Architecture news

• Victorian architecture’s lost giant to regain rightful recognition

  25-02-2023 17:00
  
  The designer of the glasshouses at Kew Gardens fell out of favour – but supporters of a new museum hope to change all thatOne major name is missing from the line-up of great British architects that students learn have shaped the way that Britain looks. And it is a name with quite a ring to it: Decimus Burton.Now members of the Decimus Burton Society believe they are about to put that right by establishing this Victorian classical revivalist’s place alongside better known titans such
  
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• Architect Decimus Burton: ‘Utter originality and unselfconscious perfection’

  25-02-2023 17:00
  
  His neo-classical conservatism was condemned as ‘pagan’ by one rivalIf Decimus Burton had only designed one building, and that had been the Palm House at Kew Gardens, he would deserve to be famous. It is a pioneering work of steel and glass, built in collaboration with the Dublin ironmaster Richard Turner, completed three years before the celebrated Crystal Palace of 1851, its swelling, doubly curving bubble of glass more beautiful and – unlike the latter – still standing
  
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• Country diary: English thatchers are having to take to the woods | Tom Allan

  25-02-2023 06:30
  
  Start Bay, Devon: I’m on the hunt for straight hazel for a roof, and supple hazel for a fiddly porch. Normally I wouldn’t be doing thisThe sun has turned the bay indigo, and in this hazel hedgerow above the sea, you can almost hear the sap rising. The first buds are forming, and the catkins send puffs of lime green pollen into the air as I brush through the branches in search of hazel to cut.English thatching is unimaginable without the hazel tree. Its wood is used to make spars &nda
  
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