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In fact, America has beautiful and popular non-traditional structures – the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles – and it has crude and soulless classical buildings. Unfortunately, the authors of the order are not completely wrong when they say that some architects have ignored public feeling. — The Guardian
Rowan Moore, architecture critic at The Observer, responds to last week's presidential executive order that makes classical and traditional architecture the preferred style for federal buildings. "If architects don’t want to give ammunition to the repressive thinking behind this order," Moore... View full entry
Shield House is just one example of “permitted development”. It is an outcome of a government experiment in deregulation, which allows homes to be made out of old offices and shops without planning permission, that has been going on for some years. An estimated 65,000 flats have been made in this way. — The Guardian
The Observer's architecture critic Rowan Moore highlights in his latest Guardian piece the failed outcome of a government program that seeks to speed up the conversion of old commercial properties into residential spaces. "The experiment has been catastrophic in several significant respects, but... View full entry
“I came away blindsided [by Eisenhower's legacy]. It brings tears to my eyes. How his accomplishments as a general and as a president match anything, all without the fanfare that’s going on around the president now. The opposite. He was modest but strong. A staggering accomplishment.” — The Guardian
Rowan Moore, architecture critic at The Observer, interviews architect Frank Gehry for The Guardian regarding the soon-to-open Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C. The contentious memorial, which drew the ire of conservative architecture critics, was developed by Gehry Partners... View full entry
[...] tall buildings are still sold on the basis that they are good for the environment. Mostly the argument is about density – if you pile a lot of homes or workplaces high on one spot, it is said, then you can use land and public transport more efficiently. There’s some truth in this, but you can also achieve high levels of density without going above 10 or 12 storeys. — The Guardian
The Observer's Rowan Moore dissects a list of the usual arguments in favor of ever taller buildings around the world and concludes that not much of it passes the reality test of urgent climate crisis, resource scarcity, wealth distribution, city planning, global pandemic, and ultimately, good... View full entry
The new breed of airports take that altered reality and alter it some more, to create their own version of the world.
If you want to be dystopian, airports are prototypes for sinister societies of the future, products of the military-entertainment complex where dictatorial government colludes with big business to create controlling environments. Where individuals are pacified by distractions and ruled by technology.
— The Guardian
The Observer's Rowan Moore takes a critical look at the newest global breed of airport architecture, including the recently opened Beijing Daxing and the brand new Singapore Jewel Changi, in the face of climate change, commerce, and mass surveillance. "It is sometimes pointed out that a modern... View full entry
It was supposed to be the ultimate symbol of Cool Britannia. Instead it became a nightmare that exposed the spin and hubris of the New Labour project [...] — The Guardian
The Observer's architecture critic, Rowan Moore, revisits the events leading up to the opening night debacle of the Richard Rogers-designed and much hyped, but ultimately failed, London Millennium Dome on January 1st, 2000. "The Millennium Experience that it contained then is dimly remembered... View full entry
[Amager Bakke] is a work that revels in its own contrivance, a condensation and celebration of the surrounding artifice, a creation of what might be called hypernature. It is at once an energy facility, converting refuse into electricity, and a ski slope. It is arresting and striking. It’s an emblem of a culture of why-not and because-you-can that currently pops up in a number of modern cities [...] — The Guardian
Writing in The Guardian, architecture critic Rowan Moore heaps praise on Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and the firm's founder in a write-up of the firm's recently completed Amager Bakke project in Copenhagen. Describing the architect's ability to impress clients, Moore writes, "He... View full entry
It is built into the value system of architecture – the ways in which it is taught, published, recognised and awarded – that the most desirable possible outcome of a career is to be a celebrated maker of singular objects, of buildings that can be admired as you would a painting or a symphony. [...]
It’s a start that the prize is to Grafton Architects – that is to say, a whole practice – rather than its two principals alone.
— The Guardian
Rowan Moore, the Observer’s architecture correspondent, applauds in his recent commentary the decision to award the next RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture to Irish practice Grafton Architects, a deserving team with female principals at the helm, rather than further perpetuating the... View full entry
Responding to recent works by Thomas Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels, Rowan Moore interrogates architecture's obsession du jour. With each recently unveiling their "most striking landmark to date"—for Heatherwick, the Vessel and for Ingels, the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy power plant—Moore is... View full entry
“Every child,” lamented Tom Wolfe in From Bauhaus to Our House of 1981, “goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse”. Had there ever been another place on earth, he also said of Bauhaus-influenced America, “where so many people of wealth and power paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested?” — The Guardian
Observer architecture critic, Rowan Moore, on the vast and enduring impact of the "short-lived but longlasting" Bauhaus movement—both the sympathetic and the averse. The famed school celebrates the centenary of its original founding this year. View full entry
The Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has built ‘a gliding swan’ of a house in Devon that strikes a perfect balance between inside and out, whichever way you look — The Guardian
Peter Zumthor recently completed a meticulously crafted concrete house in the gently sloping English countryside of Devon—the Swiss architect's first permanent building in the UK after designing the Serpentine Gallery's 2011 summer pavilion in London. Photo: Jack Hobhouse/Living... View full entry
Portman was a pioneer of the devices with which somber modernism was given glitz: mirror-glass, wall-climbing glass lifts, sky bridges, swooping curves. He described some gaudy candelabra he put around a piano stage in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis as a “homage to Liberace”. His buildings became known for their “Jesus moments”, those times when, emerging from a deliberately understated entry into some architectural emulation of the Grand Canyon, a visitor would reliably exclaim, “Jesus!” — The Guardian
Rowan Moore pens a piece on the lasting impact of the late John Portman's other-worldly buildings in Atlanta, which were known for eliciting “Jesus moments” from surprised visitors and also described as “Disneyland for adults” by less-impressed critics. View full entry
Escobedo’s approach is, she says, not about the look of the architectural object, but “how you feel inside the space, how you go about it in the moment”. It is designed for the “very specific space and time” of the Serpentine’s lawn in summer, but is also for the future in which, like previous pavilions, it will be sold to private collectors. Since “we don’t know where it’s going”, the design “can absorb locality no matter where it is”. — The Guardian
In this piece for The Guardian, Rowan Moore speaks with 39-year-old Mexican architect Frida Escobedo about her Serpentine Pavilion, an “intimate public courtyard” that will open in London this month. Escobedo talks about her start in architecture, Mexican modernism, and the “always... View full entry
Farrell and McNamara’s theme is “Freespace”, which they say describes “a generosity of spirit and a sense of humanity at the core of architecture’s agenda”. It can also mean the “free and additional spatial gifts” that architecture can offer and “its ability to address the unspoken wishes of strangers”. They have invited a selection of like-minded architects to demonstrate these qualities with three-dimensional installations of “scale and quality”. — The Guardian
Rowan Moore, architecture critic of the Observer, finds admiring words in his Guardian piece for Grafton Architects principals Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, who are wearing the curator hats this year at architecture's biggest biennial spectacle: "McNamara and Farrell are neither celebrities... View full entry
The dominant theme is that of the expression of identity, the overwhelming preference in British mosque design being for traditional elements and decoration – especially dome, minaret and arches – applied to sometimes basic box-like structures. From time to time the cry goes up, including in Jonathan Glancey’s introduction to this book, that a “contemporary” Islamic British style should be developed. — The Guardian
There are about 1,500 mosques in Britain most of which have been designed in the last decade. Rowan Moore reviews architect and academic Shahed Saleem's book The British Mosque, a survey looking at why British mosque design is mostly traditional. Saleem presents both sides of the argument for... View full entry