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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.
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- You are here:Essays
Typology
Typology: EmbassySubscription
Redolent of the geopolitical climate, embassy design has shifted to create symbols of protection as well as power
Typology: BankSubscription
Beginning with the simple table from which they take their name, banks developed into one of the most splendid urban building types as they sought to reassure depositors. Today they are on the verge of disappearing altogether
Typology: PalaceSubscription
Big houses for feudal rulers advertised the right to power of those within, while protecting them from the people they exploited to build them – today, the tradition continues in the hands of oligarchs
Typology: PierSubscription
Devised by pleasure-seeking Victorians but now undermined by social change and physical neglect, does the building that defined the seaside have a future?
Typology: Power stationSubscription
Faced with planetary catastrophe, does the future of energy generation lie in a return to its historical origins?
Typology: Market hallSubscription
The market hall shelters a cornucopia of delights, but the traffic and mess it generates presents a challenge to planners
Typology: Law CourtSubscription
From Kafkaesque labyrinths of columns and arches to the abstraction of Modernist towers: the representation of justice in a world ruled by its absence is an intractable task
Typology: PrisonSubscription
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 animalsSubscription
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: BathhouseSubscription
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
AR February 2020 on SoilSubscription
Martin Rauch | Waugh Thistleton Architects | BC Architects | De Gouden Liniaal Architecten | Anne Holtrop | Ensamble Studio | Junya Ishigami | Voellmy Schmidlin Architektur | Bas Princen | Hassan Fathy
Typology: Public toiletSubscription
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: ShopSubscription
Sacred lair of the commodity, its mysteries veiled by plate glass: who can resist the lure of the shop?
Typology: HotelsSubscription
Anonymous rooms for anonymous and rootless lives, the hotel has long been a giant metaphor for modernity
Typology: DamsSubscription
The control of nature promised a world transformed for the benefit of humans, but have gigantic dams drowned such hopes?
Typology: AirportSubscription
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 SquareSubscription
When human particles collide in the accelerator of the square, the public comes into being – as evanescent as an unstable element
Typology: CrematoriumSubscription
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: PubSubscription
Idealised as a comforting refuge and a site of warm conviviality, the public house can also be divisive
Typology: Housing EstateSubscription
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 townsSubscription
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 Subscription
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 Subscription
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 StationsSubscription
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: CinemasSubscription
Gloriously kitsch picture palaces engulfed the masses in darkness, while opening virtual space through the screen
Typology: FactoriesSubscription
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: UniversitiesSubscription
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: TombsSubscription
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: SkyscraperSubscription
Soaring expression of the individualistic spirit of capitalism, logical extrusion of land values or irrational, anti-urban monster?
Typology: Artist StudioSubscription
The studio reflects the changing status of artists through time, from the humble workspace of art workers to the hallowed ground of masters
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.
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