"Designing and writing about a building are very different processes of thought"
The Venice Biennale manifesto of Grafton Architects is proof that vapid commentary can diminish great architecture, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"High-tech never went away, though many wish it had"
High-tech architecture is not on the verge of a comeback – it actually never went away, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"These are not the moves of a city that is proud of its architecture"
With Coventry set to be UK City of Culture in 2021, the destruction of the city's post-war architecture needs to stop, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"What is happening at Sewoon Sangga is, quietly, quite extraordinary"
A brutalist megastructure in Seoul is undergoing a major revamp. The result may not be photogenic, says Owen Hatherley, but it offers a promising model for regeneration without gentrification. More
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"The only living Russian architect well-known abroad is a former fantasist"
In the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Alexander Brodsky was the only national architect to offer a response. That says something about Russian architectural culture, suggests Owen Hatherley. More
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"London streets don't need to look like a 1940s that never happened"
The sanitisation of shop signs in Walthamstow, northeast London, is a mistake that mustn't be repeated anywhere else in the capital, argues Owen Hatherley. More
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"The Garden Bridge's cancellation provides an opportunity that mustn't be wasted"
Now that the Heatherwick-designed Garden Bridge has been officially scrapped, its time to think again about what London really needs, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"You could imagine Theresa May looking with profound sympathy at Britlins"
A satirical design proposal to restructure the UK like a 1970s holiday camp, based on the collective nostalgia that fuelled the Brexit vote, perfectly summarises the tone of national debate in recent years, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"A lethal failure of oversight, like at Grenfell Tower, was going to happen sooner or later"
The devastating fire at London's Grenfell Tower has highlighted the widespread neglect of the UK's residential high-rises, and the undeserved contempt held for the people that live in them, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"The Japanese House is about fear, imagination, aggression and dreams"
The Japanese House exhibition at London's Barbican doesn't offer solutions to the housing crisis, says Owen Hatherley, but it does show what's possible when architects respond to extreme change and instability. More
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"Belarus is a place that badly needs shaking up"
With widespread protest taking place across Belarus, the design of public spaces and social legacies has become a critical project for the nation's architects, says Owen Hatherley in his latest Opinion column. More
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"Architects and designers are no good at altering your mental topography"
With her latest exhibition, British artist Laura Oldfield Ford is more likely to change your understanding of London's working-class landscape than any architect or designer, says Owen Hatherley in this Opinion column. More
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"However brutal, the Yolocaust website gave meaning to Berlin's Holocaust memorial"
By juxtaposing selfies taken by visitors to Peter Eisenman's Holocaust memorial with archive photos from concentration camps, artist Shahak Shapira has revealed why design that shames is important, says Owen Hatherley in his latest Opinion column. More
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"The best new towns achieved something the original garden city never did"
The sleepy town of Letchworth, England, may have been the first garden city, but it wasn't particularly radical, says Owen Hatherley in his latest Opinion column. More
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"With a good culture war, you can ignore the real reason why British transport architecture is so grim"
The problem with Britain's railway stations isn't anything to do with style, it's that they are all just malls waiting to happen, argues Owen Hatherley in his latest Opinion column. More
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"The Global South could create a different, and maybe better, kind of modernity"
Chile and Cuba's contributions to the London Design Biennale suggest that, while the Global South is expected to copy the design of the north, it could offer a more radical future, argues Owen Hatherley in his latest Opinion column. More
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"Let's move to radical Essex"
The radical buildings in the English county of Essex suggest that avant-garde architecture is better found in the suburbs than the cities, says Owen Hatherley in his latest Opinion column. More
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"Vyborg looks like Helsinki might after a long, drawn-out war"
Opinion: with the exemplary restoration of Alvar Aalto's seminal Viipuri/Vyborg Library, Finland has schooled Russia in how to treat its neglected 20th-century buildings. Now they need to restore the rest of the city, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"Kiev is a city where any and all public space is seized upon by parasitic capital"
Opinion: a temporary installation around a plinth that once hosted an infamous statue of Lenin in Ukraine accidentally highlights a deeper problem facing the city than what to do with the relics of Soviet rule, finds Owen Hatherley. More
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"Europe has been for the lucky few in the UK"
Opinion: Richard Rogers' vision for a more European form of British architecture promised to create modern and prosperous urban environments. But this "new Europe" failed to reach the suburban council estates and cul-de-sacs that backed Brexit, says Owen Hatherley. More