architecture

Collections
Essays
Music of the Squares: David Ramsay Hay and the Reinvention of Pythagorean Aesthetics

Music of the Squares: David Ramsay Hay and the Reinvention of Pythagorean Aesthetics

Understanding the same laws to apply to both visual and aural beauty, David Ramsay Hay thought it possible not only to analyse such visual wonders as the Parthenon in terms of music theory, but also to identify their corresponding musical harmonies and melodies. Carmel Raz on the Scottish artist’s original, idiosyncratic, and occasionally bewildering aesthetics. more

Porch Memories

Porch Memories

In this affecting photo-essay, Federica Soletta invites us to sit with her awhile on the American porch. more

Little Switzerlands: Alpine Kitsch in England

Little Switzerlands: Alpine Kitsch in England

Far from the treacherous peaks and ravines of Switzerland, Alpine cottages arose, unexpectedly, amid the hillocks and modest streams of 19th-century England. Seán Williams recovers the peculiar fad for “Little Switzerlands”, where the Romantic sublime meets countryside kitsch. more

A Paper Archaeology: Piranesi’s Ruinous Fantasias

A Paper Archaeology: Piranesi’s Ruinous Fantasias

From the vast confines of his imaginary prisons to the billowy scenes that comprise his grotteschi, the early works of Giovanni Battista Piranesi wed the exacting details of first-hand observation with the farthest reaches of artistic imagination. Susan Stewart journeys through this 18th-century engraver-architect’s paper worlds. more

*Hypnerotomachia Poliphili* and the Architecture of Dreams

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Architecture of Dreams

With its otherworldly woodcuts and ornate descriptions of imagined architecture, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili brims with an obsessive and erotic fixation on form. Demetra Vogiatzaki accompanies the hero as he wanders the pages of this quattrocento marvel, at once a story of lost love and a fever dream of antiquity. more

Concrete Poetry: Thomas Edison and the Almost-Built World

Concrete Poetry: Thomas Edison and the Almost-Built World

The architect and historian Anthony Acciavatti uses a real (but mostly forgotten) patent to conjure a world that could have been. more

Marvellous Moderns: The Brothers Perrault

Marvellous Moderns: The Brothers Perrault

Charles Perrault is celebrated as the collector of some of the world’s best-known fairy tales. But his brothers were just as remarkable: Claude, an architect of the Louvre, and Pierre, who discovered the hydrological cycle. As Hugh Aldersey-Williams explores, all three were able to use positions within the orbit of the Sun King to advance their modern ideas about the world. more