We have seen a collective madness this week with one of the results of the tragic events in the US being a spate of vandalism to statues of historic figures such as Winston Churchill who, whether individuals like it or not, are part of our heritage and, worse of all, to memorials to those who […]
The exterior as you approach from King’s Cross Station is a little austere, its horizontal cladding perhaps having a link back to the former Daily Express Building in Fleet Street, which would be appropriate as this is the headquarters of the Guardian and Observer newspapers. The street façade could, however, be considered to be […]
The three Brutalist towers and extensive piazza of the Economist Building in St James’s, London, with steps down to the neighbouring streets, designed by architects Alison and Peter Smithson was radical in its day, set alongside the traditional architecture of Mayfair, and, though completed in 1964, still looks new and fresh today. I would doubt […]
As part of the celebrations on the reopening of the Kettle’s Yard Gallery in the normally conservative university town of Cambridge, the French-Tunisian artist El Seed painted one of his characteristic murals on an architecturally-uninspiring post-war block of flats, Arbury Court. Intended to be there for only three months, such was its reception that it […]
Goodbye white walls. I wonder what the architects Dixon Jones think of Bridget Riley’s addition to their pristine white walls in for the Annenberg Courtyard of the National Gallery in London as part of the East Wing masterplan, created over a decade ago by transforming an unloved external courtyard. Riley’s mural, Messengers, shows that art […]
A short walk along the riverside from Doon Street at Waterloo and, rising in front, you discover an immense timber head on one of the old jetties, the face staring out across the River Thames, in the background of which multi-coloured ribbons create an arch going out into the river on a second jetty. Together […]
Standing proudly as a sentinel outside the Francis Crick Institute at St Pancras, Conrad Shawcross’ five-metre high sculpture ‘Paradigm’ could be representative of many things – the paradigm shift in biomedical research which the Crick Institute aims to achieve, the paradigm shift that St Pancras has undergone from its original role in 1868 as the […]
The swans happily paddle around it and the herons are keeping a watchful eye, but the boaters are having more difficulty with the 7,506 oil drums that have been coloured and piled up to create The London Mastaba, Christo’s first major sculptural installation in the UK which appears almost surreal as it floats in the […]
Hanging overhead is a huge explosion caught in time; flying clothes frozen in a split second. Here, in the centre of London, hundreds of shirts, trousers, socks, jumpers, skirts and other items of clothing that have been discarded by refugees arriving on Lesbos are hanging, caught in mid-flight, as the artist Arabella Dorman invites the […]
After an exciting life, Old Flo has returned to London, and to her old borough of Tower Hamlets, for her retirement. Poor Old Flo. For 35 years she had a contented life in Tower Hamlets, living on the Stifford housing estate in Stepney, where she was well loved. Then, with the demolition of her home, […]
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