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Clerkenwell Cool
A visual delight at Golden LaneClerkenwell was cool before Hoxton was hip. It is stuffed full of architects, designers and creative types and has a minimalist self confidence rather different from...
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High Speed 2 Nowhere
"Bend an ear and listen to my version...."I s’pose I’d better admit that I used to be a train spotter, although you’ve probably guessed that already. I was in short trousers when I ‘copped’ Evening...
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Elephant & Cynicism
Modernism & road engineeringWhen my parents first took me to London we got the Bakerloo line from Paddington and as the tube train came thundering out of the tunnel I saw its name was ‘Elephant’....
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Naples Funiculi, Funicula
Cities alien to one another can share similar circumstancesA few days spent in Napoli give cause for some reflections on similarities and differences with Blighty. At first sight you may think there...
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Bristol Fashion
With Bristol it’s difficult to know where to begin. Here is a place with probably the finest architectural legacy of any city in England outside London, a superb location, thrilling townscape, Georgian...
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Superlative Newcastle
The industrial spirit, not the financial – Parson's PolygonSuperlative Newcastle – that’s what Ian Nairn called it and he was right. No English city evinces the anticipation and excitement of arrival...
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Liverpool Futurist
Speed - the Modern MercuryLiverpool is the last in our series on planning and architecture in the great cities of the North and it has been the most difficult to capture. Certainly Liverpool is the...
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A Day Out in Birmingham
It's all about surfaces nowIt’s a few years since we explored Birmingham for Towns in Britain. More recently we have been concentrating on the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ for our forthcoming book Cities of...
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Warsaw doesn't know how good it is
Warszawa PowiśleWarsaw is definitely not on the tourists’ agenda: even Poles will tell you to go to Kraków instead. Neither Stanford’s nor the RIBA Bookshop could provide me with an architectural...
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Cities of the North – our new book
Cities of the North takes an irreverent and often amusing look at the changing townscape, special character, architecture and planning of the great Northern English cities. Lavishly illustrated, it is...
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Bus Spotting – or why buses are important
The proud municipal livery of the former Birmingham City TransportTrain spotting is now officially cool. Who could resist Tim Dunn’s enthusiasm for that magnificent Black Five steaming alongside a...
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Red Vienna (and the rest too)
Vienna loves council housingYou may be surprised that Vienna, one of the greatest of European cities, is of a similar size to the Birmingham, Manchester or Glasgow conurbations. Of course it is the...
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Dutch Modernism, De Stijl & Rotterdam Bling
Contrast & reflectionOf all our continental neighbours the Dutch seem most like the English, or at least what we thought the English were like until recent events. Countries on the periphery, the...
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Is Leeds Really up for Jan Gehl?
Whoa, Jan Gehl signs for Leeds ...Leeds is a great city. I say this since it undoubtedly is, but also because as I am now almost a resident – well I have a Leeds postcode - it would be churlish of me...
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Halifax, Hebden Bridge and the Republic of Todmorden
A strong identity: entrance to Square Chapel Arts CentreHalifax is spectacular both in its setting and in the ambition of its architecture. Set in the narrow valley of the Hebble Brook and surrounded...
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Trainspotting: a Potemkin privatisation
Swiss Trains. Courtesy eisenbahnfans.chNothing like a trip to Switzerland to provide comparison with our own chronic railway system. In Switzerland the trains run like clockwork. Sleek inter-city,...
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Coventry Revisted: The Modernist City
I recently heard a performance of Britten’s emotionally shattering War Requiem which was first performed at the consecration of Coventry Cathedral in 1962. Both the Cathedral and the Requiem are hugely...
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Milton Keynes @50
Off my trolley in Milton Keynes (Boyd & Evans)Milton Keynes is definitely weird. There are the concrete cows. Then there is the weirdness of driving through a city with a population of over 250,000...
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Stoke-on-Trent
The place has formAlthough Stoke-on-Trent is right in the centre of England it is one of its least known cities. Frequently termed The Potteries for obvious reasons, Arnold Bennett's epithet for it was...
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