Tag Archives: Architecture

At Home With Jimmy Carter and Don DeLillo

I read White Noise recently and noticed by chance that Picador have bizarrely just published a 40th anniversary edition of Don DeLillo’s book, although it was first published in 1985. Perhaps it is the accumulated prescience of the book that … Continue reading

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Souvenirs For Buildings That Don’t Exist

There is a moment in Superman III

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Anarchy on Wall Street

On 16 September 1920, a wagonload containing 45 kilos of explosives and 230 kilos of lead weights placed outside the JP Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street in New York was detonated, killing 38 people and injuring many more. The … Continue reading

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The Pompidou Centre Inside Battersea Power Station

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When Doves Fry

A plan to ban fireworks from the Opening Ceremony of the games, prompted IOC President Jacques Rogge into prolonged reminiscence about a salutary tale from the annals of Olympic history. Rogge, one of the rare members of the IOC to … Continue reading

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A Cathedral Dedicated to Excrement

As London’s sewer system accepts into its gaping maw a huge autumnal deluge, it is worth sparing a thought for those who created it. The Metropolitan Board of Works was created in 1855 to improve the cities infrastructure ‘under the … Continue reading

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Northern Seascapes

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Ruskin in Venice

The years that John Ruskin spent in Venice are no longer just an important biographical fact about an eminent art Victorian critic. They have become a narrative prism through which to assess architecture’s role in contemporary society. This month the … Continue reading

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Empire State of Mind

I re-read JG Ballard’s Empire of the Sun recently. This was at the same time that I was getting sent beautiful shots of pavilions from the Shanghai Expo, and then writing about it in some kind of historical context. At … Continue reading

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Not Learning From Learning From Las Vegas

The exhibition What We Learned at Yale and the 3-day symposium Architecture After Las Vegas prompted a predictable degree of puffery from those media-friendly, Po-Mo apologists over at FAT.  Sean Griffiths review in Building Design was generally a list of … Continue reading

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