Subterms
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
From the February issue of Apollo: preview and subscribe here In 1903, unveiling the first commemorative ‘blue plaque’ to be installed on a house by the London County Council, the Earl of Rosebery, the former prime minister, observed that, ‘great cities gratefully remember those who have honoured them by living in their midst’. It requires […] 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
The news that a 3D-printed replica of the arch of the Temple of Bel at Palmyra is to be erected in Trafalgar Square and Times Square, New York, in April raises interesting issues. The great Temple of Bel was ostentatiously destroyed by ISIS after they had taken control of the ancient city of Palmyra, and […] More
From the September 2015 issue of Apollo: subscribe here The journey around Sir John Soane’s Museum is a journey through the architect’s life. Now the second floor of No 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields has returned to its domestic plan after more than a century and a half. And so, the self-portrait that Soane (1753–1837) drew up […] 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 January issue of Apollo: preview and subscribe here Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason.’ This quotation, by the author of Lord of the Rings, is printed as an epigraph at the beginning of the catalogue of the […] More
