Otto Saumarez Smith is assistant professor of art history at Warwick University and the author of ‘Boom Cities, Architect Planners and the Politics of Radical Urban Renewal in 1960s Britain’.

Reviews
St Bride’s Church in East Kilbride, designed by Andy MacMillan and Isi Metstein for Gillespie Kidd & Coia and completed in 1964.

In defence of the modern buildings of Britain

Some of Britain’s finest examples of modern architecture may be under threat, but in Owen Hatherley they have a fierce champion

30 May 2022
Architecture
The lower precinct, Coventry, built by the city’s Architect’s Department in 1957–60 and connecting to the upper precinct and the cathedral beyond (photographed in 1960).

In defence of Coventry’s post-war architecture

Why is the city so determined to destroy one of the best civic centres of the post-war period?

21 Sep 2020
Architecture
View of Ferrybridge B power station behind the Church of St Edward the Confessor in Brotherton, North Yorkshire, photographed by Eric de Maré in 1960. Photo: © Eric de Maré/RIBA collections

Cooling towers are a powerful presence in the landscape – and deserve to be saved

It’s time to appreciate the gracefulness of power stations before more of them disappear

24 Feb 2020
Reviews
The Island of Love and Fisherman’s Rest, Lequeu

Painstakingly perfect and utterly peculiar – the drawings of Jean-Jacques Lequeu

The French draughtsman’s fantasies seem as bizarre today as they did 200 years ago

18 Feb 2019
Reviews

Cedric Price’s mission to make architecture amusing

Cedric Price believed that architecture should be mobile, lightweight, and temporary. Above all, he thought it should be fun

17 May 2017
Reviews
Wittgenstein in New York, (detail; from the As is When portfolio) (1965), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, ,

More can be less when it comes to Eduardo Paolozzi

Paolozzi’s 1950s work is astonishing, but a full retrospective draws too much attention to his duller later work

4 May 2017
Architecture

Finally, a reminder that post-war architecture deserves our praise

Elain Harwood’s magisterial Space, Hope, and Brutalism is a triumph

22 Dec 2015
Architecture

John Aubrey on architecture: centuries old and more relevant than ever

17th-century writing on ancient buildings never felt so contemporary

28 May 2015
Reviews

Review: ‘Louis Kahn: The Power of Architecture’ at the Design Museum

Kahn’s designs have a sense of grandeur unmatched by most modernist buildings

18 Jul 2014
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Masterpiece [Re]discovery 2022. Photo: Ben Fisher Photography, courtesy of Masterpiece London

The Masterpiece podcast: episode three

This episode explores an ancient funeral stele, Marie Antoinette’s breast bowl, and how digital technologies are helping to preserve Egyptian heritage sites

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Slovak National Gallery’s department heads resign – with 177 staff threatening to follow

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Frank Auerbach has died at the age of 93

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