Jonathan Meades
CommentThe dismal profession
How has architecture come to be such a regulated, disciplined, controlled and artistically emasculated business? And what can be done to save it?
CommentHow our house fell down
British domestic design in the 20th century is a story of architectural vandalism committed by the very rich and eagerly emulated by the middle class
FeaturesFive great architects … you’ve never heard of
Jonathan Meades on the works of Douglas Stephen, Georgie Wolton, Frederick Pilkington, Sextus Dyball and Gino Coppedè … Why they’re so good – and so neglected
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The tyranny of taste
The dead hand of totalitarian modernism should be prised from the shoulders of living architects: it was no more than a style among many others
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Farrell & Nash (deceased)
Sir Terry Farrell's grand plan for a central promenade linking Primrose Hill to the South Bank captures a little of a Georgian ancestor's grand vision
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Old-fashioned fun
My, isn't Edinburgh beautiful? It just goes to show, there's nothing wrong with revivalism and pastiche – after all, architecture used to be playful
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Give it to me straight
It’s all very well designing a building whose curves have been inspired by a hippopotamus’ backside, but just how does it fit in to our rectilinear urban jungle? ...
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A case for the SFA
Does empty space always cry out to be filled? Not when what you're filling it with looks like Berkeley Homes' Potters Fields project, it doesn't
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Architects Week point
Architects are 'celebrating' their very own Week, during which they will try to convince us they are about to change the world. It's a worrying trend …
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Meades 160
What we are witnessing of course – at the basest, most frivolous level – is the globalisation of uniqueness, the internationalisation of the particular, the homogenisation of the peculiar.
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Death by Venice
The A-list of tourist destinations thrive on their history, uniqueness, beauty and immutability. Which is precisely what makes them so deadly
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A voyage to Psychotropia
"Art deco was kitsch and camp and gently surreal, and architects who take themselves too seriously have always taken it too seriously, too." Discuss …
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Of Mies and men
Mies van der Rohe's failure to win an architectural competition in 1910 gives us an insight into a fascinating in-between period in the careers of artists
FeaturesNow for a feast …
Imagine what a restaurant critic would make of a Christmas visit to a bustling site canteen. Well, you don't have to: Jonathan Meades has done just that at Bovis' site at White City in west London – and found that not everything was quite to his taste. In fact, he ...
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Mechanised tree-houses
One reason for our British spinelessness is that we don't like to make a fuss. Which wasn't always the case. In fact, our cars used to look a perfect fright …
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Invisible pleasures
Medieval builders who died before their cathedrals were finished were lucky, because once a building's built, everything it could be is erased by what it is
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Desecration row
Iconoclasts have come a long way from Byzantium to Brockhampton, but they're still smashing up £7m of church property a year. Here's a solution …
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The snobs' barricade
Labour seems to have no intention of providing shelter for those unable to provide it for themselves – and one reason is that we don't really want it to