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• John McNeill obituary

  02-04-2025 23:13
  My friend John McNeill, who has died aged 67 after a short illness, was one of the UK’s leading scholars of romanesque architecture and sculpture. He published articles on romanesque architecture from across Europe, especially monastic buildings, with an interest in elements often overlooked: the beasts inhabiting romanesque arches were a particular passion.Many of those publications were for the British Archaeological Association (BAA), though he produced two excellent volumes in the Blue
  
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• Even if you’re not a person of faith, there are reasons to see Antoni Gaudí as a saint | Rowan Moore

  19-04-2025 17:00
  
  The Catholic church has taken the first steps to canonise the architect of Barcelona’s extraordinary Sagrada FamíliaI don’t understand the processes by which people become saints, but the case for the canonisation of the great Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, now progressing with the blessing of the pope, seems strong. He was devout – he tried to go without food for 40 days in emulation of Jesus Christ, until a bishop friend talked him out of likely death. The unpr
  
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• The radical plan for a futuristic age-friendly neighbourhood in Manchester

  18-04-2025 17:00
  £1.5bn of funding has been granted to transform a hospital into a neighbourhood designed for people to thrive as they ageFuturistic planning for spaces where people can age well and live in an area designed for them to grow old in is accelerating in the UK with a radical project backed by £1.5bn of funding.The plan to transform a hospital into the first neighbourhood in the country designed for people to thrive as they age will be a national testbed for holistic health and social car
  
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• Vatican puts ‘God’s architect’ Antoni Gaudí on path to sainthood

  14-04-2025 19:32
  Pope Francis recognises the ‘heroic virtues’ of the creator of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família basilica in first step of processHe’s long been nicknamed “God’s architect” by those who point to his piety and the religious imagery woven through his soaring spires, colourful ceramics and undulating lines.Now it seems the Vatican may be ready to make it official. It said on Monday that Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan architect behind Barcelona’s Sa
  
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• ‘Cities trigger our imagination’: why a walk in town can be just as good for you as a stroll in the countryside

  13-04-2025 15:00
  Wandering among historic buildings, cemeteries and winding back streets can lift your spirits as effectively as communing with nature, according to author Annabel Streets. Let’s put that to the test …When I arrange to meet Annabel Streets, the appropriately named author of a new book, The Walking Cure, I’m presented with a challenge. She wants me to choose a London location I am unfamiliar with, so I can experience her ideas about the upsides of urban landscapes. In the book,
  
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• ‘It’s unjust’: charity fights to save UK’s at-risk modern buildings

  09-04-2025 08:00
  Millennium-era buildings – including Sheffield’s ‘kettle building’ – among a number of landmarks facing demolitionWhat happened to UK’s millennium projects?Sheffielders describe it as “alien-shaped” and like a “kettle” but it seems the former National Centre for Popular Music may soon be consigned to history, with the distinctive building at risk of being bulldozed.The Marmite structure – soon to be vacated by its current occupant
  
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• Lewis Braithwaite obituary

  07-04-2025 18:52
  My father, Lewis Braithwaite, who has died aged 87, was influential in the 1970s and 80s in town planning, saving historic buildings and street patterns, and in considering canals as urban assets. Many of his ideas are taken for granted now, but were radical at the time.Lewis wrote three books for A&C Black. The first, Canals in Towns (1976), argued that cities should embrace their canals, and advocated new flats and warehouse conversions facing the canal. The Historic Towns of Britain (1981
  
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• ‘Something to be proud of’: how an Irish town got a sewage makeover – and stopped discharging its waste into the sea

  06-04-2025 11:00
  Arklow’s sleek new wastewater treatment plant is a collaborative triumph between engineers, contractors and architects Clancy Moore. And it’s amazingly unsmelly…“Who’d want to live next to a sewage treatment plant?” asks the architect Andrew Clancy, who with his business partner Colm Moore runs the Dublin-based practice Clancy Moore. Who indeed, yet they have had to find a way to overcome precisely this difficulty. In the coastal town of Arklow, 40 miles sout
  
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• ‘Cathedral of crap’: is this the world’s most beautiful sewage treatment plant?

  04-04-2025 09:30
  Its inspiration was Sydney Opera House and its paper-thin louvre windows are reminiscent of a luxury ocean-liner. More importantly, the people of Arklow in Ireland can finally go swimming without fear of floatersIt is not often that the arts section of a newspaper finds itself concerned with the aesthetic merits of a sewage works. But then there are few facilities designed with the finesse of the new €139m (£117m) wastewater treatment plant in Arklow, which stands like a pair of minty
  
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• A tower topped with a pangolin! The Oxford university building inspired by Tolkien … and the pandemic

  01-04-2025 13:33
  A chubby, rhubarb and custard-coloured tower bedecked with anteaters and moles make a fun neighbour to the city’s dreaming spires. It’s left some locals lost for wordsA carved stone pangolin clings to the top of the tower, its scaly tail curled into the crevice of a cornice, as if holding on for dear life. It crowns an arresting arrival to Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, the anteater taking its place on this skyline of slender steeples and gurning gargoyles, up there at the summ
  
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• March design news: Maurzio Cattelan goes Greek, art teapots and house paint that changes colour

  31-03-2025 12:20
  Exhibitions at this year’s Milan Furniture Fair, a guide to green wood carving and funeral urns by AlessiThis is the final monthly design news round-up, so we’ve made it a bumper edition. As well as previewing some shows that will be this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, there’s pyjamas from Grayson Perry and Greek mythology reinterpreted by conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan. Enjoy. Continue reading...
  
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• For whom the bell tolls: hunt for missing piece of Shrewsbury’s industrial history

  31-03-2025 07:00
  Quest to restore sound that called child workers to Flaxmill Maltings building, which paved way for modern high-risesFor almost 200 years, the bell tolled to mark the start and end of the working day at one of the UK’s most remarkable industrial sites – but it vanished when the buildings became derelict in the late 1980s or early 90s.As English Heritage prepares to welcome visitors to the Flaxmill Maltings building in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, a hunt for the missing bell has been launc
  
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• How the architect who made modern Brisbane shaped the city’s 2032 Olympics stadium plans

  30-03-2025 16:00
  
  Michael Rayner, who designed city’s skyscrapers, bridges and cultural venues, says new stadium will revitalise ‘rarely used’ parkAs plans for the 2032 Olympic Games were thrown into limbo last year, architect Michael Rayner began to bend the ear of local politicians and Olympics officials about his idea for Victoria Park.Rayner – a prolific designer who has been described as one of the makers of modern Brisbane – proposed Victoria Park as an Olympics precinct in a 2
  
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• Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style review – lidos, Speedos and atomic bombs

  30-03-2025 12:00
  
  Design Museum, London
  Swimming’s deep and shallow ends are granted equal weight in an engaging show that ranges from Pamela Anderson’s Baywatch cossie to South Korea’s female free divers and the explosive naming of the bikiniAt the end of Splash!, the Design Museum’s new exhibition on “a century of swimming and style”, there’s a film about the haenyeo – women on the South Korean island of Jeju who for centuries have been diving for seafood and seaw
  
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• Take the roof off: outside meets inside in a radically artistic Italian home

  30-03-2025 11:00
  
  A creative couple’s house in the Romagna countryside is where sculptural simplicity meets curated eclecticismTucked into the rolling hills between Bertinoro and Cesena, Marcantonio Raimondi Malerba’s home is not just a place to live, it is a testament to the seamless fusion of art, nature and design. For the celebrated sculptor, artist and designer, whose whimsical creations have captivated the design world, this sanctuary is both a refuge and a continuous source of inspiration.&ldqu
  
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• Gold leaf and Gatsby: Brussels lays claim to birth of art deco with year of celebrations

  29-03-2025 12:10
  
  Throughout 2025, the Belgian capital is marking 100 years of the movement with events, exhibitions and film screeningsThe gold leaf around the window and door frames ripples, reflected in the water of the swimming pool. Elegant, spare, pristine, the Villa Empain in south Brussels seems little changed since it was built over 90 years ago.Yet this art deco masterpiece reopened only in 2010 after falling into ruin. Illegal ravers had scrawled on its marble walls and stolen its treasures, from radia
  
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• Fears for Bagan’s towering Buddhist temples after Myanmar earthquake

  28-03-2025 18:10
  
  City is close to Sagaing faultline and monuments were significantly damaged after the last earthquake in 2016Rising through the mist of the forest at dawn, with spires reaching more than 200ft, few sights on earth have impressed travellers like the temples and pagodas of Bagan. “Jerusalem, Rome, Kiev, Benares,” wrote the Scottish journalist and colonial administrator James George Scott in 1910, “none of them can boast the multitude of temples, and the lavishness of design and o
  
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• ‘No more velvet rope’: how New York’s beloved Frick museum opened up – and will now even sell coffee

  25-03-2025 16:11
  
  It is a Gilded Age gem full of Old Masters, from Vermeer to Holbein. Now, after a ravishing $300m revamp, it is even more welcoming. Our writer revels in its silk-clad walls and the freshly trickling fountain of its light-filled sculpture court‘If I could have a pound for every person who’s told me that the Frick is their favourite museum, I’d be able to retire already,” says Axel Rüger, the new director of the New York institution, who has just moved there from lead
  
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• The battle for Glasgow’s Wyndford estate – photo essay

  24-03-2025 13:44
  
  A carbon crime or bright new future? For nearly four years, a fierce debate raged over demolishing the site’s high-rise flatsFor nearly four years, a fierce debate raged over the future of the Wyndford estate in Glasgow, dividing residents and sparking wider national controversy. Was the demolition of its high-rises an environmental travesty or the first step toward much-needed regeneration?The dispute began in November 2021, days after the city hosted the UN climate conference Cop26, at w
  
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• Discovering Jewish Country Houses review – crumbling symbols of staggering success

  24-03-2025 13:17
  Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire
  Hélène Binet’s haunted photographs of spectacular country residences built by Jewish people across Europe are filled with the melancholic grandeur of fallen empiresAll things considered, we Jews haven’t done too bad. Not that you need reminding. Every corner of the internet, from Reddit to X, is desperate to point out that Jewish people are apparently in control of the banks, Hollywood, the government and, ahem, art criticism. That&rsquo
  
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• ‘A place you remember for the rest of your life’: why Dutch architects are giving new life to old schools

  23-03-2025 12:00
  The inspiring makeover of a 1960s Utrecht college at less than half the cost of a new building and a third the carbon footprint is among projects in the Netherlands that can teach the UK vital lessons in sustainability‘The greenest building,” to quote a slogan now popular among architects, “is one that is already built.” It sums up the belated realisation that the carbon impact and energy consumption of demolition and new building can be more significant than those of hea
  
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• A temple to extravagance. And that goes for Manchester United’s new stadium, too | Rowan Moore

  22-03-2025 17:00
  
  Could Norman Foster’s £2bn design for the club, which will be seen 25 miles away, turn out to be a case of hubris before ruin? There’s a phenomenon in architectural history whereby great empires build their grandest monuments just before they fall. The Parthenon was completed just before Athens embarked on the devastating Peloponnesian War. Manhattan’s most celebrated skyscrapers went up on the brink of the Great Depression. The British inaugurated the imposing government
  
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• I’m still here, in case you were wondering | Letters

  21-03-2025 19:01
  Birthday blues | Historic sites | The T-word | Mythical posties | Chiffchaff firstAfter more than 30 years of appearing in it, I have to confess I felt a little disappointed to see that I was omitted from your list (Birthdays, print edition, 15 March). I would like to reassure anyone who might care that I’m still here, and 76 this year. By the way, who is Howard Devoto?
  John Duttine
  Worthing, West Sussex• While we marvelled at Amiens Cathedral in France, our son, then eight, commented
  
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• ‘Like a game of black-belt level Jenga’: inside the ancient art of Japanese carpentry

  17-03-2025 13:57
  From the earthquake-defying joints that support a 13th-century temple to the delicacy of sashimono puzzle boxes, a new exhibition shows off the myriad possibilities of this centuries-old craftDo you know your ant’s head from your shell mouth? Or your cogged lap from your scarfed gooseneck? These are just some of the mind-boggling array of timber jointing techniques on display in a new exhibition spotlighting the meticulous craft of Japanese carpentry. The basement gallery of London’s
  
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• New designers to look out for in 2025 – from 3D printed buildings to fuzzy chairs made from agave

  16-03-2025 15:00
  
  The UK’s top creatives have put together a list of makers who put sustainabilityfirst. Using everything from reclaimed rattan and bacteria-dyed fabrics to algorithmic design, these trailblazers are making positive steps forward for people and planetI feel hopeful about the impact of design on the world,” says fashion designer Foday Dumbuya, “It has the power to drive change by addressing social issues, promoting sustainability, and enhancing quality of life.”In September
  
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• ‘They goggled and gawped’: Bahrain gives its pearl-divers a sci-fi wonder – and four ‘filo pastry’ car parks

  14-03-2025 12:05
  The kingdom’s old capital is a world heritage site – and it has now honoured its once-biggest industry with a ‘pearling path’ wending through two miles of architectural marvels. But did its car parks really have to be so lavish?Think of contemporary architecture in the Gulf and you might think of gilded towers rising from the desert, eye-popping “iconic” museums, and artificial islands carved into ever more fanciful shapes. But, sandwiched between the petrodol
  
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• ‘Zippos circus is in town!’ Can Man Utd really raise £2bn for a throbbing big top?

  11-03-2025 18:57
  
  Local lad Norman Foster’s plan envisions an enormous canopy over a new stadium and a ‘mixed-use mini-city’. But, given the club’s £1bn debts, the idea seems as flimsy as its own tensile membrane‘What Manchester does today,” Benjamin Disraeli once proclaimed, “the world does tomorrow.” So begins the breathless promotional video for Manchester United’s proposed £2bn football stadium, summoning the words of the Victorian prime minist
  
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• Outside in: the extraordinary home inside a giant greenhouse in Norway

  09-03-2025 17:00
  An architect has designed a sustainable home inside a glass box, where fruit and veg grow, and their family can thriveSituated on the family farmstead, surrounded by trees and pasture, stands the extraordinary glasshouse where architect Margit Klev and her young family have made their home. Here, Klev has created a house within a house, placing her bespoke building inside a vast glass barn, delivered as a kit from Denmark and erected on site in just two weeks. This glass shell not only protects
  
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• Welcome to Upper Lawn, the 60s Wiltshire retreat of brutalism’s first couple

  09-03-2025 12:00
  
  Pioneering architects Alison and Peter Smithson’s no-frills glass box near the ruins of a grand 18th-century folly was an experiment, a second home and a ‘fairy story’ – all of which awaits whoever buys it next…Upper Lawn is a weekend retreat in Wiltshire built by the late architects Alison and Peter Smithson for themselves and their family and used by them from 1959 to 1982. It’s a place of obvious delight, thanks to a garden enclosed by old stone walls in w
  
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• Streaming: Steven Soderbergh’s Presence and the best haunted house films

  08-03-2025 09:00
  The director’s witty supernatural thriller joins Psycho, Hereditary, The Brutalist and more – films in which buildings are characters in their own rightThe first more-or-less horror movie in the lengthy, genre-skimming career of director Steven Soderbergh, Presence is a film about grief, trauma, familial dysfunction and abusive masculinity. But it’s also, to a significant and compelling extent, about property. Beginning with a family’s first viewing of a handsome Victoria
  
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