Detroit’s early 20th-century buildings were astonishingly grand – now they’re being destroyed. Philip Jarmain captured their fading glamour. Michigan Theatre, 2013. Architects: Rapp and Rapp. Built: 1926. Michigan Theatre is widely known for its hau
She created gilded monuments to corporate excess. But now Yasmeen Lari is building mud huts for the poor. As she wins the Jane Drew prize, Pakistan’s first female architect looks back on an extraordinary life. A mirrored glass ziggurat stands on a c
The construction industry is wasteful and creates huge CO2 emissions. But what if new buildings had to be adapted and resused or built only with materials already available? he wrecking ball has always been the great symbol of urban progress, going h
Abright-green steel frame perches on a steeply sloping site north of Valencia, Spain, projecting out from the hill above a busy main road. It forms a large 3D grid, some of its spaces filled with white cubic volumes, others left empty as if still awa
The seer of sizzling city architecture now says the countryside is where the future is being built – and it’s a ‘toxic mix’. Ahead of a major Guggenheim show, he explains his epiphany. It was while visiting a brothel on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada,
The prairie town of Andrew is no stranger to loss, but when its last grain elevator was slated for demolition, the community fought to win a stay of execution. For nearly a century, a wooden tower has loomed over the prairie town of Andrew in western
High-tech smart cities promise efficiency by monitoring everything from bins to bridges. But what if we ditched the data and embraced ancient technology instead? Ever since smartphones hooked us with their limitless possibilities and dopamine hits, m
In a departure from the gothic image of English private schools, Brighton College’s new building, designed by OMA, is an expression of global ambition. Think of an English private school and you will probably think of somewhere gothic. Something like
From Beijing to Istanbul, exotic new airports are symbols of prestige for strongman leaders. But the environmental cost is massive… We have the confidence and ambition,” announced China’s president, Xi Jinping, to a rapt audience last September, “to
Is Banksy the new Charles Dickens? The anonymous street artist’s Christmas creation combines jolly sentiment with genuine compassion in a way that would make the Victorian author of A Christmas Carol tingle all over. What’s more, his latest artwork i
Architect turned photographer Yener Torun started taking pictures of colourful buildings in Istanbul in 2014. For his latest series, he has travelled round Turkey, to the likes of Ankara, Izmir and Antalya. He looks for clean lines, bright colours an
After the second world war, socialist Yugoslavia set out to reconstruct a land destroyed by fighting. Concrete residential blocks, hotels, civic centres and monuments shot up across the country in a show of power from a state between two worlds, west
Franck Bohbot’s photography series LA Confidential, started in 2018, is a nocturnal exploration that focuses on neon signs. “At night, everything changes,” says the photographer, who is originally from Paris, “and the neon lights help to create the s
Jean Nouvel’s lawyers say sums demanded from him are ‘totally disproportionate’. The architect behind the Philharmonie de Paris, one of the world’s most expensive concert halls, is suing the body that manages it over fines issued against him when the
Kara Walker’s new commission remakes the language of monuments through allusions and references to the slavery age. The Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern is a cavernous maw that swallows and spits out all but the most confident artists. Kara Walk
Street of 105 homes hailed as high-quality architecture in its most environmentally and socially conscious form. One hundred years since the 1919 Addison Act paved the way for the country’s programme of mass council housing, the prize for the best ne
Junya Ishigami’s hillock of Cumbrian slate was meant to feel ‘primitive and ancient’. But British regulations – and the wind – dashed his dreams. Is it time to rethink the annual event?
Michael Wolf, who has died suddenly, aged 64, was perhaps best known for his 2013-14 series, Architecture of Density, in which the facades of Hong Kong’s massive tower blocks, each one housing thousands of people, appear as dramatic geometric abstrac
When Trump won the election, photographer Brian Rose made straight for the gambling town – to show the reality behind his billionaire boasts. The broken city he captured speaks volumes about today’s America. When Donald Trump opened the towering
The first time I became aware of modernism was through the work of Le Corbusier. I first laid my eyes on his monograph in the art section of a secondhand bookstore. It was too expensive to buy right away, so I saved my money and bought it a month lat
It took 18 years to build, has nearly a mile of galleries and is inspired by a desert rose. Hundreds of huge white plates lie scattered along the roadside in the centre of Doha, Qatar, as if someone has had a spectacular accident with a gigantic
After a generation in the doghouse, concrete is more fashionable than ever. So why don’t we take better care of our brutalist architecture? Concrete is everywhere. It is not only under our feet and above our heads, forming the background infrastructu
You wait decades for a city to get a world-class concert hall and two come along at once. Last month plans were revealed for the Centre for Music in the City of London by the New York architects Diller Scofidio Renfro. But there is now another projec
