Architecture
Thomas Heatherwick
Thomas Heatherwick is the most famous designer in the United Kingdom today and has an unquestionable flair for attention-grabbing creations.…
Intelligent design
Peter Mandelson, in his moment of pomp, had his portrait taken by Lord Snowdon. He is sitting on a fine…
The clock towers bigger than Big Ben
Bigger Bens Big Ben will have a £29m refurbishment. Who has the biggest clock tower? Kremlin Clock: Installed on the…
Big is beautiful: A crushing case for brutalism — with the people left out
Elain Harwood’s flawed but impressive study of modernist architecture manages perfectly to reflect its subject, says David Kynaston
Edmund de Waal’s diary: Selling nothing, and why writers need ping-pong
On the top landing of the Royal Academy is the Sackler Sculpture Corridor, a long stony shelf of torsos of…
Waiting for Utopia
The Soviet Union was a nation of bus stops. Cars were hard to come by, so a vast public transport…
God’s architect
Palladio gave his name to a style that spread around the world. But was it too successful for its own good, wonders Stephen Bayley
Antigua
‘Tourism, tourism and tourism,’ said my Antiguan cab driver, when I asked what the country’s main industries were. Still, it’s…
Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid is the most famous woman architect in the world. Would women or, indeed, architecture, be better off without…
Wild things
Are adventure playgrounds set to make a comeback, asks Maisie Rowe
City life
To gentrify or not to gentrify. That is the question, says Stephen Bayley
On the cusp
‘A stalker who dressed a pillow “mannequin” in his ex’s nurse’s uniform, then sent her a picture, has been told…
High anxiety
Fenchurch is a restaurant that is scared of terrorists. It cowers at the top of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper…
Restoration drama
Yes William Cook Rejoice! Rejoice! Fifty-four years after its destruction, Euston Arch has returned to Euston. Well, after a fashion.…
Eastern reflections
In his introductory remarks to the Afro–Eurasian Eclipse, one of his later suites for jazz orchestra, Duke Ellington remarked —…
Moving pictures
About six years ago the first section of the now celebrated High Line was opened in New York and made…
Dedicated follower of fascism?
The ‘revelations’, 50 years after he drowned, that Le Corbusier was a ‘fascist’ and an anti-Semite are neither fresh nor…
Public enemy
Stephen Bayley announces the launch of What’s That Thing?, The Spectator’s award for bad public art
Glasgow School of Art
I was working on the final edit of my book — a fictionalised account of the year Charles Rennie Mackintosh…
Letters
Disband Ofsted Sir: Dennis Sewell’s damning indictment of Ofsted (‘Ofsted in the dock’, 13 December) stopped short of the logical…
Texas: From cowboys to culture
Dallas has reinvented itself as a major arts destination, says Hugh Graham
A hymn to ancient and modern
The Pevsner architectural guides are around halfway through their revisions — though it is like the Forth Bridge, and soon…
Le French bashing
The popular sport has spread to France. Are things really that bad, wonders Jonathan Meades
It was a wonderful town
I picked up this book with real enthusiasm. Who cannot be entranced by those 20 years after the second world…
On the waterfront
The current redevelopment of the city’s riverside is a lost opportunity to reclaim the Thames for Londoners, says Ellis Woodman
