Stephen Bayley

The eccentric genius behind Big Ben

31 December 2023 5:00 pm

One test of great architecture is whether it, and the city it stands in, can be recognised from its silhouette…

The crimes of Le Corbusier

14 October 2023 9:00 am

We can all sympathise with his desire to end bad, ugly new building, but too many of his own projects have had to be scrapped for functional reasons

Purpose built

10 June 2023 9:00 am

Hugh Pearman examines a wide range of building types apart from houses, including museums, theatres, schools, shopping malls, palaces and places of worship

The story of architecture in 100 buildings

26 November 2022 9:00 am

Witold Rybczynski’s majestic survey takes us from Brittany in 4,800 BC to Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry

Why are heritage enthusiasts so stubbornly hidebound?

12 November 2022 9:00 am

Even if notions of beauty are treacherously fugitive, and even if interpretations of history are nowadays subject to revision by…

Must we now despise colonial architecture too?

6 August 2022 9:00 am

Here’s a thing. A disturbing book about disturbing cities. And it’s full of loaded questions. Like Hezbollah, the publisher uses…

Enjoy your beloved car while you can

19 March 2022 9:00 am

Remember ashtrays in cars? Soon cars will themselves become objects of wet-eyed nostalgic reverie. A thrilling era of propelling ourselves,…

Stylish and useful: why the Anglepoise remains a design classic

23 October 2021 9:00 am

The tide of survival bias has retreated and left the Anglepoise a design classic. Its contemporaries from the mid-1930s, a…

The country house is dead: that’s why we love it so

9 October 2021 9:00 am

The true English disease is Downton Syndrome. Symptoms include a yearning for a past of chivalry, grandeur and unambiguously stratified…

How we did the locomotion: A Brief History of Motion, by Tom Standage, reviewed

14 August 2021 9:00 am

Audi will make no more fuel engines after 2035. So that’s the end of the Age of Combustion, signalled by…

The disgraceful decision to remove Liverpool’s heritage status

23 July 2021 12:07 am

Unesco has cancelled the ‘World Heritage Status’ of the Necropolis at Memphis and the Giza Pyramid because a Radisson Blu…

The magnificent fiasco of Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House

10 April 2021 9:00 am

John Ruskin believed the most beautiful things are also the most useless, citing lilies and peacocks. Had he known about…

Is it farewell to the handshake?

20 March 2021 9:00 am

Ella Al-Shamahi is a Brummie, born to a Yemeni Arab family. From a strict Muslim upbringing she transitioned (evidently con…

Roy Strong’s towering egotism is really rather engaging

5 December 2020 9:00 am

Stephen Bayley recalls his (mainly enjoyable) encounters with the flamboyant former museum director

High-speed trains, planes and automobiles are increasingly redundant

21 November 2020 9:00 am

Should the world be faster or slower? This is a question relevant to global economics, politics and culture. But not…

The 747 was the last moment of romance in air travel

25 July 2020 9:00 am

I felt a genuine pang when British Airways announced that it was retiring its fleet of Boeing 747s, the largest…

René Dreyfus: the racing driver detested by the Nazis

2 May 2020 9:00 am

I have driven a racing car. On television, it looks like a smooth and scientific matter. It is not. A…

Clean lines and dirty habits: the Modernists of 1930s Hampstead

24 April 2020 11:00 pm

With its distinctive hilly site and unusually coherent architecture (significantly, most of it domestic rather than civic), Hampstead has always…

Plumbing the mysteries of poltergeists

21 March 2020 9:00 am

This is a paranormal book — by which I mean it exists in a truly out of the ordinary netherworld…

There’s something hot about a hat

15 February 2020 9:00 am

When an American describes a woman as wearing a ‘Park Avenue Helmet’ you know exactly what is meant. This is…

A museum-quality car-boot sale: V&A’s Cars reviewed

7 December 2019 9:00 am

We were looking at a 1956 Fiat Multipla, a charming ergonomic marvel that predicted today’s popular MPVs. Rather grandly, I…

An unconventional biography of the visionary architect Frank Lloyd Wright

19 October 2019 9:00 am

Paul Hendrickson’s previous (and very fine) book was Hemingway’s Boat, published in Britain in 2012. It was a nice conceit…

The stormy lives of Jack the Dripper and the Wife with the Knife

18 May 2019 9:00 am

A stiff, invigorating breeze of revisionism is blowing through stuffy art history. Is it really true that all the valuable…

How Camilla’s grandfather helped popularise the architecture Prince Charles detests

4 May 2019 9:00 am

Was the Bauhaus the most inspired art school of all time or the malignant source of an uglifying industrial culture…

‘Wonderground Map of London Town’, 1914, by Max Gill

Not as good as his immoral brother Eric but still wonderful: Max Gill at Ditchling reviewed

16 February 2019 9:00 am

MacDonald ‘Max’ Gill (1884–1947) is less well known than his notorious brother, Eric. But was he less of a designer,…