"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
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"Hardly any British designers have had a style as instantly recognisable as David King"
Opinion: David King, who died in May at the age of 73, secured a place in British design history with album covers for The Who and Jimi Hendrix, the design of the Sunday Times Magazine, and his logo for the Anti-Nazi League. But his legacy is far richer for anyone interested in the political power of the media, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"Why not move some of Britain's political power northwards?"
Opinion: moving the UK's Houses of Parliament to Bristol is not that strange an idea, says Owen Hatherley, but why not go one step further and create a new capital city in Milton Keynes or the Pennines? More
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"The cult of self-build and do-it-yourself won't solve the housing crisis"
Opinion: Walter Segal's self-build houses in south London and Assemble's Turner Award-winning Granby Four Streets project in Liverpool are rightly celebrated, but they're not the answer to the housing crisis, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"Wouldn't buildings be better designed by people who lived in the city where they practiced?"
Opinion: municipal architects helped create some of 20th-century Europe's best cityscapes and buildings, says Owen Hatherley. It's time for them to return. More
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"Saakashvili didn't need interesting architects to design the New Georgia"
Opinion: former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili may be wanted on multiple criminal charges in his home country, but his architectural legacy has helped him win political favour in Ukraine, says Owen Hatherley. More
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"Massive, horrible and unavoidable"
Opinion: when the Tour Montparnasse was built in Paris, its residents were so appalled they banned all high-rises. Londoners should do something similar in the wake of Rafael Viñoly's walkie talkie, says Owen Hatherley. More