Olly Wainwright
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Architecture and design critic of the @Guardian oliver.wainwright@theguardian.com
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Articles by Olly Wainwright
The CO2-absorbing building made of old sinks, windscreens and toilets: Ghent’s £17m design museum is a green marvel
Museums often try to reflect the world around them, but rarely are they made so literally of their surroundings as the new design museum in Ghent. Rising above the Belgian city’s medieval tiled rooftops like an angular white watchtower, the new building has vacuumed up the city’s condemned concrete frames, windows, car windscreens, sinks and old toilets, and transformed them, phoenix-like, into a gleaming monument to recycling.
Bring on the Vegas glitz! How Roma families are defying their persecutors with bling palaces
In the village of Hășdat in the heart of rural Romania, geese roam the dusty streets, bonfires burn in back gardens, and the houses are not quite what you would expect. Not at all. One sports a pair of golden Versace Medusa heads and Rolex crown emblems on its tall metal gates, flanked by marble pillars topped with trios of cherubs. They mark the entrance to a compound where a creamy stuccoed pile groans with balconies and plaster mouldings, its roof dripping with ornamental guttering.
London’s £19bn Elizabeth line is named best new architecture in Britain
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‘A triumph’: London’s £19bn Elizabeth line is named best new architecture in Britain
With the longest platforms, the biggest tunnels and the fastest trains on the entire London underground, the Elizabeth line boasts a dizzying list of superlatives, carrying more people a day than any other train line in the country. It is now deemed to have the best design, too – being named as the winner of the 2024 RIBA Stirling prize for the finest architecture in the UK.
‘Like a sylvan spa!’ Inside Zurich’s staggering, revolutionary new hospital for kids
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‘Like the Guggenheim!’ Inside Zurich’s staggering, revolutionary new hospital for kids
‘Hospitals are the ugliest places in the world,” says Jacques Herzog. “They are a product of blind functionalist thinking, while neglecting basic human needs.” The Swiss architect has a point. With their low ceilings, windowless corridors and harsh fluorescent lighting, hospitals can sometimes seem consciously calibrated to make you feel ill, if you didn’t already.
a mind-boggling banquet of replica Japanese food
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Is this a mountain? A multistorey car park? Or both? Inside Shanghai’s audacious £225m summit
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Is this a mountain? A multistorey car park? Or both? Inside Shanghai’s audacious £225m summit
China is no stranger to moving mountains. It has levelled hundreds of peaks in Gansu for urban expansion, blasted away hills in Yunnan to build railway stations, and bulldozed bluffs in Hubei for economic development zones. This insatiable lust for terraforming is simply a case of the authorities doing their duty to the Communist party.
Occult? Try upstairs! Inside the world’s weirdest library, now open to the public
A mysterious cosmic emblem hangs over the entrance to a building in Bloomsbury, at the heart of London’s university quarter. Depicting concentric circles bound by intertwined arcs, it represents the four elements, seasons and temperaments, as mapped out by Isidore of Seville, a sixth-century bishop and scholar of the ancient world, as well as patron saint of the internet.
the iconic ‘eco-Blade Runner’ roundabout that became a grim £132m ‘abomination’
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Rewi Thompson, the Māori architect who shocked his neighbours
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A genius in pink jandals: Rewi Thompson, the Māori architect who shocked his neighbours
In the leafy Auckland suburb of Kohimarama, where pitch-roofed clapboard homes line well-kept streets, a striking grey ziggurat rises from the subtropical foliage. It looks like a defensive fortification, greeting the road with a monolithic, windowless facade. Narrow arrow-slit openings puncture the sides of its blank, blocky bulk, as if keeping a lookout for bands of marauding neighbours.
‘Professional buck-passers’: why the excoriating Grenfell report was right to damn architects
Lying manufacturers, incompetent inspectors, muddled regulations, contemptuous landlords – the blame for the Grenfell Tower fire has been hurled in all directions, exposing a housing and construction industry that is rotten at every level. But, after seven years of waiting, yesterday’s inquiry report makes it very clear that there was one professional actor that bore the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the safety of what was designed and built: the architect.
‘There’s a lot to be built still’: architect Mariam Issoufou on excavating the past to build Africa’s future
Mariam Issoufou designed a prize-winning library and mosque complex in Dandaji, Niger. All images courtesy of Mariam Issoufou Photograph: Courtesy of Mariam Issoufou Growing up near the historic mud-brick city of Agadez , Niger’s gateway to the Sahara, Mariam Issoufou was always inspired by the majestic adobe structures around her. The 27-metre-high minaret of the city’s mosque, the tallest mud-brick structure in the world, has stood on the sandy horizon since the 16th century.
Monstrous carbuncles to talking columns: the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing is still a controversy magnet
Annabelle Selldorf’s redesign for the Sainsbury Wing. Photograph: Selldorf Architects If buildings could speak, would they always object to their demolition? In the case of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing, now undergoing a controversial redevelopment , a voice from the grave heartily approves of the arrival of the wrecking ball.
From Van Gogh to Le Va, Rego to the Renaissance: the best exhibitions for autumn 2024
From left to right; Installation view of Jasleen Kaur, Alter Altar, Vincent Van Gogh Self-Portrait, Mike Kelley as The Banana ManComposite: Guardian Design/ Jim McHugh/National Gallery of Art, Washington/ Tramway and Glasgow Life Art Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers Taking us from euphoria to despair, Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers promises to be spectacular.
the best exhibitions for autumn 2024
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the drive to make cities swimmable
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Splashing in the Seine, diving in the Danube: the drive to make cities swimmable
Come on in, the water’s lovely … Sandkaj harbour bath is one of several architect-designed options for public swimming in Copenhagen, and the water quality is monitored on a dedicated app.Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images On a summer morning in the Swiss city of Basel, groups of commuters bob merrily down the Rhine. They’re not on boats but in their trunks, clutching fish-shaped waterproof bags that double as floats as they drift to work alongside cargo ships and gravel barges.
Baustellenballett - Wenn Maurer viral gehen: Bauhandwerk in Zeiten von TikTok und Instagram
Baustellenballett Taugen Bauhandwerker als Influencer?
the story behind Nek Chand’s 25-acre outsider art masterpiece
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‘What they threw away, I used’: the story behind Nek Chand’s 25-acre outsider art masterpiece
Dreamscape … Nek Chand Saini’s Rock Garden of Chandigarh. Photograph: UniversalImagesGroup/Universal Images Group/Getty Images A forest of curious cement statues stands on the edge of the city of Chandigarh in northern India, their bodies dressed in colourful costumes made from beads and broken glass bangles.
can a tiny dairy farm beat the epic Elizabeth Line?
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Britain’s best new building: can a tiny dairy farm beat the epic Elizabeth Line?
195 flats reborn … Park Hill housing estate, transformed by Mikhail Riches, now on the Stirling prize shortlist.Photograph: Tim Crocker It is like trying to compare a Hollywood blockbuster with an indie documentary, or a symphony orchestra with a busker. This year’s RIBA Stirling prize for the best building in the the country sees the £19bn Elizabeth line and the 67-acre regeneration of King’s Cross go head to head with a little row of council houses and a refurbished farmyard in Dorset.
Olympische Spiele in Paris 2024: Nachhaltiger als jemals zuvor
Frankreich Die Ausrichter von Olympia 2024 haben weitgehend auf Gigantomanie verzichtet, sondern sich schlanken und umweltfreundlichen Spielen verschrieben Exklusiv für Abonnent:innen | Ausgabe 30/2024 | The Guardian Foto: Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images Vor den Wettkämpfen in Paris wurde geschworen, so wenig wie möglich zu bauen, stattdessen die Wahrzeichen der Stadt als Kulisse zu nutzen. Hat es funktioniert?
Paris’s department stores transformed urban life. What can they teach today’s struggling shops?
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Paris’s department stores transformed urban life. What can they teach today’s struggling shops?
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Paris’s department stores transformed urban life. What can they teach today’s struggling shops?
Inspired by opera houses … the Crespin and Dufayel department store.Photograph: Les Arts Décoratifs/ Christophe Dellière On the top floor of the fabled La Samaritaine department store in Paris, an empty row of champagne-branded deckchairs is arranged on an artificial beach, facing a wall-sized digital screen of the sun setting over a sparkling sea.
inside the Natural History Museum’s mind-boggling new garden
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‘You travel five million years a metre’: inside the Natural History Museum’s mind-boggling new garden
Queueing for three billion years might sound like an ordeal, but the Natural History Museum has made it a thrill. When the daily stampede of 25,000 visitors now exits the pedestrian tunnel connecting South Kensington station to the grand London institution, they will embark on a journey of several aeons. “We want to get people to walk through geological time,” says Dr Paul Kenrick, lead scientist for the museum’s new evolution garden.
can Paris deliver the leanest, greenest Olympics yet?
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Plastic-bottle seats and wooden pools: can Paris deliver the leanest, greenest Olympics yet?
Recycle and reuse … the Georges Vallerey pool, to be used for swimming training, has been fitted with a new retractable timber roof. Photograph: Hugo Hebrard/AIA Life Designers – architectes Paris’s Place de la Concorde is no stranger to scaffolding, as the site of more than 1,000 beheadings during the French Revolution. Two centuries on, the scaffold has returned.
Keir Starmers Pläne für mehr Wohnraum: Mary Poppins gefiele das
Neuland Keir Starmers neue Labour-Regierung will nach dem Vorbild der britischen Regierung von 1945 neue Städte schaffen.
My bricklayer’s gone viral! Why construction workers are the new social media stars
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My bricklayer’s gone viral! Why construction workers are the new social media stars
Site specific … the screens documenting the builders’ work at madskills: Self-Documenting Construction on Social Media.Photograph: Matthieu Brouillard Among the endless makeup tutorials, coordinated dances and people cutting things open to see if they are made of cake, there is one genre of social media video that has proved to be an unexpected hit: life on building sites.
Assemble electrify the RA’s Summer Exhibition
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‘A show you want to pick up and fondle’: Assemble electrify the RA’s Summer Exhibition
Ready to fly … Assemble’s Maria Lisogorskaya with a model of a Ghanaian coffin on a rubble plinth.Photograph: Charlie J Ercilla/Alamy Slimy curtains made of seaweed and hog guts dangle from the ceiling in the central rotunda of the Royal Academy, with the look of slippery skins shed by some reptilian creature.
‘Public vandalism’: M&S wants to flatten its art deco flagship store – here are six alternative options
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‘Public vandalism’: M&S wants to flatten its art deco flagship store - here are six alternative options
Twice the size … M&S’s proposal for the site after the old building has gone, with the top storeys set back and concealed from view.Photograph: Pilbrow & Partners As the trusted purveyor of pants and socks to the nation since 1884, Marks & Spencer makes for an unlikely villain in one of the most high-profile planning battles of the century.
‘I plumbed in our bath – and it works!’ The DIY diehards who built 36 affordable homes from scratch - NewsBreak
‘Everyone just got stuck in’ … the build in progress. Photograph: Andrea Vladova Kareem Dayes’s story will be familiar to many millennials. Moving between rented house shares, with stints in leaky warehouses and spells back home with the parents, Dayes led a precarious existence – going from one temporary set-up to the next, continually subject to evictions and rent hikes, with little hope of ever finding an affordable, stable place.
Bienvenido a Aranya - Oliver Wainwright
La comunidad de Aranya, en el distrito de Beidaihe de la ciudad costera de Qinhuangdao, se ha transformado en los últimos años en un escaparate para los mejores arquitectos jóvenes de China. Cuenta con una colección de galerías experimentales, cafés y capillas, que atraen a más de 1,5 millones de visitantes al año, todo gracias a la poderosa atracción de las redes sociales... The Guardian. ‘Our parents did all the hard work. We don’t have to’: China’s seaside haven for the ‘lying flat’ generation
China’s seaside haven for the ‘lying flat’ generation
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China’s seaside haven for the ‘lying flat’ generation
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Romans in togas, shepherds in saunas and the Bridgerton garden in bloom … my wild day at Chelsea flower show
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Romans in togas, shepherds in saunas and the Bridgerton garden in bloom … my wild day at Chelsea flower show
Quite a view from the sofa … the treehouse by the artificial waterfall. Photograph: Oliver Wainwright A gigantic Chinese dragon made of gnarled chunks of driftwood towers over a display of bog plants, puffing steam from its nostrils and clutching a ceramic pearl that gushes with water. Nearby, men dressed in togas patrol the courtyard of a pretend Roman villa, where simulated rain pours into the garden from a pantiled roof.
Cómo podría haber sido el mundo - Oliver Wainwright
¿Sabías que, si las cosas hubieran sido diferentes, el Centro Pompidou podría haber sido un huevo? En el concurso de 1969 para el centro de arte de París (ganado finalmente por Richard Rogers y Renzo Piano), un arquitecto francés radical llamado André Bruyère presentó una propuesta para una gigantesca torre ovoide.
How the world could have looked: the most spectacular buildings that were never made
Welcome to the Inca citadel … the hotel in Machu Picchu, which appears in Phaidon’s Atlas of Never Built Architecture.Photograph: no credit Did you know that, if things had gone differently, the Pompidou Centre could have been an egg? In the 1969 competition for the Paris art centre – ultimately won by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, with their inside-out symphony of pipework – a radical French architect called André Bruyère submitted a proposal for a gigantic ovoid tower.
‘We’ve got drone swarms, dirty bombs, radar-jamming’: the fake town where America practises for war
Soldiers test their ability to combat an opposing force at Fort Irwin in California.Photograph: Alamy In the middle of California’s Mojave desert, down a long, bumpy track that winds past barren hills and arid ravines, there is a town like no other. The first unusual sight is a golden onion dome poking up on the horizon, crowning a pale blue minaret.
landmarks in protest architecture, from UCLA to Hong Kong
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