Broader View
The ugly truth: the beauty of ugliness
The best-selling author of Ugly: The Aesthetics of Everything, sees ugliness as a necessary corrective that stimulates a deeper appreciation of beauty
The Ghost in the Machine: Programming and Architecture
Robert Aish shares his insight as the software developer whose application was used to design the Olympic Velodrome
Love thy neighbour
Emily Cockayne peers through the lace curtains to discover that, while well-designed houses can foster a sense of community, thoughtless design can be more divisive than an overgrown leylandii
Reality Bytes: THE DigitalLY-MEDIATED Urban REVOLUTIONS
Digital media plays an important role in the galvanisation of social movements, says social scientist Merlyna Lim, but can it ever supplant urban space?
An Ecology of Mind
In the 20th century, the diverse work of Gregory Bateson was hugely influential in many fields. Now his thinking and writing could offer an essential guide to the future of architecture and urbanism
Psychology of urban neighbourhoods
Clinical psychiatrist Mindy Thompson Fullilove advocates mending the fracture between rich and poor communities
Prehistoric buildings hold an overlooked social complexity
The discovery of the oldest known wooden stairway in Europe, preserved in an Alpine saltmine, revealed astonishing levels of design sophistication among some of our distant ancestors. Timothy Taylor muses on Bronze Age construction and placemaking and the effects that prehistoric architecture may have had on social control.
Designs for life in Humanity 2.0
As the technological revolution creates growing interactivity between our lives and the things around us, philosopher-turned-sociology professor Steve Fuller considers the social and spatial implications of a world in the near future where everyone and everything is seamlessly interconnected
THE ONLY WAY IS UP
Harvard economist and author of The Triumph of the City, Edward Glaeser makes the economic and environmental case for building denser, higher cities
Reputations
Walter Gropius
The Bauhaus reduced even to its own door handles is considered to be Gropius’ greatest achievements.
Herman Hertzberger
Spanning through seven decades, Herman Hertzberger’s career as both architect and professor is reviewed
Fernando Távora
As history unfolds, unexpected connections appear between the recent and the more distant past. Works which were once discussed as central retreat into the background, while others which seemed marginal at the time move into the foreground.
Filippo Brunelleschi
One of the first great modern architects – perhaps most famous for the dome of Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore – Brunelleschi’s fresh understanding of the laws of perspective revolutionised painting too
