Articles by Owen Hatherley

Sheffield is one of the UK’s most important cities for modern architecture, says Owen Hatherley, and we need to take action to stop it being destroyed. The Jury’s Inn is the sort of building that Sheffield has been producing a lot of since the 1990s. Mediocre, over-scaled, it could have been built absolutely anywhere in

The post “To change Sheffield for the better, the answer might lie in anger and civic action” appeared first on Dezeen.

Stage, the crowdfunded wooden pavilion that won a special mention in the European Prize for Urban Public Space, is paving the way for a new approach to architecture in the Ukraine, says Owen Hatherley. Ukraine’s big cities are some of Europe’s most fascinating. Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and Lviv are unique, stuffed with topographical and architectural excitement. But

The post “The future of Ukrainian architecture could be collective, lightweight and public” appeared first on Dezeen.

The Venice Biennale manifesto of Grafton Architects is proof that vapid commentary can diminish great architecture, says Owen Hatherley. “Freespace focuses on architecture’s ability to provide free and additional spatial gifts to those who use it and on its ability to address the unspoken wishes of strangers,” reads the manifesto of Venice Architecture Biennale curators Yvonne Farrell

The post “Designing and writing about a building are very different processes of thought” appeared first on Dezeen.

High-tech architecture is not on the verge of a comeback – it actually never went away, says Owen Hatherley. Every era comes back as a revival eventually. The fact that, in 2025, semi-ironically liking Make or Will Alsop buildings will be a top edgelord position is depressing, but an inevitability that it is pointless to

The post “High-tech never went away, though many wish it had” appeared first on Dezeen.

With Coventry set to be UK City of Culture in 2021, the destruction of the city’s post-war architecture needs to stop, says Owen Hatherley. Every now and then, I go to a city that had the hell bombed out of it in the second world war, and find that what it did afterwards to replan, rehouse and reimagine

The post “These are not the moves of a city that is proud of its architecture” appeared first on Dezeen.

In the 1970s, the Open University offered a course on the history of architecture and design. Architects can learn a lot from it, says Owen Hatherley. Why don’t ordinary people understand modern architecture? It’s a question that comes up now and again in what architects like to call “the profession”. If only these people understood

The post “Can modernism be explained without an architectural education?” appeared first on Dezeen.

A brutalist megastructure in Seoul is undergoing a major revamp. The result may not be photogenic, says Owen Hatherley, but it offers a promising model for regeneration without gentrification. The most interesting architectural experience I had in 2017 was a walk in Seoul. The map given out at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism included a

The post “What is happening at Sewoon Sangga is, quietly, quite extraordinary” appeared first on Dezeen.