Architect: Gottfried Semper

Owen Jones and the V&A (2023) and Style and Solitude (2023) – Review

Owen Jones and the V&A (2023) and Style and Solitude (2023) – Review

Adrian Forty

Now remembered almost only for The Grammar of Ornament (1856), Owen Jones, architect, designer, writer, publisher was regarded in his lifetime as one of the greats of British architectural and design culture, up with Pugin and Ruskin. Yet of his prolific output of some 60 buildings and interior schemes, nine… Read More

Writing Prize 2020: Pens down, Braid up

Writing Prize 2020: Pens down, Braid up

Cassandra Adjei

Hair, silky, wavy or coiled, somewhere, is felt by us all. It is one of the first things we play with, we shape and mold, unconsciously or artfully. Beginning as a line, slack and tentative, a hair appears as a strike of fine ink. Collected and carefully teased each strand… Read More

Alternative Histories: Clancy Moore Architects on Joseph Paxton

Alternative Histories: Clancy Moore Architects on Joseph Paxton

‘Every element of its construction speaks for itself alone.’ So wrote Gottfried Semper of the Caribbean hut he had seen in the Crystal Palace, and which he used to describe the four elements of architecture. Paxton’s patent drawings and text describe a fragment of the roof that sheltered Semper, the… Read More