Edwin Heathcote is the architecture and design critic of the Financial Times and the author of The Meaning of Home.

Dreaming spires – the restless imagination of Imre Makovecz

The Hungarian architect with a penchant for the fantastical left behind a series of provocative buildings

26 Feb 2024

When French theory shaped high-minded buildings

Deconstructivism wasn’t exactly a movement, but its practitioners – from Frank Gehry to Bernard Tschumi – certainly caused a great stir

2 Nov 2023

Is the grand museum entrance now on its way out?

In the pursuit of greater accessibility, institutions are making themselves oddly unapproachable

23 Feb 2023
Paris Street, Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte

The subtle details that put Paris streets ahead

Street lights, kiosks and benches are easy to ignore, but they can make all the difference to how a city look and feels

1 Jan 2023

What’s the point of old postcards?

Unused postcards may seem like a blast from the past, but they can still send a powerful message

27 Nov 2022
Goetheanum Rudolf Steiner

The other-worldly architecture of Rudolf Steiner

The mystically inspired polymath was never a professional architect, but his haunting buildings are among modernism’s most curious structures

26 Sep 2022
The Smithsonian’s Arts And Industries Building, Washington, D.C. Photo: Ron Blunt; courtesy Smithsonian

‘It has always been a museum of the future’ – at the original Smithsonian

The Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall has finally reopened – and it remains as forward-looking as ever

31 Jan 2022
Photo: by Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images

Loved shacks: the very British obsession with beach huts

It may be an unassuming little shelter, but the beach hut tells of a British infatuation with property and propriety

12 Aug 2021

An architectural frieze is the icing on the cake, for a building

They’re the classic way to embellish a building – and for all their suspicion of ornament, even modern architects went in for them

22 Feb 2021
A detail of George Mayer-Marton’s mosaic and fresco before the latter was painted over.

A threatened mural in Oldham illuminates a key moment in British art

George Mayer-Marton was an accomplished, influential émigré artist – and his Crucifixion for the Church of the Holy Rosary in Oldham must be protected

26 Aug 2020
Original door fittings at an entrance to the Bauhaus in Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius.

Points of contact – a short history of door handles

Door handles can be the first and only part of a building we touch, but their design is all too often an afterthought

10 Jun 2020
Michael Sorkin.

‘The most humane, most incisive and most readable writer on architecture of the modern age’ – a tribute to Michael Sorkin

The critic and architect fervently believed that architecture should promote social justice

31 Mar 2020
Installation view of ‘Ghost Parking Lot’ (completed in 1978) at the National Shopping Center in Hamden, Connecticut, by James Wines & SITE. © SITE New York

‘If James Wines’ greatest works were still around, they would be Instagram sensations’

Perhaps it’s time to catch up with the sculptor-turned-architect who has always been ahead of the pack

5 Feb 2020
Photograph of the saleroom of the Continental Havana Company in Berlin, designed by Henry van de Velde in 1899, and published in Innen-Dekoration, October 1899.

From schools to cigar shops – the eclectic vision of Henry van de Velde

The Belgian painter-turned-designer was a prominent figure in the early history of modernism – although his precise role is not so easy to pin down

9 Oct 2019
Drawing of a display case, c. 1940, Lina Bo Bardi. IBCV Archives.

The variety, delicacy and wit of Lina Bo Bardi

In her drawings as in her architecture, the Italian-born Brazilian modernist was ‘radical and magical’

6 Jul 2019
Philip Johnson with models showing ‘the evolution of the modern skyscraper’, shortly before their display at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1933.

The most influential and most detested architect of the modern age

Philip Johnson was not the most talented modern American architect, but he was certainly the most important

15 May 2019
The museum of Het Schip ('The Ship') in Amsterdam, designed by Michel de Klerk and built in 1917–20.

Schip shape – the infectiously bizarre style of the Amsterdam School

Het Schip and other buildings of this early 20th-century movement are both hyper-modern and curiously medieval

6 Apr 2019

The modern architect who gave Budapest a taste of the future

Béla Lajta was one of the most innovative architects of the early 20th century

21 May 2018
Brooch, 1907, designed by Josef Hoffmann. Courtesy Neue Galerie, New York

The business of luxury in modern Vienna

The Wiener Werkstätte was a commercial flop, but its designs still embody the spirit of Viennese modernism

9 Dec 2017

Where will London’s artists work?

As London’s former industrial areas are being redeveloped, artists are running out of affordable studio space. Can a city be a thriving cultural centre if its artists have nowhere to work?

21 Dec 2015