Architecture - Archive Articles

Open Days Announced for the “Middlesex Cathedral”

Open rarely during the summer months over the past couple of years, what was once coined the Middlesex Cathedral is open even fewer days this year, and those dates have been announced.

See the Astonishing Interior of Two Temple Place

A rather eclectic collection has gone on display inside an equally eclectic building that is worth a visit in its own right if you haven't been before.

Exhibition – The Brits who Built Modern Britain

As a tie-in with the recently completed homage to British architects on BBC4, their spiritual home at RIBA is holding an exhibition of some of their work.

Photos from the deep excavations under Victoria Street

If you were to descend deep down underneath Victoria Street in central London -- some five floors down -- you might be met by a metal leviathan clawing away in the darkness.

Silvertown’s derelict Tate Institute

Down in Silvertown opposite the mighty Tate & Lyle sugar factories sits a rather forlorn looking building. Run down and neglected, it has the appearance of a large pub, or maybe an old music hall.

The redevelopment of Peckham Rye Railway Station

The area around Peckham Rye railway station is such that if it were a person, it might be described as having a face for radio, a face that only a mother could love, for it is undeniably not a nice looking area at all.

How close London came to being covered in concrete

One of London's greatest strengths, and in some ways, its greatest curse, has been the lack of a dominating Overload with the power to tear down entire chunks of the city and rebuild it in their preferred style.

My alternative to the planned Thames Garden Bridge

There are plans, as I am sure you are aware for a pedestrian bridge across the Thames in the centre of the city, to be decked out in all sorts of greenery which is aimed to make it look terribly nice and pleasing.

A small garden of calm moments from Oxford Street

On the 9th November 1889, a new public garden was opened just to the south of Oxford Street as part of the clearance of slums and their replacement with social housing for the working classes.

A brutal beauty next to Tottenham Court Road

Just around the corner from Tottenham Court Road sits one of London's great unmarked pieces of architecture. A building, like so many of its era looks a bit tired and shabby now, but will reward the viewer who stands back to admire the whole.

Great Estates: How London’s landowners shape the city

Dotted around London can be found some of the Great Estates that are the consequence of developments by single minded owners often in Georgian periods. But the Great Estates are not just a historic quirk, but are a still growing phenomena across the city.

Post War buildings celebrated inside the Wellington Arch

Wellington Arch next to Hyde Park has swapped out the display inside the top of the arch bit and is running a short exhibition on how 20th century buildings, often derided have been preserved and in some cases, gained affection.

A look around the new Library of Birmingham

Birmingham has two very large public spaces, separated by the brutalist architecture of the public library. One with the town hall and next to the market and main shopping areas, and on the other side of the library, sits a more artistic quarter with theatres.

Another attempt to rebuild the Crystal Palace

From fiery embers, phoenix like, the Crystal Palace is to be reborn. A shining glass emporium of culture to adorn the terraces of long neglected Sydenham. Except, that isn't what is being planned.

Photos from the new King’s Cross Square

Barely meeting its Thursday deadline, the long anticipated King's Cross station got the wide plaza space in front of the original Victorian station building.

Take a look around London’s newest Postcode – E20

Over the next few weeks, people will start typing E20 in to websites as the first part of their address as they move into new flats built on the Olympic Park.

A look around an empty office block in Victoria

Even by the standards of the era it was built in, Selborne House -- that sat opposite the Army and Navy store on Victoria Street -- was a masterpiece of bland office design -- a brown monolithic slab of drab.

In praise of Euston Railway Station

Much derided, in part for its admittedly shabby appearance and dated fascia, as for how it reduced the Euston Arch to rubble, Euston Station is not a particularly loved building.

Planes, Trains and Drains at the Building Centre

A new exhibition about London's infrastructure opened recently in the Building Centre that shows off the three dominant challenges for the city in the decades ahead.

There is a Big Red Shed on the SouthBank

If you have passed by the Southbank recently or crossed over Waterloo Bridge in a red bus, you might have struggled to avoid seeing a big red shed that has appeared next to the National Theatre.

London Wall’s Ugliest Tower Block

Of the many post-war mistakes built in the City of London, one of the ugliest has managed to cling on determinedly, the black and steel monolith of St Alphage House.

A look inside the Lighthouse HQ next to the Tower of London

For just under 500 years, Trinity House has been looking after the safety of seafarers around the coasts of Britain, but an organisation set up to save people from disaster seems to be rather unlucky with its own buildings.

The splendour that is the Victorian “Cathedral of North London”

As Private Eye is wont to say, it's Grim up North London, but if the eponymous characters of that newspaper were to dart out of their shell, they might find a remarkable building peaking its tall spire above the council estates of Kilburn.

England’s oldest Lych-Gate found in South London

If you approach an old church, mainly in towns and villages rather than cities, you might enter the churchyard through a small wooden gate with a pitched roof.