Your browser is no longer supported
For the best possible experience using our website we recommend you upgrade to a newer version or another browser.
- Today
-
Essays
-
Buildings
-
Places
-
Architects
- Competitions
- Films
-
Awards
- Magazines
-
Subscribe
-
-
1-9 subscriptions
The only architecture magazine with a social conscience, your subscription is designed to deepen your knowledge and challenge you with reflections on the social purpose of architecture.
-
10+ subscriptions
Practice or university-wide subscriptions grant access to the AR's formidable archive in addition to the print edition. Can't find the historical article you need? We'll scan it for you.
-
-
- Previous
- Next
Typology: Prison
To confine, secure, rehabilitate or punish: the prison has several, sometimes contradictory aims, but however humane its approach, penal architecture is essentially cruel
Typology: Buildings for animals
Designing buildings for animals has prompted an extraordinary range of responses, from palace to cat flap, which say more about humans than the residents
Typology: Bathhouse
Since time immemorial, and from continent to continent, saunas or bathhouses have played a community role, stripping their users of social distinctions and affording a rich seam for architects
Typology: Public toilet
From the pissoir to the sanisette, from the communal to the stand-alone pod, from male to female provision, a rich seam of history runs through toilets
Typology: Shop
Sacred lair of the commodity, its mysteries veiled by plate glass: who can resist the lure of the shop?
Typology: Hotels
Anonymous rooms for anonymous and rootless lives, the hotel has long been a giant metaphor for modernity
Typology: Dams
The control of nature promised a world transformed for the benefit of humans, but have gigantic dams drowned such hopes?
Typology: Airport
Once glamorous gateways to freedom, airports have become zones of consumerist tedium and state terror – but the emotional intensity of the departure gate endures
Typology: Public Square
When human particles collide in the accelerator of the square, the public comes into being – as evanescent as an unstable element
Typology: Crematorium
Our final encounter with architecture increasingly takes place in crematoria but, despite an association with modern bureaucratic society, the type has a long history
Typology: Pub
Idealised as a comforting refuge and a site of warm conviviality, the public house can also be divisive
Typology: Housing Estate
From the green quadrangles of medieval almshouses to towering banlieues, the history of mass housing represents architecture at its most high-minded – which makes its failures all the more painful
Typology: New towns
Creating new urban areas from scratch may appear to be a utopian exercise, but more frequently it entrenches existing systems of power
Typology: Corporate campus
With the 1940s came a compulsion to move headquarters from the inner-city sprawl to more tranquil environs out of town. Is the resurgent migration a retreat to a natural idyll or a calculated isolation?
Typology: Multifaith
Religious belief systems remain powerful and distinct but, alongside the differences, comes a call for greater tolerance and cohesion. Can the worship of different gods take place under one roof?
Typology: Fire Stations
The fire station is a unique blend of domesticity and workplace, with the engines brought as close as possible to the living quarters in search of the world’s briefest commute (preferably via pole)
Typology: Cinemas
Gloriously kitsch picture palaces engulfed the masses in darkness, while opening virtual space through the screen
Typology: Factories
Commodities flowed from them, along with money for their owners - but the factory also produced new ways of living, of thinking, and of designing
Typology: Universities
The university is one of the oldest surviving institutions in the western world. It has colonised the globe, its architecture reflecting the prevailing ideology – of which it is the reproductive machinery
Typology: Tombs
A sealed volume, the tomb has no interior – or if it does, you really don’t want to go there. The exterior, by contrast, is a screen onto which we project our hopes and fears about the other side of life
Typology: Skyscraper
Soaring expression of the individualistic spirit of capitalism, logical extrusion of land values or irrational, anti-urban monster?
Typology: Artist Studio
The studio reflects the changing status of artists through time, from the humble workspace of art workers to the hallowed ground of masters
Typology: Swimming Pools
Sites of ablution, illicit heavy petting, athleticism, surveillance, leisure, racism and death: pools bring people together stripped of status symbols, but in ways profoundly marked by wider social conditions
Typology: The semi-detached house
Symbol of middle-class aspiration, conservatism and compromised individualism, the semi-detached house is England’s modern domestic type par excellence
Typology: Opera Houses
Since its birth in the Renaissance, opera has been claimed as a reincarnation of community-forming Greek drama, while being used to represent the power of the state − whether feudal, dictatorial or democratic
Typology: Museums
Museums arrange the world according to the changing way we see it: from Renaissance memory theatres and Baroque cabinets of curiosity, via Enlightenment typologies, to Modernist teleologies and the current vogue for environmental contextualism
Typology: Offices
Conceived in an era of command and control, the traditional fixed and stratified office is evolving to embrace more fluid and intuitive ways of working
Typology: Hospitals
Ancient civilisation advocated letting the wider world’s healing power flow through the body and mind, but the industrialisation of healthcare isolated patients from these larger contexts. From city centres to sylvan settings, today’s hospitals must reintegrate the public realm into the healing process
Typology: Schools
In the industrial era, schools developed as highly controlled environments to instil the discipline to thrive in a machine age. Now, to prepare pupils for success in a knowledge economy, the evolving typology is more fluidly conceived to provide flexibility, connectivity, and spaces for social and educational encounters
Typology: Libraries
In this piece from November 2011, Oriel Prizeman examines six recent public library projects in the first of a major new quarterly series on typology
Library of Birmingham by Mecanoo
Oriel Prizeman examines six recent libraries in the first of a new quarterly series on typology
King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture by Snøhetta
Oriel Prizeman examines six recent libraries in the first of a new quarterly series on typology
National Library of China by KSP Jurgen Engel Architekten
Oriel Prizeman examines six recent libraries in the first of a new quarterly series on typology
- Previous
- Next
AR Emerging Architecture awards 2017
View the shortlisted and winning projects from architects such as Avenier Cornejo, Studio Anne Holtrop and Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter, at the 19th edition of the AR Emerging Architecture awards held at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin
Interview with Rachel Whiteread: ‘A memorial needs to be visible but not screaming’
2017 Ada Louise Huxtable prize winner Rachel Whiteread talks to us about her ‘shy sculptures’, working in series, how Gordon Matta-Clark influenced her student days and why she finds it difficult to collaborate with architects.
Denise Scott Brown: The petition is my prize – and it's better than the Pritzker
Jane Drew Prize 2017 winner Denise Scott Brown on sexism, prizes, low architectural pay and the fight for self-esteem
‘By creating public space you are able to create chances for social change’: Ada Yvars Bravo
The Moira Gemmill Prize shortlist: interview with Ada Yvars Bravo
‘Architecture is not only about laying bricks: it is a social construction’: Rozana Montiel
The Moira Gemmill Prize shortlist: interview with Rozana Montiel
‘Can we do architecture that hits you in the gut? That’s a lifelong quest’: Johanna Hurme
The Moira Gemmill Prize shortlist: interview with Johanna Hurme
‘I practice architecture as a language in itself’: Jing Liu
The Moira Gemmill Prize shortlist: interview with Jing Liu
Designing with Daylight
The global winners from this year’s International VELUX Award 2016 on rethinking daylight in architecture
Revisiting Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium
Ellis Woodman revisits the building that brought Aalto international attention
MPavilion by Bijoy Jain
Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai explains his concept and the realisation of the MPavilion 2016 in Melbourne, Australia
The 2016 Emerging Architecture awards
The judges, winners and supporters of last year’s Emerging Architecture awards share their experiences
‘The architect is someone who can harness failure’: Interview with Pezo von Ellrichshausen
As an experience, the pavilion is just as much a physical reality as any other form of architecture
‘The generation of forms can catalyse change’: Interview with Kunlé Adeyemi
Even simple pavilion projects have the potential to affect change
‘The typology of housing is a construct’: Interview with Cany Ash
How can housing offer residents a sense of agency?
Interview: Anupama Kundoo on craft and urbanisation in India
Architects’ ability to synthesise is crucial to help Indian cities keep up with unprecedented migration and provide necessary infrastructure to its newcomers, says Kundoo
Norman Foster on Women in Architecture
Norman Foster discusses the importance of the campaign as well as the judging process and award winners of 2016
Women in Architecture: 'There's a good message here, we need to amplify it'
Eva Jiricna, Norman Foster, Martha Thorne, Terry Farrell and more discuss the challenges facing women in architecture and the shortisted architects for the 2016 Women in Architecture awards
Moving pictures: Alvaro Siza Vidago Palace Hotel & Spa
Produced by Architectural Video, the story of a building is described in a day
Interview: Gabriela Etchegaray
‘I became an architect out of curiosity’: Winner of the 2016 Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture
Interview: Anna Heringer
‘Rammed earth and bamboo are not materials of the past’: Heringer on architecture’s impact on the planet’s resources
Interview: Jenni Reuter
From projects for the official home town of Santa Claus to underprivileged communities in Africa
Interview: Di Zhang
‘I like to go through the emotional route for things’: Founder of WAA (We Architech Anonymous) discusses the work of her practice in Beijing’s competitive market
Interview: Design, Bitches
‘There’s not a lot of historical boundaries’: Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph on Los Angeles’ history of architectural experimentation
Interview: Elisa Burnazzi
‘Feminine values are very important’: Co–founder of Burnazzi Feltrin Architects who fell in love with architecture as a girl scout
Interview: Marie Zawistowski
‘As an architect you have to be optimistic’: Co–founder of onSITE and director of the design/buildLAB on how architecture must set things in motion
Moving pictures: Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership by Studio Gang
An atmospheric film of Architect of the Year Jeanne Gang’s award-winning building at Kalamazoo College, Michigan
Moving pictures: Housing in Ciudad Acuña by Tatiana Bilbao Estudio
An atmospheric film of Bilbao’s low-income housing in Mexico
Rethink: What makes a great workplace?
AR Work: Hear from the judges as they outline the criteria and reveal the shortlist
Sports Hall St. Martin in Austria by Wissounig Dietger Architekten
Sponsored Feature, Copper Awards: Facades of folded, perforated copper plates covering this hall with a semi-transparent veil
Euravenir Tower in Lille by LAN
Sponsored Feature, Copper Awards: LAN’s Commended project creates a new urban space in a pivotal location
A curated selection of the best architectural ideas in the world to
inspire your mind and feed your soul. Each special edition is created
using sheet-fed litho printing with hand-inserted tip-ins and gatefolds
with vegetable-based inks on a mix of FSC-certified paper and card.
Don't miss the next issue –