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Anyone who enjoys visiting British churches and cathedrals will soon learn to identify stained glass by Charles Eamer Kempe (1837–1907). Helpfully, he often placed a wheatsheaf in one corner of his windows, a device taken from his family’s coat of arms, but in any case his fastidiously luxurious style is unmistakable. Swathed in robes of […] More
Most architectural styles are pioneered by the wealthy. The villa, the mansion, the upmarket apartment block, the blockbuster cultural centre: these have been the vehicles for new architectures. The Amsterdam School was different, driven by the imperatives of social housing, municipal building and civic infrastructure. Its moment, though very specific to the Netherlands, was remarkably […] More
Cairo is blessed with many beautiful mosques. Close to the Coptic area is the mosque of Amr ibn al-As, where Muslims still pay homage to the Arab general who conquered Egypt in 640. Further north in Islamic Cairo the Fatimids built the popular Al-Hussein mosque over the remains of the martyred Shia imam. Tourists are […] More
In Roubaix, a city near Lille once known as the ‘Manchester of France’, there is an art deco swimming pool that opened to the public in 1932. Commissioned by the socialist mayor, Jean-Baptiste Lebas, who described it as ‘the most beautiful swimming pool in France’, it was intended as a social melting pot, where all […] More
The Espaces d’Abraxas is a set of social-housing blocks in Marne-la-Vallée, a new town in the Paris suburbs. It is one of several grands ensembles planned in the 1970s by the Communist-led council of Seine-Saint-Denis. Like many of these projects, the Espaces d’Abraxas is built close to an RER station and a shopping mall, but […] More
For centuries, ambitious architects have been dependent on sublime visualisers, from John Soane and Joseph Gandy to Norman Foster and Helmut Jacoby. In ‘Superstructures: The New Architecture 1960–1990’ at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich (closed 2 September), the most arresting exhibits – alongside the models – are the renderings, perspectives, exploded sections and […] More
Given the unsuitable proposals its management has put forward in recent years, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Southbank Centre (SBC) is an arts institution suffering from architectural self-loathing. The latest plans have concerned the Royal Festival Hall (RFH), the undisputed jewel in the crown of the South Bank complex. Listed at […] More
Naughty postcards and toffee apples, knees-up songs and double entendres, rollercoasters and gang fights: a trip down the pleasure pier offers up a ragtag bunch of British memories. Gaudy and vulnerable, these spindly old structures are important parts of the island’s cultural memory, artefacts of a form of leisure that seems completely anachronistic in the […] More
