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While you have to fight your way through crowds in Cambridge to see the gothic splendour of King’s College Chapel, in the countryside around the city you will most likely find the parish churches that served Cambridgeshire’s medieval villages deserted. But – to take one example – the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary at […] More
From London to California, architects are helping museums provide interactive learning experiences that can’t be found on screen Last year, the Hoxton-based architecture practice AOC set up the Open Studio at the V&A Museum of Childhood in nearby Bethnal Green, east London. The 147-year-old institution was set to be renovated and initial consultation of local […] More
A new and beautifully illustrated book on Henbury Hall by the architectural historian Jeremy Musson, full of wonderful photography, drawings, letters and portraits, raises the old question of the ‘problem’ building, the one that most writers and critics find hard to discuss. For Henbury, near Macclesfield in Cheshire, is the 1980s progeny of Andrea Palladio’s […] More
There is a great urban legend about Tower Bridge. It goes that in 1967 the American entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch purchased the stone facings of the demolished ‘New’ London Bridge in the belief that he was buying those of its neighbour less than a mile downstream. It’s very easy to see why – the neoclassical […] More
In 2017 Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, a move that can be seen as the beginning of more hopeful times for the country. The following year Eritrea and Ethiopia, its much larger neighbour (from whom it had gained independence in 1993) signed a declaration ending a state of […] More
Kearsney Court is a late Victorian house just outside Dover in east Kent. Designed in 1899 by Worsfold and Hayward for brewer Alfred Leney, it is a perfectly respectable essay in the Arts and Crafts manner – rough-cast walls, picturesque massing, and large bay windows. Its garden, though, is something else altogether. It cascades down […] More
A generation ago Lina Bo Bardi was not much known outside Brazil, and not much talked about. Today, notably in academia and architecture schools, she is arguably the most referenced and most widely influential architect of her era. Sure, Mies van der Rohe’s buildings were more minimal – but were they so cool as to […] More
Mastering public transport is one of the most reassuring steps for a visitor in a major city, that familiarity that makes you feel almost at home. Naples Metro – the Metropolitana di Napoli (MDN) – has over the years absorbed older railway lines and, where the terrain is steep and difficult, has turned for help […] More
