Archinect - News

Jonathan Glancey's final article for the Guardian

2012-02-13T10:38:00-05:00

In 2002, Tony Blair decided to invade Iraq – not a decision that, on the face of it, has a lot to do with architecture; but one of the articles I am most proud to have written for this paper was the story of a journey I made from one end of Iraq to the other, with Stuart Freedman, an unflappable press photographer.

Jonathan Glancey has been the Guardian's architecture and design correspondent for the past 15 years. On the occasion of his last article for the paper he looks back at some of the projects – ancient and modern – that have enchanted him over the past 15 years.

Guardian young arts critic competition 2011: Our critics' picks

2011-06-21T17:28:35-04:00

For as long as I can remember, right back to when I was a teenager trying to piece together the story of architecture, the ziggurat at Eridu had been a presence in my life. I was haunted by the thought that somewhere in deepest Mesopotamia, today's southern Iraq, there lay, in ruins and largely hidden under sand, what might be the world's first monumental building: the mother of all architecture in the world's first metropolis.

Critics at the Guardian newspaper share the most inspirational moments within their fields.

Sticks and stones: can architects be built in the classroom?

2011-04-21T16:37:09-04:00

... one of the big problems in Britain – a country infamous for its visual illiteracy, or so say outsiders – is that architecture isn't taught to children, not much in the home, and much less at school. What an all-embracing discipline it is, though, for teachers and pupils alike: a fusion of art, maths, geometry, geography, physics, technology, politics, economics and environmental concerns.

The Guardian's Jonathan Glancey discusses the architectural education, or lack thereof, in the British early childhood education system.

The sun is God

2011-04-13T11:26:47-04:00

Turner Contemporary, a brand-new public art gallery that opens on the seafront at Margate next week, glories in sunlight.

Turner Contemporary Margate's brand new gallery opens on April 16th 2011. It stands where JMW Turner painted his epic seascapes. Jonathan Glancey wonders will "it attract artists back to the town?

Glancey goes on to write "What Chipperfield has designed is further inland, a bold yet simple gallery that has cost £17.5m. From a distance it appears to be a sequence of industrial-era boat sheds, but close up reveals itself as an interconnected set of giant artists' studios sheathed in walls of thick translucent glass. During the course of a day they capture, reflect and refract the many moods of the sun and sea. The building changes colour, acting as an architectural canvas on which the light that inspired Turner can play."