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Jean Nouvel helicoptered in to Sao Paulo last week to attend the ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone of Rosewood Tower, a new hotel and residential complex . The site is in the grounds of the long abandoned Matarazzo hospital (an oasis of green in central São Paulo), whose neoclassical buildings – the […] More
Recalling the effect of reading Pugin in his youth, George Gilbert Scott (1811–78) recounted that ‘every aspiration of my heart had become medieval’. Paradoxically, however, for the architect renowned as the most prolific progenitor of the 19th-century Gothic Revival, Scott insisted, ‘I am no medievalist. I do not advocate the styles of the middle ages […] More
Zaha Hadid, who has died aged 65, was the most successful female architect of her generation. Regardless of gender, she was one of the most important British architects of the past 100 years. She had won every significant international honour architecture can offer – including the Pritzker, the RIBA’s Royal Gold Medal, the Praemium Imperiale […] More
It’s every historian’s dream to track down an untouched archive. That is exactly what Kieron Connell – a researcher at the University of Birmingham – experienced in 2014 when, after months of searching, he received an email from a photographer: ‘I would love it if you could take over the collection of all my images […] More
It’s a rich paradox that it was due to lobbying by Mayor Ken Livingstone that the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the London mayor were empowered to take decisions covering strategic planning applications into their own hands. Nowadays, they can supersede the borough (or boroughs) and give final approval or disapproval. Under the GLA Act […] More
Melanie Vandenbrouck visits some of the most interesting and pertinent photography exhibitions to kick off 2016 It is a sobering experience, to visit the Prix Pictet’s Disorder exhibition (inaugurated Paris 12 November–13 December 2015; now at Somerset House until 17 January before continuing its global tour). The prize was established in 2008 to showcase leading photographers’ contributions to debates […] More
Elain Harwood’s Space, Hope and Brutalism reviewed From the December issue of Apollo: preview and subscribe here On a ‘perfect autumn day’ in 1958, Anthony Wedgwood Benn MP visited a new 14-storey skyscraper of modern flats in Bristol. He saw the flats as the expression of the fruits of a project that merged modernism with […] More
From the May 2015 issue of Apollo: preview and subscribe here European architects of the fin de siècle often looked back to national traditions of building as they sought to forge novel styles. But the Hungarian Ödön Lechner looked further afield, finding inspiration in the Indo-Saracenic buildings of British India The Museum of Applied Arts in […] More
