BREAKING NEWS: Architecture

Troy Bowker’s Caniwi Capital buys $95m of Auckland properties from Mansons TCLM

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 23:54:12 +0000

Big plans for Mt Wellington property; Greenlane property is fully refurbished offices.

The Tiny Treehouse That’s Also a Bird Sanctuary

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 18:32:39 +0000

Inside a Peaceful Modern Cabin by the Water’s Edge

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 18:31:54 +0000

Trump removes Fine Arts panel ahead of White House ballroom, arch plans

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 04:24:39 +0000

The firings impact an agency that traditionally reviews Washington’s landmarks.

A Rusted Roof, White Walls, and Desert Light: Inside Arizona’s Canal House

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:10:11 +0000

If You’re Obsessed with Concrete, You’ll Want to See This House

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:09:30 +0000

How Two Car Collectors Turned Their Passion Into a House

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:28:56 +0000

‘We want people to get lost!’ Princeton’s new museum survives scandal to deliver a mazey art ambush

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 05:00:24 +0000

It is architect David Adjaye’s first major project since the allegations that rocked his firm – a bold museum for Princeton University with exhibits that sneak up on its students. But do the insides match the outsides?

A cluster of serrated concrete bunkers has landed in the heart of Princeton University’s leafy campus in New Jersey, sending tremors through this twee Oxbridge fantasyland of gothic turrets and twiddly spires. The new addition’s brute, blank facade gives little away from the outside. Wrapped in rows of vertical grey ribs, contrasting with the arched windows of the surrounding stately stone halls, it has the look of a secure storage facility, keeping a beady eye out through a single cyclopean window.

The vault-like quality is fitting. This bulky new bastion is a repository for the university’s astonishing collection of art and antiquities – a 117,000-strong haul spanning everything from Etruscan urns and medieval staircases to expressionist paintings and contemporary sculpture. Previously housed in a hodgepodge of extensions and additions accrued over decades, the collection can now shine in its own purpose-built castle.

How a Seattle Family Built a Backyard Office for Two Using Off-the-Shelf Materials

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 18:06:52 +0000

The London House with a Secret Basement, Double-Height Courtyard and Green Wall

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 18:06:01 +0000

Inside the Clever Beachside Home Built on a Plot the Size of a Garage

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 17:03:34 +0000

Where Light Meets Wood: A Modern Minnesota Lake House That Feels Effortless

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 17:02:52 +0000

A Slow Life in Spain: The Architect Who Built Her Dream Cottage in the Mountains

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 17:20:28 +0000

Clean lines and a connection with nature: the modernist beach house jutting out over a Scottish loch

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 10:30:40 +0000

A couple’s dream home on Scotland’s rocky west coast is an audacious, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired feat of architecture

Building a bold new contemporary home directly on the British coastline is a tall order. Aside from the logistics of designing a house that functions successfully in such an unforgiving setting, planning permission is likely to make it a nonstarter. But on the shore of Loch Long on the Rosneath peninsula, 40 miles north-west of Glasgow, John MacKinnon and his wife Laura found a way to make it work for their house, Rock Cove. While the area is wild and ruggedly beautiful, its history has long been intertwined with the military and was once a brownfield site, home to disused Ministry of Defence huts and garages, overgrown and strewn with rubble.

Back in 2008, MacKinnon had bought a property on the same site, a 1940s cottage that had been repurposed as a navy signalling station. MacKinnon has a deep-seated passion for design, and worked closely with architect Stuart Cameron of Cameron Webster to completely reimagine this humble property as a modernist beach house, Cape Cove. He then began contemplating what could be done with the scruffy space alongside his new home.

Homes for sale in England with a grand design – in pictures

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 06:55:56 +0000

From a multi award-winning treehouse, to a sleek glass-clad home built by architectural pioneers of new Brutalism

Donald Trump’s ballroom blitz upsets old guard

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:39:21 +0000

The $250m project will replace the White House’s entire East Wing.

Twenty truckloads and 120 cubic metres of concrete poured for Napier’s new library

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 22:02:19 +0000

The mix’s 50% fly ash content cuts carbon emissions by about 65%.

Louvre thieves carjacked truck-mounted lift nine days before heist

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 21:40:18 +0000

The gang used a stolen 90-foot (27m) lift truck to scale the Louvre’s walls.

Diversity in architecture has taken a backwards step | Letter

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 17:06:05 +0000

John Murray on how one London borough championed female and ethnic minority staff in management positions 30 years ago

Up to the 1990s, local authorities and public sector design services provided positive opportunities for women and ethnic minorities to flourish in departments of architecture (‘Stark displays of sexism’ driving women out of architecture, report finds, 20 October).

For example, in Haringey’s building design service, which developed ideas from the New Architecture Movement that aimed to involve tenants and users in the design of their buildings and to democratise public architecture, 20% of the senior management team were women and 20% ethnic minorities – this was 30 years ago.

‘Dictator-for-life vibes’: our architecture critic on Trump’s bulletproof ballroom bling

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 15:00:44 +0000

He has already turned the Oval Office into a wrestler’s changing room. Now the president is building a place so gilded Nero would feel at home. Why did he pick an architect whose speciality is Catholic churches?

As if truffling thuggishly in pursuit of the Nobel peace prize wasn’t enough, the spectacle of bulldozers ripping into the White House is yet more evidence of Donald Trump’s unstinting quest for epic self-aggrandisement. Having decreed the East Wing not fit for purpose – namely, his purposes of swank and show – he plans to replace it with a faux classical bulletproof ballroom, capable of seating up to 650 partygoers.

Renderings show a vast, glacially white aircraft hangar of a structure embellished with an ornate coffered ceiling, gilded Corinthian columns and drooping gold chandeliers. Nero, who conceived the original domus aurea, would feel right at home. Costing $250m (£187.5m), a sum to be extracted from sycophantic donors, Trump’s ballroom is one of the most grandiose White House projects to be implemented in more than a century, as he strives to bend the building – and US architecture more generally – to his will.

Entire White House East Wing to go as cost rises on Trump ballroom project

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 23:33:32 +0000

The $522m rebuild will replace the first lady’s traditional East Wing offices.

Why Gothenburg should be on your Sweden travel list: Best food, culture and attractions

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 23:30:00 +0000

Most travellers transit this spot as fast as possible. Here's why it's worth lingering.

First look inside new UniLodge Auckland Central: less ‘student digs’, more resort

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 22:00:00 +0000

Ashton Mitchell architect Cliff Paul's stylish new Auckland CBD tower for uni students.

More of the structure was torn down to make way for Trump’s planned ballroom

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:50:22 +0000

Historic items from the first lady’s office have been stored for safekeeping.

Ep 187: Objects of Design

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:10:56 +0000

Architects explore the stories behind objects of design that remind us why design matters — revealing creativity, purpose, and meaning in everyday things.

The post Ep 187: Objects of Design first appeared on Life of an Architect.

Continue reading Ep 187: Objects of Design at Life of an Architect.

Stuart Gulliver obituary

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 18:12:30 +0000

Economic development strategist who helped make Glasgow a cultural centre of international standing in the 1980s and 90s

When Stuart Gulliver arrived in Glasgow in 1978 to work as an economic development strategist, the city was desperately in need of a plan. Its population had crashed by almost 25% in the previous 20 years. Its swagger as the empire’s second city, with a Manhattan-style grid and a wealth of grandiloquent but by then decaying architecture, had evaporated. Its factories, shipyards and steelworks were closing.

The people of Glasgow were getting steadily poorer and sicker. And as one wit suggested at the time, its only tourists were people who had got lost trying to go somewhere else.

Repair bills could force hundreds of UK churches to close within five years

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 12:13:23 +0000

Two in five say their roof is at risk and one in three are using reserves for basics, National Churches Trust survey finds

Hundreds of Britain’s churches may be forced to close in the next five years as the cost of maintaining heritage buildings becomes unmanageable, a conference at the V&A in London has heard.

Many of the UK’s 20,000-plus listed places of worship contain important heritage treasures, such as stained glass windows, and monuments of historic significance. They are also hubs for community groups and social action projects.

Forgotten water well, 1915 plaque found in University of Auckland Old Choral Hall restoration

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 23:00:00 +0000

A well dating back to the 1800s and a stone plaque were found during building restoration.

Protecting the crown jewels in pilates classes | Brief letters

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 16:26:27 +0000

Pilates and the male psyche | Targeted for tax | Hot designs | Carving up the US

As the (frequently) sole male in pilates classes, I wonder if the reason “pilates and the male psyche don’t seem to connect” (Letters, 19 October) is that the language is directed towards women and their anatomy. On more than one occasion, when I have clearly been confused as to what bit of myself I am meant to be concentrating on, female instructors have whispered “crown jewels” in my ear.
Tom Stubbs
Surbiton, Surrey

• After my sigh of relief that perhaps sanity had finally prevailed (Rachel Reeves says those with broadest shoulders should pay fair share of tax, 16 October), normal service resumed with the suggestion that the chancellor is targeting a scheme providing cars for disabled people (Chancellor says she ‘can’t leave welfare untouched’ this parliament as budget looms, 17 October).
Sandra Norburn
Doncaster

Hidden, lost and dramatic: tour Melbourne’s most treasured heritage interiors – in pictures

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 14:00:44 +0000

A new book by interior designer and heritage consultant Kristine Slawinski and graphic designer Phil Campbell showcases the fabulous Victorian, art moderne and mid-century styled interiors of Melbourne’s city centre buildings, drawn from archival and present-day images

A rare glimpse inside Melbourne’s most captivating buildings

‘Stark displays of sexism’ driving women out of architecture, report finds

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 08:25:57 +0000

The RIBA and Fawcett Society survey finds many are afraid to report bullying, sexual harassment and unequal pay

Two decades after a seminal report on sexism in architecture, women are still abandoning the profession because of “toxic workplace cultures”, sexual harassment, long hours and unequal pay, according to a report from the Royal Institute of British Architects (the RIBA).

Female architects still faced intractable barriers, including “long hours being gloriﬁed, an imbalance of power between employers and employees, lack of clear policies and proactive action, and stark displays of sexism within practices”, according to the RIBA Build It Together report, produced with the equality charity the Fawcett Society.

Half of all female respondents had experienced bullying at work

A third had been sexually harassed

A majority felt their architecture career progression had been stymied by having children

Spa vibes with a grow-your-own-dinner option: Britain’s best new building is a revamped almshouse

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 21:00:53 +0000

With its shimmering ginkgo trees, tinkling pools and a rooftop garden, the Appleby Blue Almshouse housing complex for older people is a worthy winner of RIBA’s prestigious Stirling prize

Described as “a provision of pure delight”, Appleby Blue Almshouse, a social housing complex for older people has been named this year’s winner of the RIBA Stirling prize. With a vibe that has more in common with an Alpine spa hotel than the poky rooms and grim corridors usually associated with housing for elderly people, the building – by architects Witherford Watson Mann – reinvents the almshouse for the modern era as a place of care, shelter and social connection.

As a building type, the origins of almshouses extend back centuries, giving a semblance of dignity to the poor, the old, the sick and the marginalised. Sequestered from the outside world, with cellular dwellings arrayed around courtyards, they evoke a sense of pastoral benevolence.

From glorified sheds to sleek sci-fi palaces: how architecture put the zing into football grounds

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 17:32:51 +0000

A new exhibition in Liverpool tells the story of the grassy arenas, from churning tribal terraces to hyper-modern, wedding-cake-like structures with retractable pitches. And let’s hear it for the world’s first all-timber stadium!

Bill Shankly, a man so beloved by Liverpool that there is now a hotel in the city named after him, once famously observed: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”

Inevitably, Shankly pops up in Home Ground, a punchy new exhibition on the architecture and social culture of football stadiums. The legendary manager is pictured savouring the acclaim of an adoring crowd, part of a tableau on the farewell to the Kop prior to its metamorphosis from churning tribal terrace into a more sedate, all-seater stand.

The dream of turning empty office blocks into apartments appears over. What went wrong?

Sat, 11 Oct 2025 23:00:36 +0000

Strict planning rules and soaring refit costs are deterring landlords and developers, amid calls for government intervention to alleviate housing crunch

Two years ago, state and local governments pushed to fast-track conversions of near-empty offices into much-needed apartments to alleviate a housing crunch.

The promised panacea never eventuated.

Get Cartier! How Jean Novel turned an old Paris department store into a museum to rival the Louvre

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 11:23:00 +0000

The exterior may be a bit Apple shop. But inside – upending the very notion of galleries – the new Fondation Cartier can reconfigure its spaces with thrillingly movable platforms. And as for the lecture theatre, it’s blood red

Come what may, Jean Nouvel will always have Paris. The City of Lights has been the stage and stomping ground of French architecture’s vieux terrible since the early 1980s. Yet the building that first made his name – the Institut du Monde Arabe, a glittering, delicate, metallic creation inset with mechanical lenses to regulate light – is a lifetime away from the bemusement that met his last Parisian project, completed a decade ago.

That was the ill-starred Philharmonie, a gargantuan trophy concert hall, described in the Guardian as resembling “a pile of broken paving stones” and “a greatest hits mashup of dictators’ icons”. Nouvel may well concur, since he boycotted the building’s inauguration, dismayed by budget cuts and design tweaks (“value engineering” as it is known in the trade), describing his project as “sabotaged” and the half-finished concert hall as “counterfeit”.

Ep 186: The Rules of Modernism

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 19:00:17 +0000

Every rule was made to be broken, except in architecture, where even the act of breaking rules seems to come with its own set of rules. Modernism promised liberation from the past, but it quickly wrote its own commandments into the story—flat roofs, open plans, white walls, and exposed structure became the expected vocabulary. A movement that arrived as rebellion soon carried the weight of convention, and those conventions still shape how we design and judge buildings today. This week, Andrew and I are taking a closer look at the commandments of Modernism—where they came from, why they matter, and what they mean for the way we practice now. Welcome to Episode 186: The Rules of Modernism.

[Note: If you are reading this via email, click here to access the on-site audio player]

If you are interested in seeing just a few of the houses I mentioned on the podcast, you can see them listed on the Realtor.com (here and here are just a few of them)

The Roots of Modernism jump to

Modern architecture did not emerge in a vacuum.

Continue reading Ep 186: The Rules of Modernism at Life of an Architect.

‘Like time-travelling’: readers tell of unexpected joys of V&A East Storehouse

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 12:00:18 +0000

Some visitors get close to their chosen items through the ‘order an object’ service as others describe being affected by the displays

The V&A has launched a new exhibition space, the V&A East Storehouse in Hackney, east London, which houses more than 250,000 objects and offers immersive experiences alongside more than 100 small, curated displays. As well as browsing the exhibits that are on show, visitors have the option to choose up to five via the “order an object” service and have them delivered to a study room for a private viewing. (That’s if they’re movable – if not, you go to them.)

We asked visitors for their highlights – here are some of them.

From a Utah church to a Denver museum: the man who found 75 pyramids in the US

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 09:02:44 +0000

Over a decade, Ian James captured an array of pyramid structures across 20 US states, now documented in a new book

On a summer afternoon in 2017, Los Angeles-based artist Ian James found himself at the Pain Reliever Bar & Grill, the only functioning establishment in Nekoma, North Dakota.

Lingering until midnight, while trying not to look too much like a Californian in a town of less than 30 residents, James struck up a conversation with a local couple who explained how to gain access to the Stanley R Mickelsen Safeguard Complex. The former anti-ballistic missile military facility, constructed during the cold war and only operational for six months before being decommissioned, was his destination: specifically, its brutalist concrete radar tower resembling an Egyptian pyramid without an apex.

Thumping ambition – and demolition: 10 high-rises that changed modern Britain

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 09:00:07 +0000

Eyesores and scandalously unsafe? Or utopian housing for the working classes? Here are the stories and scandals behind some of the UK’s most revolutionary homes

‘There is nothing, it seems to me, more appalling, more deadening in the urban landscape than a uniform mass of low buildings covering acres and acres … High dwellings – I think, really very high dwellings – are an enormous enhancement of the scene.” So said Evelyn Sharp, civil servant and powerhouse within the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, in 1955.

Seventy years later, many would disagree. High-rise blocks are regularly denounced as ugly concrete monoliths: repetitive, plain, inhuman, boring …

Sir Terry Farrell obituary

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 16:14:45 +0000

Influential postmodern British architect best known for the MI6 building on the Thames

Terry Farrell, who has died aged 87, was arguably the most influential and prolific of the architects associated with the British postmodern movement.

At the start of his private practice in 1965 he worked in partnership with Nicholas Grimshaw, and a few years later he seemed destined to join Richard Rogers and Norman Foster as a “high-tech” pioneer, the first movement in British architecture to achieve worldwide recognition since the arts and crafts designers of the late 19th century.

‘His buildings were always ready for their closeup’: how Terry Farrell’s postmodern exuberance conquered the world

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:35:25 +0000

From the ziggurats of the MI6 HQ to TV-am’s eggcups and a Hong Kong tower that featured on a banknote, Farrell strived to make uplifting architecture
• ‘Nonconformist’ architect of MI6 building dies – news
• Spies, eggcups and penthouses: Farrell’s best buildings – gallery

Terry Farrell made his mark on London. All his buildings had a certain postmodernist swagger, but one of his most conspicuous (ironically, in view of its function) was the headquarters of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, on the site of the former Vauxhall pleasure gardens.

Completed in 1994, MI6 showed Farrell, who has died aged 87, in his postmodern pomp, energetically juggling historicist motifs to conjure a flamboyant, flesh-coloured fortress, replete with ziggurats and crenellations, dominating its Thames-side locale. Deyan Sudjic described MI6 as “an epitaph for the architecture of the 80s”, and its styling that which “could be interpreted equally plausibly as a Mayan temple or a piece of clanking art-deco machinery”. Others were less complimentary: “Ceaușescu Towers”, pronounced one critic.

Spies, eggcups and penthouses: Sir Terry Farrell’s best buildings – in pictures

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 13:27:54 +0000

Sir Terry Farrell, the UK’s leading architect-planner and postmodernist, has died aged 87

• ‘Nonconformist’ architect of MI6 building dies – news

Ep 185: Procrastination – Today’s Problem Tomorrow

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 19:00:57 +0000

It’s one thing to be busy and another to be productive – and most of us are far better at the first than the second. The reality is that architects live in a world of deadlines, meetings, and endless to-do lists, but somehow there’s always time to check Instagram, rearrange your desktop icons, or spend twenty minutes deciding which playlist will help you focus before actually doing the work. Procrastination has a way of disguising itself as “just five more minutes” until suddenly tomorrow is looking a lot worse than today. This week, Andrew and I are taking a closer look at procrastination – why it happens, how it disrupts even the best-laid plans, and what you can actually do to keep it from derailing your work. Welcome to Episode 185: Procrastination: Today’s Problems Tomorrow.

[Note: If you are reading this via email, click here to access the on-site audio player]

The Struggle is Real jump to

Procrastination is not about a lack of discipline or effort, it is more like a default response that shows up once the to-do list starts outpacing the hours in the day.

Continue reading Ep 185: Procrastination – Today’s Problem Tomorrow at Life of an Architect.

Ep 184: The Architect as Brand

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 19:00:01 +0000

The Architect as Brand explores how personal reputation and firm identity collide, coexist, and shape modern architectural practice.

The post Ep 184: The Architect as Brand first appeared on Life of an Architect.

Continue reading Ep 184: The Architect as Brand at Life of an Architect.

A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books is on Substack

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 12:24:02 +0000

I'm breaking my blogging silence to do two things:

Alert readers to the fact I am still writing reviews of architecture books under the title A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books, but over at Substack, not Blogger.
Put a new post at the top of this blog so I don't have to look at those photos of me every time I come here to find an old post that I want to link to.

That is all.

The Hidden Carbon Cost of Climate Retrofits

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 07:30:00 +0000

Evolving urban conditions call for an evolving builtscape, and retrofits have been a key mechanism to allow buildings to adapt and respond to new needs. Amidst global environmental concerns, climate retrofits have become a popular strategy to upgrade buildings based on improved operational efficiency. Global decarbonization plans have even called for city-wide retrofits, such as in the case of London, to meet civic goals. While such upgrades significantly reduce energy consumption, they often come with a hidden cost - embodied carbon in retrofit materials and the potential for future waste.

House Within a Few Lines / fala

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 07:00:00 +0000

architects: fala
Location: Porto, Portugal
Project Year: 2020
Photographs: Francisco Ascensão
Photographs: Ivo Tavares Studio
Photographs: Giulietta Margot
Area: 50.0 m2

"Architecture is That Fixed Element Within Nature": David Montalba in My Point of View

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 06:45:00 +0000

Courtesy of Sky-Frame

Architect David Montalba was born in Switzerland but grew up in California. He became a passionate surfer, bobbing in the waves of the Pacific, staring at the land, yet always feeling and hearing the ocean around him; profoundly connected to nature.

“I was surfing by the time I was 12 or 13, and it was my driving force probably all the way up to 18 or 19,” he notes. “It brought a kind of spirituality to my life. That was when I felt most connected to nature and I was truly with myself… It’s still a really special thing for me. It’s one of those things that can both ground you and connect you with nature in a unique way.”

This sense of intimate, spiritual connection to one’s surroundings drives Montalba’s architecture. While it is beautiful—filled with elegant forms, materials and details—, at its core, it is a human experience. “Curating an emotional response is a big part of what we do,” he says, sitting in the glowing, serene living room of his Graoni Beach House, sited on a secluded Malibu beach, edging an eclectic, colorful bluff.

Sordo Madaleno Reveals Proposal for the Refurbishment and Remodeling of the El Molinón Stadium in Spain

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 06:30:00 +0000

In preparation for the city of Asturias, Spain, to become one of the hosts of the FIFA World Cup in 2030, the El Molinón stadium is proposed to undergo a major remodeling process. Home Real Sporting de Gijón, the stadium is reimagined by the architecture office Sordo Madaleno together with Orlegi Sports. The proposal aims to increase the stadium’s capacity to accommodate 9,000 additional visitors to the 33,650 fixed seats during the World Cup. It also strives to reconnect the venue to its surroundings and the city of Gijón, Asturias.

Kornmarktplatz Townhouse / Herzog & de Meuron

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

architects: Herzog & de Meuron
Location: Bregenz, Austria
Project Year: 2024
Photographs: Christian Schramm
Photographs: Daisuke Hirabayashi
Photographs: Robert Hösl
Area: 190.0 m2