Architecture news

• Paris’s department stores transformed urban life. What can they teach today’s struggling shops?

  25-07-2024 10:00
  
  Inspired by opera houses, the grands magasins were astonishing spectacles, built on a pharaonic scale. A new exhibition in the French capital charts the golden age of a dying conceptOn the top floor of the fabled La Samaritaine department store in Paris, an empty row of champagne-branded deckchairs is arranged on an artificial beach, facing a wall-sized digital screen of the sun setting over a sparkling sea. Downstairs, at the “beauty light bar”, futuristic face masks glow with red L
  
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• Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England: Staffordshire review – the final word on the nation’s finest buildings

  21-07-2024 16:00
  
  Nearly 80 years after it was conceived, an update to a peerless series of guides to the country’s architecture concludes with a detailed Staffordshire handbook that, typically, isn’t just an exercise in nostalgiaIn the 1940s, a refugee from Nazi Germany called Nikolaus Pevsner started travelling round the lanes and streets of England, armed with sheaves of notes compiled in advance from lengthy research, cataloguing the noteworthy structures in meticulous-going-on-obsessive detail. I
  
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• Urban Nature Project at the Natural History Museum review – it’s a wondrous jungle out there

  21-07-2024 12:00
  
  The museum’s newly transformed gardens are a collaborative triumph, offering a walk through geological time in a landscape of ancient rocks and Jurassic planting that’s a haven for wildlife, Londoners and dinosaurs alikeThe Urban Nature Project, the Natural History Museum’s transformation of the five-acre open space in front of it, is a triumph of cultural and architectural multitasking. It educates, surprises and delights. It is a living laboratory for expert research. It make
  
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• ‘It is our destiny’: Meet the people who rebuilt Notre Dame

  21-07-2024 09:00
  
  In April 2019, Agnès Poirier watched a fire almost destroy the Paris cathedral. For the past five years, she has had unique access to the army of artisans tasked with rebuilding the 12th-century ‘soul of France’The yellow-brown plumes of smoke coiling upwards filled my entire kitchen window. A few moments earlier the sky had been bright blue. I rushed down the stairs on to Quai de la Tournelle. Everything was still and eerily silent: passersby looked stunned, rooted to the gro
  
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• Putting design first: six social housing projects from around the world

  20-07-2024 02:00
  
  Australia’s commitment to social housing is far outstripped by rising demand. With greater opportunity, architects could deliver world class designsThe social housing of last century often calls to mind towering blocks of flats, poorly maintained with dark, pokey and cold units. But alongside a rise in community living, the 21st century has brought quality construction, sustainability, and quality of life to the forefront of social housing design.Australia’s commitment to and funding
  
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• Canary Wharf Group to carve chunks out of HSBC tower after bank leaves

  18-07-2024 18:57
  Revamp of 42-storey block when bank moves out in 2027 will include new terraces and leisure facilitiesBusiness live – latest updatesCanary Wharf Group has unveiled plans to remove large chunks from the HSBC tower as part of a revamp of the 42-storey office block when the bank moves out in 2027, in a reflection of the changing face of the east London financial district after the pandemic.The property company said it would carve out sections of the tower’s facade to create terraces as
  
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• ‘You travel five million years a metre’: inside the Natural History Museum’s mind-boggling new garden

  16-07-2024 16:41
  
  It has giddying cliffs, three-billion-year-old rocks, a prehistoric forest – and a giant bronze dinosaur called Fern. Our writer hurtles back through millennia as the beloved museum’s five-year revamp comes to fruitionQueueing for three billion years might sound like an ordeal, but the Natural History Museum has made it a thrill. When the daily stampede of visitors in their thousands now exits the pedestrian tunnel connecting South Kensington station to the grand London institution,
  
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• Where tourists seldom tread, part 10: four more towns with hidden histories

  16-07-2024 08:00
  
  We continue our series on towns the guidebook writers skip with visits to Gillingham, Camborne, East Kilbride and Stockport
  Where tourists seldom tread, parts 1-9Chy? I wasn’t familiar with the Ordnance Survey abbreviation for chimneys until I set off to walk around the ghost mines of Camborne. On every tump stand houses for engines built to raise ore from, and drop men into, the Great Flat Lode – a rock field that coughed up 90,000 tonnes of tin, worth $3 billion at today’s ra
  
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• Plastic-bottle seats and wooden pools: can Paris deliver the leanest, greenest Olympics yet?

  15-07-2024 06:00
  
  The Paris Olympics vowed to build as little as possible, using the city’s landmarks as a backdrop instead. Has it worked? We check out the bold new venues, upgraded old ones – and the athletes’ candy-coloured villageParis’s Place de la Concorde is no stranger to scaffolding, as the site of more than 1,000 beheadings during the French Revolution. Two centuries on, the scaffold has returned. Teetering mountains of metal poles now fill the ceremonial square, forming a dozen
  
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• Seven ways to experience the best of Switzerland

  14-07-2024 13:00
  
  From the turquoise waters of Bernese Oberland to toothsome Ticino and musical Montreux, Switzerland caters for every tasteEurope’s best crossroads city, Basel, is a short tram ride from both Germany and France. Every person who stays in a hotel or guest house here gets free public travel – from the moment you arrive, your reservation counts as your ticket from the airport. Basel isn’t just brilliant for transport nerds, it’s also an art-filled, leisure-focused haven, espe
  
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• Cockpit Deptford review – the subtle art of making do

  14-07-2024 12:00
  
  Deptford, London
  The architects behind Peckham’s pioneering Bold Tendencies car park venue have renovated a block of artists’ studios housed in a 60s council office building, with a few deft additions maximising what was already thereCities are not made by housing alone. Nor, even, by the cafes and retail units and light garnish of landscape that tend to come with speculative residential developments. They also need places such as Cockpit Arts, a social enterprise providing studio sp
  
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• Cars paired with buildings of the same vintage – in pictures

  13-07-2024 18:00
  Architectural photographer Daniel Hopkinson and architect John Piercy Holroyd realised they had a shared passion for modernist buildings and car design when they separately turned up to photograph a building, both driving an Alfa Romeo 159. From there began a two-year collaboration, A Time a Place, which pairs every European Car of the Year of the past 60 years with a building of the same vintage. “The project aims to present everyday vehicles that used to be a common sight but have now al
  
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• Rouen Cathedral fire brought under control in Normandy

  11-07-2024 17:19
  
  City authorities say blaze in spire contained after plume of smoke seen rising from 12th-century gothic buildingFirefighters in the Normandy city of Rouen have managed to bring a fire in its world-famous gothic cathedral under control, calming fears of another disaster at one of France’s architectural jewels five years after the devastation of Notre Dame.Initial television images showed a dark plume of smoke rising from the cathedral spire and people in the streets below looking up in horr
  
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• Fire at Normandy’s Rouen Cathedral extinguished with no major damage reported

  11-07-2024 17:19
  
  Normandy fire services say blaze in spire extinguished, with all works of art saved, says French culture ministerFirefighters in the Normandy city of Rouen have managed to extinguish a fire in its world-famous gothic cathedral, calming fears of another disaster at one of France’s architectural jewels five years after the devastation of Notre Dame. Local fire services said no major damage was reported.A section of plastic sheeting covering renovation work 120 metres (400 feet) up the cathed
  
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• Rouen’s cathedral spire on fire during renovation work – video

  11-07-2024 14:16
  
  During renovation efforts, the spire of Rouen's Gothic cathedral in Normandy has ignited, evoking memories of the 2019 Notre Dame fire in Paris.Rouen's cathedral, considered one of France's architectural masterpieces, was famously depicted multiple times by the 19th-century impressionist painter Claude MonetRouen’s cathedral spire on fire in NormandyEmergency services battle to extinguish fire in Rouen’s gothic cathedral – Europe live Continue reading...
  
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• Cornish ‘tin tabernacle’ church linked to 1907 sea rescue given listed status

  11-07-2024 07:00
  
  First vicar of tiny St Mary’s church in Cadgwith took part in RNLI rescue of 456 people from stricken liner SuevicA tiny church speedily built from corrugated iron more than a century ago and synonymous with one of the UK’s most famous sea rescues has been given protected status.Historic England has declared that St Mary’s in the Cornish fishing village of Cadgwith is important both for its architectural worth and its link to the rescue of 456 passengers and crew from the Suevi
  
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• Architects asked to design ‘powerful’ memorial to Grenfell Tower victims

  10-07-2024 10:00
  
  Design brief invites shortlist of five firms to create a ‘powerful homage to those at the heart of the tragedy’Architects are being invited to compete to design a “powerful” memorial to the victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster, which will feature the names of those who died in the fire and be of “significant stature”.A design brief was published on Wednesday starting a search for firms from the UK or abroad to draft concepts for a “bold” memorial
  
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• World Architecture festival 2024 shortlist – in pictures

  09-07-2024 17:00
  The World Architecture festival’s 2024 shortlist has been announced, revealing projects from around the world spanning categories such as childcare, energy, transport and science. The live event will take place in Singapore from 6 - 8 November 2024. This year’s finalists represent 71 countries, with five shortlisted: Australia, China, India, Singapore and the United Kingdom Continue reading...
  
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• My bricklayer’s gone viral! Why construction workers are the new social media stars

  04-07-2024 11:23
  
  From pirouetting diggers to dazzling displays of plastering, astonishing professional skills from unsung experts are winning millions of views
  Among the endless makeup tutorials, coordinated dances and people cutting things open to see if they are made of cake, there is one genre of social media video that has proved to be an unexpected hit: life on building sites.On Instagram, there is a pair of Dutch brickies who, with cameras strapped to their helmets and microphones attached to their tools,
  
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• Westminster coroner’s court extension review – an extension of deep sympathy

  30-06-2024 12:00
  
  A Beatrix Potter-meets-ancient-Rome aesthetic brings and dignity and intimacy to Patrick Lynch’s addition to the coroner’s court that held the hearings into Grenfell and the Westminster Bridge attacksWestminster coroner’s court is a pretty, playful building from 1893 by the little-known architect GRW Wheeler, red brick with stone trimmings, pertly symmetrical, its style sort of Jacobean. “It’s a bit Beatrix Potter,” says the architect of its new extension, Pat
  
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• ‘I may have reacted too far’: architect Roger Walker on his groundbreaking buildings

  28-06-2024 21:00
  
  The New Zealander is known for his use of colour as well as turrets, towers, cylinders, cubes and pyramid shapesRadically inventive Wellington architect Roger Walker remembers being at a party a few years ago and overhearing two people who thought he was out of earshot talking about him. One of them asked the other if he would ever use Walker to design something for him. The reply was a firm, “No, I wouldn’t. You can’t tell Roger what to do.”Walker, an architect who has a
  
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• Sydney firm scoops top NSW architecture prize for rebuild of North Head viewing platforms

  28-06-2024 14:00
  
  Judges praise ‘poetic, generous’ design , while awarding apartment building in Sydney’s inner-west the prize for architecture that benefits the people of NSWGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailA structure arising from the ashes of a hazard reduction burn that went horribly wrong in 2020 has taken out New South Wales’ top architecture honours.The new North Head viewing platforms on Sydney’s heritage-listed headland overlooking Port Jackson were awarded the NSW
  
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• ‘A nearby farmer took the whole herd’: how a couple turned a cowshed into a dream home for artists

  28-06-2024 12:00
  
  A former dairy business now hosts a thriving artistic community – and a spectacular converted barnSuzanne Blank Redstone and her husband, Peter Redstone, have lived on the same Devon farm, nestled in a tree-fringed valley a mile from the sea, for 50 years. The couple’s current home was once their cowshed, a simple, functional structure that they built in 1979 to shelter their herd of Jerseys over winter.Today, it’s an architectural statement, albeit a very livabl
  
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• June design news: forgotten modernist gems, wonky watches and inside Noma’s kitchen

  24-06-2024 10:00
  
  Fresh talent at London’s graduate design show, the history of Parisian flea markets and innovative talent in CopenhagenThis month we celebrate the old and the new. There’s a report on graduate show New Designers, where you can see the latest ideas coming out of the UK’s universities, but also a new book that celebrates the largest concentration of second-hand dealers in the world, Les Puces de Paris. Something for everyone. Continue reading...
  
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• New Marks & Spencer building will be a showcase for low-carbon design | Letter

  18-06-2024 19:03
  
  Fred Pilbrow on why the much-touted retrofitting of the flagship store on Oxford Street would be worse for the environment and commercially unviableI write in response to Oliver Wainwright’s piece about our proposed building for Marks & Spencer on London’s Oxford Street (‘Public vandalism’: M&S wants to flatten its art deco flagship store – here are six alternative options, 7 June). As architects, we understand the benefits of retrofit, but at Oxford Street
  
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• Change? If only. Labour’s housing plans are built on flimsy foundations, fantasies and fudge

  18-06-2024 16:34
  
  The manifesto promises minor common-sense reforms to the planning system. But the headline proposal for new towns won’t amount to much. Where is the bold modernism of the postwar Labour government?With his sleeves rolled up, his hands in his pockets and the frown of a building inspector encountering flammable cladding panels for the umpteenth time, Keir Starmer stares out in black and white from the cover of Labour’s election manifesto next to a single word: “Change.”The
  
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• Art museum and mosque among Australian projects recognised in UK’s RIBA architecture awards

  17-06-2024 17:00
  
  Judges praise disaster-resistant gallery and bridge on Arthur Boyd’s NSW estate and ‘profoundly moving’ place of worship in Sydney’s PunchbowlFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastTwo Australian architecture projects have been recognised in the UK’s prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) international awards for excellence.The Bundanon Art Museum and bridge and
  
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• Wild ting: why a chattel house now sits on a manicured Scottish lawn

  17-06-2024 12:27
  
  Two years in the making, and drawing on themes of healing, the slave trade and even Vikings, the latest show by Alberta Whittle, who represented Scotland at Venice, has taken over a grand mansion on a holiday isleOn the sweeping manicured grounds of Mount Stuart, a neo-gothic stately home on the Scottish Isle of Bute, sits a most incongruous sight: a bright yellow and green Caribbean chattel house. It’s the creation of Barbadian-Scottish artist Alberta Whittle, who had originally planned t
  
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• Why are Australian houses so cold, and how can we build 1.2m new ones without trashing the environment? | Philip Oldfield

  17-06-2024 04:28
  
  Here’s how Australia can build new homes that not only keep us warm but cut emissions and avoid climate catastropheThe federal government has set a target of building 1.2m new homes in Australia by 2029.If we construct these homes the same way as we do today, their materials will contribute to millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, while our poorly performing existing homes will remain freezing in the winter. We need to change the way we design, build and retrofit housing to avoid
  
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• Why are Australian houses so cold, and how can we build 1.2m new ones that won’t trash the environment? | Philip Oldfield

  17-06-2024 04:28
  
  Here’s how Australia can build new homes that not only keep us warm but cut emissions and avoid climate catastropheThe federal government has set a target of building 1.2m new homes in Australia by 2029.If we construct these homes the same way as we do today, their materials will contribute to millions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, while our poorly performing existing homes will remain freezing in the winter. We need to change the way we design, build and retrofit housing to avoid
  
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• From social housing to $1.5m for a studio: minister hits out at ‘dud deal’ sale of Sydney’s Sirius building

  16-06-2024 17:00
  
  Exclusive: Rose Jackson says losing public housing in expensive central suburbs leaves society worse off, and this week’s state budget will address issueGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastA decade ago the only way to secure a bed in Sydney’s brutalist icon, the Sirius building, was a proven need and time on the social housing waitlist. Now the price of admission starts at $1.55m – for a studio apartment.The last of the 76 apartments in the
  
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• Green space could be even better for young brains than we realised

  16-06-2024 14:00
  
  Science on specific benefits for children’s behaviour and thinking is catching up with established wellbeing claimsRevealed: private schools have 10 times more green space than state schoolsHow England’s top private schools came to own 38,000 acres of landBeagling, golf and jolly hockey sticks: outdoor life at England’s largest private schoolsThe public schools are on to something when they usher their students out of the classroom and into fresh air.Exposure to green space red
  
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• Architect David Chipperfield: ‘We used to know what progress was. Now we’re not so sure’

  16-06-2024 12:00
  
  He’s renowned for big-budget museums and galleries. But the architect’s long-term project in Galicia, northern Spain is all about fundamental, low-key ways to change communities for the better“We find ourselves doing workshops on seaweed growth,” says David Chipperfield, the much-honoured and acclaimed British architect, and “there are moments when you’re thinking: ‘Remind me, what has this got to do with architecture? What am I doing here?’”
  
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• Sawdust toilets and chairs that crash cars: inside Copenhagen’s radical design festival

  14-06-2024 18:32
  
  The 11th edition of 3daysofdesign favours family businesses over tech startups, with over 400 designers (including a Norwegian postman) exhibiting workAt the Verpan showroom, a space dedicated to the work of Verner Panton, the renowned Danish designer’s daughter Carin Panton von Halem regaled a rapt audience with an anecdote. Apparently when Panton’s cone chair was displayed in a New York shop window in the late 1950s, it had to be removed by the police after drivers distracted by th
  
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• A Tokyo developer will demolish a building for spoiling the view. Why doesn’t Britain care about beauty? | Simon Jenkins

  14-06-2024 14:00
  
  Politicians and planners are allowing the Thames to become an urban canyon – greed always seems to win out A Japanese developer has announced it will demolish a new tower of luxury flats in Tokyo it was weeks from completing. The reason? The 10-storey development was blocking beautiful views of Mount Fuji. The idea a developer would reach such a decision in Britain is inconceivable. In London, flats are usually built to make a profit. If they have a beautiful view, good luck to those buyin
  
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• ‘A show you want to pick up and fondle’: Assemble electrify the RA’s Summer Exhibition

  12-06-2024 17:36
  
  The architecture room of the Royal Academy’s annual event has been turned into a mesmerising ‘museum of making’ by the Turner-prize winners, full of intriguing insights and mind-boggling exhibitsSlimy curtains made of seaweed and hog guts dangle from the ceiling in the central rotunda of the Royal Academy, with the look of slippery skins shed by some reptilian creature. They hang above a busy scene, where workbenches brim with half-finished maquettes and material samples, next
  
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• Serpentine pavilion 2024 review – Minsuk Cho’s multi-use design is bold and playful

  09-06-2024 12:00
  
  Kensington Gardens, London
  The South Korean architect has incorporated a climbing structure, a cafe and a library into an unpredictable space meant for coming together“Do a belly flop.” “Spread your arms like Jesus and then jump.” The photographers at the press view for the Serpentine pavilion are calling to me: I’ve ascended a rope climbing structure that is part of the design, and they fancy a shot of a moderately respectable gent flying on to a net underneath. If
  
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• Centre forward: Sunderland sets sights on a revival by bringing homes and jobs to its inner city

  09-06-2024 12:00
  
  In the 1980s Thatcher helped attract the likes of Nissan to the region, but it could not revitalise the city itself. Now a new industrial strategy, backed by the local council, is aiming for more sustainable resultsWhen Richard Marsden looks across the Wear gorge to the centre of Sunderland, he has never seen so many cranes. His design and build firm, BDN, is rushing to renovate an old stable block in the shadow of the city’s football stadium.“Now there’s a bit of a resurgence,
  
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• About-face: how Australian architects rethought the ‘wild west’ facade as a nod to conservation

  08-06-2024 02:00
  
  The desire to retain a building’s heritage features can lead to what designers call ‘empty facadism’ – but some are taking a more imaginative approachGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastIn the 1980s an odd kind of construction began to appear in Australia’s city centres. In response to pleas to retain heritage structures amid a building boom, compromises were struck that preserved the facade of an old building typically two or th
  
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• ‘Public vandalism’: M&S wants to flatten its art deco flagship store – here are six alternative options

  07-06-2024 06:00
  
  Marks and Spencer’s decision to demolish its 1920s Oxford Street landmark hasn’t just infuriated campaigners. It has also sparked a design competition for how the building could be savedAs the trusted purveyor of pants and socks to the nation since 1884, Marks & Spencer makes for an unlikely villain in one of the most high-profile planning battles of the century. But, since the venerable retailer announced plans to flatten its 1920s art deco flagship store on Oxford Street in Lon
  
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• ‘I plumbed in our bath – and it works!’ The DIY diehards who built 36 affordable homes from scratch

  04-06-2024 16:57
  
  They laid floors, installed piping, hung ceilings and erected frames – and that was just the easy bit. Our writer reports on a miraculous 15-year self-build that promises capped-price housing for everKareem Dayes’s story will be familiar to many millennials. Moving between rented house shares, with stints in leaky warehouses and spells back home with the parents, Dayes led a precarious existence – going from one temporary set-up to the next, continually subject to evictions and
  
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• Stirling prize 2024: a two-horse race?

  02-06-2024 12:00
  
  The big beasts of London’s Elizabeth line and King’s Cross redevelopment loom large, but newly announced regional contenders for this year’s prize should include a classy Cambridge dining hall, an all-timber office block and a wheelchair-friendly rural retreatThe longlist for this year’s Stirling prize consists of two very big projects – achievements of generational significance whose impact will endure for lifetimes – and, as in other years, a more variegated
  
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• Landslides force dismantling of Frank Lloyd Wright Jr’s celebrated glass chapel: ‘It’s a crying shame’

  01-06-2024 02:25
  
  Relocation of the Wayfarers Chapel on the Pacific coast shows the vulnerability of cultural sites in an increasingly volatile climateFor 73 years it reigned, unique and serene, on a high plateau overlooking the Pacific Ocean: the Wayfarers Chapel, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr’s midcentury reinvention of what a church could be.The photogenic, see-through sanctuary framed in a canopy of redwoods was beloved long before it became Instagram-famous. Jayne Mansfield was married there, Brian Wilson too.
  
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• A glass chapel framed by redwoods is coming down, piece by piece: ‘It’s a crying shame’

  31-05-2024 14:00
  
  The dismantling of Frank Lloyd Wright Jr’s Wayfarers Chapel after landslides shows the vulnerability of cultural sites in an increasingly volatile climateFor 73 years it reigned, unique and serene, on a high plateau overlooking the Pacific Ocean: the Wayfarers Chapel, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr’s midcentury reinvention of what a church could be.The photogenic, see-through sanctuary framed in a canopy of redwoods was beloved long before it became Instagram-famous. Jayne Mansfield was marri
  
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• Stewart McGough obituary

  30-05-2024 16:23
  
  My friend Stewart McGough, who has died aged 74, was an architect with a special focus on access for people with disabilities. He worked on Wembley Stadium and was employed as an expert on design for disabled people during the London 2012 Olympic Games.Stewart’s career began in the architects’ department at Manchester city council (1974-79). From there he went on to design house adaptations for disabled people in the building control department at Meirionnydd district council (1979-8
  
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• Divisive, ugly, gloomy: when will the City of London see the light on tall towers?

  26-05-2024 10:30
  
  The proposed 1 Undershaft skyscraper is meant to help woo workers, but it’ll make the Square Mile worse for everyoneSt Helen’s Square is a nice spot in the City of London, sometimes thronged with lunching office workers, at other times a good place to pause and catch your breath. It captures more sunshine than you’d expect, given the towers around. It is surrounded by beautiful architecture that tells the rich history of the Square Mile: medieval churches, Richard Rogers’
  
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• Spas, bars and luxury hotels: how Britain’s historic buildings are being sold off to the highest bidder

  26-05-2024 10:00
  
  From Churchill’s old War Office to Liverpool’s Municipal Buildings, the government and cash-starved local authorities have been selling off valuable assets to plug budget shortfalls. But should pieces of the nation’s soul ever be put up for sale?Outside the Box is a cafe in the scenic spa town of Ilkley, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales; a good-natured, relaxing place where you can enjoy a reasonably priced enchilada at the tables that spill out on to the pavement. It’s
  
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• ‘Our parents did all the hard work. We don’t have to’: China’s seaside haven for the ‘lying flat’ generation

  24-05-2024 16:20
  
  With its magnificently tranquil art gallery, its ‘lonely library’ and its pointy white chapel, Aranya is a blissful oasis for burnt-out urbanites – and architecture firms are now clambering to build thereEvery summer, since the days of Mao Zedong, the leaders of China’s Communist party have decamped to the coastal resort of Beidaihe to debate the country’s future from the comfort of luxurious seaside villas hidden behind high walls. Four hours’ drive from the
  
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• Mackintosh building restoration should be taken out of Glasgow art school’s hands, say experts

  23-05-2024 07:00
  
  Architectural gem has twice been badly damaged by fire and rebuild has suffered a string of setbacksThe responsibility for restoring Glasgow’s Mackintosh building should be taken out the hands of the city’s art school and placed with an independent body, according to leading architects, politicians and heritage experts who have expressed dismay at the lack of progress.Thursday marks 10 years since the building – which houses Glasgow School of Art – was first badly damaged
  
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• Romans in togas, shepherds in saunas and the Bridgerton garden in bloom … my wild day at Chelsea flower show

  22-05-2024 16:50
  
  Has architecture taken over the bloom bonanza? Our critic finds an elfin treehouse, a pixie grotto, a Roman villa and a £160,000 shepherd’s hut (with spa) now competing with the delphiniumsA gigantic Chinese dragon made of gnarled chunks of driftwood towers over a display of bog plants, puffing steam from its nostrils and clutching a ceramic pearl that gushes with water. Nearby, men dressed in togas patrol the courtyard of a pretend Roman villa, where simulated rain pours into the ga
  
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