Amanda Levete Freelance
Building
Stories by this contributor.
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Rulers were made for…
17 December 2010
You can’t measure the value of design with any kind of measuring stick - and anyone who suggests you can deserves a rap on the knuckles
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Why we should train architects on the job
19 November 2010
Higher education is going to become increasingly inaccessible, so why don’t we create ways of training while working
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Second best is no good at all: impressions from the Labour party conference
08 October 2010
Fresh from the Labour conference, Amanda Levete muses on the pointlessness of second place, the deviousness of committees and the role of a great leader in making great buildings
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Donkey work and urban planning
17 September 2010
A Kenyan island with an unusual freight-transportation system has inspired Amanda Levete to think again about designing for cities without cars
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How does the state imagine?
23 July 2010
The next decade is going to reinterpret, reorganise and abolish much of our familiar world, so we’ll need creative thinking from government. Which could be a problem
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Up for the cup
17 Jun 10
Goal celebrations are brilliant expressions of national identity (but not you, Clint Dempsey). How does architecture reflect where a nation has come from and where it’s going, asks Amanda Levete
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Choice in an age of uncertainty
30 April 2010
These days it seems nothing can be taken for granted, whether its simple travel plans or the fact that the Lib Dems are bound to come third. Which can be a good thing
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Amanda Levete: What Japan can teach us
05 March 2010
Or, as the atlases have it, Japan: a country that endlessly contradicts itself, but does so with such artistry that it hardly matters. But what can it teach us
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Amanda Levete: why architects know best
22 January 2010
Give Britain’s best architects the final say in what gets built. Amanda Levete explains why this modest proposal is neither elitist, utopian, nor politically impossible
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They know how to use the sky box
06 November 2009
That’s just one of the benefits of having children. But the struggle to combine work and reproduction is rewarding, exhausting and different for everybody
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The academy in peril
02 October 2009
If you find yourself with a spare hour in Piccadilly, go and see Anish Kapoor at the RA: it’s disturbing, even violent, but it has a lot to say about how art fits into buildings
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Where are we now? How architecture is understood and consumed
24 July 2009
The way architecture is produced, consumed and understood in the 21st century has been transformed – for better and worse – by digital technology
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Dining and designing
26 June 2009
Buildings are consumed by the eye in the same way that food is consumed by the organs of digestion. And in both cases, the important thing is that they’re tasty
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We can't afford cheap and nasty
15 May 2009
The recession is turning us, and our politicians, into mean, short-sighted people. And this is exactly the right way to make sure it lasts a long, long time
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Australia's grand opera house
9 April 2009
Sydney is finally going to restore Jørn Utzon’s awesome opera house to his original design – but there is a big price to pay
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Jan and me: Amanda Levete on Jan Kaplicky
6 March 2009
Jan Kaplicky, who died in January, was a visionary architect whose creativity drove him to test the bounds of the possible, says his former wife and design partner
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Nothing could be better
19 December 2008
Empty sites and redundant buildings can be colonised for all kinds of creative purposes, says Amanda Levete. It just needs a little imagination on the part of government to get them going
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A question of charisma
19 September 2008
Some regenerated areas become fizzing centres of creative energy whereas others are, well, a bit dull. But what is it that makes the difference? Amanda Levete has a theory …
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The uses of adversity
11 July 2008
The Great Depression brought destitution to millions. It also transformed politics and society and produced great architecture. Amanda Levete asks: could the present downturn do the same?
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Darwin and design
2008 Issue 18
A week in the Pacific archipelago that inspired the theory of evolution also inspires thoughts about survival and extinction in the architectural world
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The stranglers
2008 Issue 11
One hand is called administrative efficiency. The other is called funding projections. Together they are throttling the life out of education in the creative arts. We have to fight back while we still can.
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Power and glory
2008 Issue 5
Like it or not, nuclear is an essential, if temporary, solution to our power needs. But this time, let’s not design the stations as ominous concrete hulks
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A tale of three cities
2008 Issue 3
Rome, Mumbai and Marrakesh each have much to tell us about how cities work, how they fail and the possibilities they offer to those who live in them.
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Consider the bat
2007 issue 44
So, the competition was to design a des res for a few hundred flying midge munchers, but the results were revelatory – and strangely important for all of us…
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Material world
2007 Issue 39
Is furniture art? What difference does it make if a bench is made of fibreglass or marble? What goes on in a Bangkok luxury hotel? All the answers are here
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‘Relax, babe’
2007 Issue 31
What Dennis Hopper told Amanda Levete and other Vegas stories, plus the secret story of Wembley’s image rights
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Table talk
2007 Issue 19
The Milan furniture fair is where commerce meets style. This year, it was also visited by a new seriousness, reflecting the way design comments on the society that creates it
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The towers of London
2007 Issue 14
The capital’s flirtation with tall buildings is becoming a love affair, thanks to the commercial and aesthetic success of recent designs. But how can we keep it going?
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Doing what it takes
2007 Issue 06
The Olympics will only truly succeed if the powers-that-be overcome their intellectual timidity and attack the problem with passion, imagination and a whole lot of money
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Life less ordinary
2007 Issue 02
This strange time of year, when our everyday existence pauses for a week, makes us look more closely at who we are, where we live and the work that we do
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Reindeer with everything
2006 issue 47
It’s postcards from the edge this week, as our globetrotting architect flits from the antlers of Helsinki to the Buddhas of Bangkok
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Net result
2006 issue 40
For the fans, the Arsenal stadium is a great result, but architecturally it’s in the second division
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Viva Zaha!
2006 issue 25
The Guggenheim's Zaha Hadid exhibition illustrates, with equal clarity, the genius of the architect, the lack of a world-class venue in London and the problems of working in Wales
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Now is good
2006 issue 17
Now is a great time to be an architect, with liberated aesthetics, resurgent creativity, rethought modernism - and a welcome new distraction …
