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The Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire is one of the most beautiful places in England. Tourists visit it as the ‘Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’ and as a UNESCO World Heritage site. I suspect many of them are surprised to find these historic industrial attractions embedded within such a lushly Arcadian landscape, in which the River […] More
“Horizontorium” (1832), hand-colored lithograph, 22.5 x 16.5 inches In 1832, artist John Jesse Barker added depth to a drawing by Philadelphia-based William G. Mason to create an optical illusion titled “Horizontorium.” Part of a tradition of anamorphic works, this depiction of the Bank of Philadelphia is one of the two surviving works looking at the […] More
The Jantar Mantar in Delhi is famous for its 13 astronomical instruments, construction of which began under Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II (1688–1743) of Jaipur in the 1720s, and completed after his death. The park is empty when we visit and the giant triangle known as the Samrat Yantra, or Supreme Instrument, looms out of […] More
Ghost Parking Lot was one of the eeriest, most sinister and most striking pieces of 20th-century land art. The lumpy shapes of automobiles were discernible beneath a gloopy blanket of grey-black asphalt, a landscape of parking – at a shopping mall in Hamden, Connecticut – in which the cars and the surface built for them […] More
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
