estuarial towns are an architectural utopia — and the source of some sublimely weird sights, says Jonathan Meades
In defence of suburbia
The suburbs fuel creativity, says Philip Hensher. So why do writers and artists look down on them?
Let’s celebrate follies – England’s most distinctive contribution to world architecture
Ruined castles, altars, temples of virtue, alcoves, labyrinths, pagodas: Stephen Bayley celebrates a peculiarly English obsession
Why confront the ugly lie of Islamic State with a tacky fake?
Can the beauty of Palmyra be reproduced by data-driven robots? Stephen Bayley on copies, fakes and forgeries
The lifts are lovely: Tate Modern’s extension reviewed
Tate Modern, badly overcrowded, has built itself a £260 million extension to spread everyone about the place more. This means…
Jonathan Meades on the postmodernist buildings that we must protect
Best of postmodernism: is that an oxymoron? Jonathan Meades thinks not
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