Olly Wainwright

How interesting, thanks!

(Cited in this French doctoral thesis core.ac.uk/download/pdf...)

Never seen this before – the original winning entry to the 1958 Sunday Times ideas competition for an extension to the National Gallery, won by Mr Barrie Dewhurst, who received £2,500

A tower topped with a pangolin! The Oxford university building inspired by Tolkien … and the pandemic A chubby, rhubarb and custard-coloured tower bedecked with anteaters and moles make a fun neighbour to the city’s dreaming spires. It’s left some locals lost for words

Pangolin postmodernism – inside David Kohn's fruity new addition to New College, Oxford www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

The curatorial statement begins:
Little toad, little toad / I will give you an old house / In return for a new house;
Little toad, little toad / Go fetch some water / I will build your house;
Little toad, little toad / Your house is on fire / Wend your way here with a pitchfork.

Very pleased to learn that the Korean pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale will be called Little Toad, Little Toad.

‘I aspire to be like water’: the exquisite buildings of Liu Jiakun, winner of architecture’s top prize He turns steelworks into parks and makes ‘rebirth bricks’ from earthquake rubble. As the novelist, meditator and ‘accidental architect’ wins the Pritzker prize, we look at the masterful temples, caves...

Congrats to Liu Jiakun on winning the Pritzker Prize! It was an honour to meet him (and his many cats) in Chengdu recently www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

It was very entertaining! Looking forward to more episodes...

Backlash builds: why the architecture world hates The Brutalist Brady Corbet’s Oscar-tipped film is clearly based on real-life modernist master Marcel Breuer but brazenly misrepresents him and his revered modernism

Why The Brutalist is making architects mad - and what really happened when Marcel Breuer was commissioned to design a big concrete church on a hill www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ja...

‘The banks thought we were mad’: coral castles and look-at-me loos reinvent New York housing With building codes strict and land values high, Big Apple apartment blocks tend to be grim. But two firms, SO-IL and Tankhouse, are fighting back with lush courtyards, breezy landings – and glass-walled toilets 15 storeys up

How SO-IL and Tankhouse are shaking up the New York housing scene, carving out space for architecture through creative interpretation of the zoning codes www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

A sprawling megacity of multi-level madness: why Chongqing in China is my wonder of the world This megacity is like Hong Kong on steroids – a vertically sprawling, astonishing urban phenomenon that can only be understood in three dimensions

The Guardian's Travel desk asked me to pick my personal wonder of the world. It had to be the mad, multi-levelled megacity of Chongqing, which feels like being in a cross between Inception and game of snakes and ladders www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/...

‘Criminally reckless’: why LA’s urban sprawl made wildfires inevitable – and how it should rebuild A century of foolhardy development, including public subsidies for rebuilding in the firebelt, hugely contributed to this tragedy, writes our architecture critic. LA must rethink – and build upwards n...

A century of foolhardy development, including public subsidies for rebuilding in the firebelt, hugely contributed to this tragedy. LA must rethink – and build upwards not outwards | @ollywainwright.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

We need to talk about Saudi Arabia Recent posts on LinkedIn (including those by RIBA chair Jack Pringle and former NLA chief Peter Murr...

OPINION
We need to talk about Saudi Arabia, says Jeremy Till
www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opinion...

Assad's palace: an empty, echoing monument to dictator decor Oliver Wainwright: Designed by celebrated architect Kenzō Tange, what does the Syrian presidential palace say about the Assad regime?

Which turns out to have been designed by Kenzo Tange (who designed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial). @ollywainwright.bsky.social wrote a story about it in 2013:
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Notre Dame review – glorious resurrection is as close to time travel as it gets Five years since it was gutted by fire, the soul of Paris is about to reopen its doors. Our critic is wowed by the buttery stonework, gleaming lead and gawp-inducing gilding

All eyes will be on the freshly restored Notre-Dame cathedral this weekend – but the real story is what's happening right outside it www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

Chapman Taylor’s new art museum in Almaty looks like they put the Museum of Liverpool through a grinder

Two of the *municipal pools* (with amazing spas attached) that I swam and steamed in at the weekend in Vienna - Jörgerbad (1919) and Amalienbad (1926). Oh to live in a socialist city 💦🧖‍♂️✨

Thanks! 🙏

So you are! 🧐

Nice, where’s that going to be?

Woo, great! 🌴

Oh nice! I look forward to seeing that...

📢 Architects! Curators! PRs! I'm compiling a 2025 preview, so please tell me what you have coming up next year...

Yes! And the final transition into his disco-fabulous final form of mylar, faux fur and sparkles ✨

My favourite Rudolph fact is that when he wasn’t designing heroic works of muscular brutalism, his favourite hobby was painting Japanese toy robots. Here’s some of his collection

What a draughtsman 💥 Inside the dazzling Piranesian worlds of Paul Rudolph www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...