Architecture news

• Derek Walker obituary

  22-05-2015 19:03
  
  Architect whose love of landscape provided inspiration for the new town of Milton KeynesDerek Walker, who has died aged 85, was the driving force behind Milton Keynes, the last in the postwar programme of new towns. Often the butt of jokes about roundabouts and concrete cows, it is one of the most successful examples of British planning in the 20th century. In Derek’s hands, deep traditions of English landscape merged with the burgeoning consumer world of the 1970s to form a kind of electric p
  
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• ‘The sky’s the limit’: Newcastle Art Gallery unveils its ‘divisive’ $48m expansion with a blockbuster opening show

  26-02-2026 15:00
  Now the largest public gallery in NSW outside of Sydney, NAG’s new exhibition marries big names with local artists – and celebrates a changing cityGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailOn Friday night, the Newcastle Art Gallery (NAG) is throwing open its doors and filling the road and park with giant fluffy doughnuts, live music, dancing and art in a free-for-all street party – themed “industrial disco” – that has been 16 years in the making.For the NAG t
  
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• The Guardian view on saving Westminster: parliament should leave London | Editorial

  25-02-2026 19:38
  The long-overdue refurbishment could be an ideal opportunity for Britain to spread power to other parts of the UK, and send a powerful messageMPs and peers face a looming choice: stay put or move out to allow billions of pounds of urgent repairs to the crumbling Palace of Westminster. That was the conclusion of a report from MPs, peers and lay members on the restoration and renewal client board this month. The palace, rebuilt after a fire destroyed it in 1834, is falling apart. There have been 3
  
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• Six great reads: dating in later life; a lost Amazon van, ‘gong bath’ freezers, and Toni Morrison

  21-02-2026 07:00
  Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days Continue reading...
  
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• The Guardian view on the Southbank Centre: ministers must support innovation in the present as well as the past | Editorial

  20-02-2026 18:51
  The decision to grant listed-building status to the brutalist arts complex was bold. Now artists need support to match itThe granting of Grade II-listed building status to the brutalist concrete Southbank Centre, comprising the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Hayward Gallery and Purcell Room, is a bold embrace by the government of this London landmark. It is also timely. Seventy-five years ago, the 1951 Festival of Britain transformed the South Bank. Of its buildings, only the Royal Festival Hall remains.
  
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• ‘A joyful day’: final piece of Sagrada Familia’s central tower put in place

  20-02-2026 17:09
  Completion of glass cross brings Antoni Gaudí’s church to maximum final height of 172.5m, 144 years after work beganThe final piece of the central tower of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia has been laid in place, bringing the church to its maximum final height 144 years after work began.After several days when it has been too windy to work, the upper section of the 17 metre-high four-sided steel and glass cross was winched into position at 11am on Friday, completing the tower dedic
  
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• ‘A safe space to come and just be’: the radical, utopian return of Britain’s youth clubs

  19-02-2026 17:05
  After a decade of austerity closed more than 1,000 centres, the government has promised £500m to renew youth services. We tour a glossy new venue in Preston – and a girls-only one in LondonPreston, Lancashire is no stranger to trailblazing architecture. The city’s bus station, the largest in Europe when it opened in 1969, is a brutalist masterpiece. Next month, a new public building opens opposite the bus station built with similar aspirations to transform local lives: a youth
  
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• Hundred-year reveal: Catalonian chalet confirmed as Gaudí work in centenary year

  18-02-2026 17:00
  Xalet del Catllaràs contains elements of architect’s naturalistic style, expressed in works such as Park Güell and Sagrada FamíliaAn elegant modernist building in the mountains north of Barcelona, originally constructed to house engineers establishing a nearby mine, has been confirmed as a work of Antoni Gaudí, Catalonia’s most celebrated and distinctive architect.The Xalet del Catllaràs, about 80 miles from Barcelona in the county of Berguedà,
  
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• Hundred-year reveal: Catalan chalet confirmed as Gaudí work in centenary year

  18-02-2026 17:00
  Xalet del Catllaràs contains elements of architect’s naturalistic style, expressed in works such as Park Güell and Sagrada FamíliaAn elegant modernist building in the mountains north of Barcelona, originally constructed to house engineers establishing a nearby mine, has been confirmed as a work of Antoni Gaudí, Catalonia’s most celebrated and distinctive architect.The Xalet del Catllaràs, about 80 miles from Barcelona in the county of Berguedà,
  
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• Cardboard crazy! Scavenger genius Shigeru Ban on building cathedrals and quake shelters with paper

  17-02-2026 17:16
  From high-end boutiques to housing in disaster zones with beer-crate foundations, the Japanese architect creates with things people throw away. What will his distillery in whisky’s holy land look like?‘I don’t like waste,” says Shigeru Ban. It’s a simple statement – yet it encapsulates everything about the Japanese architect’s work. He takes materials others might overlook or discard – from cardboard tubes to beer crates, styrofoam to shipping cont
  
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• Mick Duncan obituary

  16-02-2026 21:39
  My friend and fellow architect Mick Duncan, who has died aged 86, imbued his architecture with human scale and proportion, whether for the extensive buildings for Stirling University, at Victoria Quay housing the Scottish Executive in Leith, or in the modest yet stately headquarters for United Distilleries in Edinburgh.Working on the new Scottish parliament building was his most demanding task. The design was won in competition by the Spanish architect Enric Miralles, with Robert Matthew Johnson
  
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• Could we have 13 million new tiles please? The astonishing £42m rebirth of modernist masterpiece Africa Hall

  16-02-2026 17:01
  Hailed as one of the defining achievements of African architecture, the historic, recently refurbished Ethiopian landmark has now won the World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism prizeDesigned by the Italian architect Arturo Mezzedimi, Addis Ababa’s Africa Hall quickly became recognised as one of the defining achievements of African modernism on its completion in 1961. In 1963, it hosted the founding meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the precursor to today’s African Uni
  
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• Is this the world’s most eye-popping restaurant? The architectural marvel – in a Leipzig industrial estate

  16-02-2026 06:00
  This extraordinary diner is the final wonder of the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who dreamt it up at the age of 103. And it’s a fine place for a sunset kombucha and ginPerched among old brick buildings in an industrial neighbourhood of Leipzig in eastern Germany, a giant white sphere appears to hover over the corner of a former boiler house. Is it a giant’s golf ball? An alien spacecraft? A fallen planet?Twelve metres in diameter, the Niemeyer Sphere is the final design
  
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• John Donnelly obituary

  13-02-2026 19:59
  My friend John Donnelly, who has died aged 84, was an architect and teacher. His projects included work in housing, waterside redevelopment and conservation design.In 1964 he qualified as an architect, following studies at Birmingham School of Art, and his early career included positions at the firm York Rosenberg and Mardall, and with the Greater London council/Inner London Education Authority architecture department. Continue reading...
  
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• The Southbank Centre is striking, polarising and now protected | Letters

  13-02-2026 18:46
  Francis Bown says its grey concrete and childlike composition expressed the fatalism and despair of the time, while Helen Keats reflects on other brutalist buildsFiona Twycross, the heritage minister, is to be congratulated for finally giving London’s Southbank Centre Grade II listing (Campaigners welcome ‘long overdue’ listing of brutalist Southbank Centre, 10 February).I remember being shocked when I first saw it in the 1960s, but it has become a remarkable symbol of the zeit
  
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• Brutal but beautiful: Southbank Centre’s Grade II listing is the cherry on a concrete cake

  10-02-2026 17:40
  As one of the longest-running battles in British heritage comes to an end, the listing of the London arts complex vindicates the audacity of this sensational droogs’ paradiseBritain’s battle of brutalism has finally reached an exhausted conclusion with the listing of London’s Southbank Centre. The so-called “concrete monstrosities” of the Hayward Gallery, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and its skatepark undercroft have finally been Grade II-listed by the Departm
  
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• Campaigners welcome ‘long overdue’ listing of brutalist Southbank Centre

  10-02-2026 15:12
  Decision to grant Grade II status marks turnaround for what was once voted ‘Britain’s ugliest building’The Southbank Centre, once voted Britain’s ugliest building, has been granted listed status, in a decision hailed by campaigners as the coming of age of brutalism.Successive governments have resisted six separate proposals to list the centre – a set of concrete buildings made up of the Hayward Gallery, the Purcell Rooms and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, plus a makeshif
  
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• Back gardens in the sky! The riotous, post-apocalyptic buildings of ‘eco-brutalist’ Renée Gailhoustet

  10-02-2026 09:00
  The French architect, who once had her nose broken by Jean-Marie Le Pen, created apartment blocks with cascading terraces that seemed to have surrendered to nature. They are still loved by their residentsWhen the French architect Renée Gailhoustet died in 2023, the residents of Le Liégat, a social housing block she completed in 1982, put up a large handmade sign saying: “Merci Renée.” Architects are often accused of designing impersonal rabbit hutches that they t
  
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• Cage fights at the White House! A gigantic arch! Trump’s gaudy plans for America’s 250th anniversary

  06-02-2026 15:52
  From minting coins featuring his own face to covering buildings with gold, the president’s proposals for marking America’s semiquincentennial say a lot about the country’s backwards outlookWhen the United States celebrated its bicentennial on 4 July 1976, it marked the occasion with the opening of the National Air and Space Museum’s exhibition hall on Washington DC’s National Mall. Designed in a boldly modernist style by the blue-chip firm Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabau
  
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• ‘We can learn from the old’: how architects are returning to the earth to build homes for the future

  05-02-2026 14:00
  Rammed earth sourced from, or near, the grounds of a proposed building site is attracting attention as an eco-friendly construction materialFrom afar, the low-rise homestead perched in the Wiltshire countryside may look like any other rural outpost, but step closer and the texture of the walls reveal something distinct from the usual facade of cement, brick and steel.The Rammed Earth House in Cranborne Chase is one of the few projects in the UK that has been made by unstabilised rammed earth &nd
  
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• No 1 for nuns! Níall McLaughlin is architecture’s discreet daredevil – and deserves its top award

  29-01-2026 01:01
  Forget brash statement projects – Riba’s prestigious gold medal has gone to a pivotal figure who works above an Aldi and designs billowing bandstands, jewel-like chapels and buildings that change colourWhen Níall McLaughlin was shortlisted for the Stirling prize in 2013, for designing an exquisitely jewel-like chapel for a theological college near Oxford, he brought along his client to the prize-giving ceremony. It was the first (and possibly last) time a group of Anglican nun
  
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• I visited Runcorn for the first time this week – and was blown away by its magic | Adrian Chiles

  28-01-2026 18:11
  Decades after I first befriended one of the town’s sons, I finally got to see the place – or at least its glorious bridgeIs it possible to have a soft spot for a place you’ve never been to and know next to nothing about? I think it is, in my case anyway, for I have developed warm feelings for Runcorn. On reflection, this has been in the making, quietly, in my subconscious, for a long time. In the last century, I was at university with a lad from Runcorn and, as he is the only p
  
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• ‘It’s the underground Met Gala of concrete murderzone design’: welcome to the Quake Brutalist Game Jam

  22-01-2026 13:00
  Quake Brutalist Jam began as a celebration of old-fashioned shooter level design, but its latest version is one step away from being a game in its own rightA lone concrete spire stands in a shallow bowl of rock, sheltering a rusted trapdoor from the elements. Standing on the trapdoor causes it to yawn open like iron jaws, dropping you through a vertical shaft into a subterranean museum. Here, dozens of doors line the walls of three vaulted grey galleries, each leading to a pocket dimension of di
  
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• Schools, airports, high-rise towers: architects urged to get ‘bamboo-ready’

  22-01-2026 07:00
  Manual for building design aims to encourage low-carbon construction as alternative to steel and concreteAn airport made of bamboo? A tower reaching 20 metres high? For many years, bamboo has been mostly known as the favourite food of giant pandas, but a group of engineers say it’s time we took it seriously as a building material, too.This week the Institution of Structural Engineers called for architects to be “bamboo-ready” as they published a manual for designing permanent b
  
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• Almshouse to haunted student digs: historic Newcastle building to become affordable homes

  20-01-2026 17:41
  Keelmen’s hospital, which housed dockers in 1700s, awarded £4.6m lottery grant after lying empty for 16 yearsIt was built 300 years ago as an almshouse for men who did some of the most backbreaking and dangerous work on the River Tyne.Most recently it provided fun, if chilly, accommodation for students. Now a new chapter is to be written in the history of a building considered the most at-risk structure in Newcastle, with the announcement of £4.6m lottery money to convert it in
  
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• Historic market in Kinshasa ready to reopen to a million shoppers a day after five-year makeover

  15-01-2026 13:00
  Long criticised as overcrowded and filthy, the city’s Zando marketplace has had an elegant and sustainable redesignSelling vegetables was Dieudonné Bakarani’s first job. He had a little stall at Kinshasa Central Market in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Decades later, the 57-year-old entrepreneur is redeveloping the historic marketplace that gave him his start in business to be an award-winning city landmark.Bakarani hopes to see the market, known as Zando, flourish agai
  
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• Country diary: A chilly tour of our historic churches (while the tourists are away) | Virginia Spierss

  15-01-2026 06:30
  St Kew, Cornwall: Midwinter is the best time for us to visit heritage sites and speculate on legends, starting at the secluded St Winnow’s churchThe stained glass window of St Kew’s church, with a tamed bear at the saint’s feet, is temporarily out of sight, penned in by a jumble of scaffolding. On a chilly hilltop a few miles to the south, St Mabyn’s tower features weathered carvings of heraldic beasts, including a muzzled bear pointing its snout northwards; ins
  
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• Letter: Frank Gehry obituary

  14-01-2026 19:00
  Dramatic plans by Frank Gehry for the redevelopment of the King Alfred Leisure Centre on the seafront at Hove, East Sussex, strongly divided opinion. In 2003, Gehry launched the £290m project featuring a cluster of four towers – the tallest of them rising to 38 floors – next to a swimming pool, sports hall and a winter garden. The eccentric design was intended to evoke crumpled Victorian dresses.Five years later, the plan was abandoned, a victim of the financial crash. Gehry to
  
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• David Bowie’s childhood home to open to public after 1960s restoration

  08-01-2026 20:00
  South London house to feature never-before-seen archival items and creative workshops for young peopleOn the evening of 6 July 1972, thousands of young people across the UK had their lives changed when the sight of David Bowie performing Starman on Top of the Pops was beamed into their living rooms.Come the end of 2027, Bowie fans will be able to walk the very floorboards where the young David Jones had his own Damascene cultural conversion, when his childhood home in south London, is opened to
  
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• Ever been caught short? Here’s the good news: a great British toilet revolution could be on the way | Eddie Blake

  05-01-2026 15:03
  Inspired by ministers and councils willing to spend a penny, architects are building beautiful, functional loos – a first step towards restoring civic prideWhy do we have so few public toilets in UK cities? It’s hard to think of two more fundamental social needs than a) not being forced to relieve yourself on the street and b) not having other people relieve themselves on the street – yet the public toilet is an ignored and vanishing public amenity. The British Toilet Associati
  
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