@ollywainwright

Architecture and design critic of the @Guardian [email protected] Now: https://xitter.cf/t.co/EVfZSXDbWa

 London
theguardian.com/profile/oliver-wainwright
Joined March 2009
  • Tweets16.9K
  • Following1.2K
  • Followers41.9K
2.7KMedia
All eyes will be on the freshly restored Notre-Dame cathedral this weekend – but the real story is what's happening right outside it theguardian.com/artanddesign…

Notre Dame review – glorious resurrection is as close to time travel as it gets

Five years since it was gutted by fire, the soul of Paris is about to reopen its doors. Our critic is wowed by the buttery stonework, gleaming lead and gawp-inducing gilding

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I've now also jumped ship to ollywainwright.bsky.social
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Inside @HerzogdeMeuron's astonishing new children's hospital in Zurich – which was actually cheaper to build than the UK's £1bn PFI disasters in Liverpool and Smethwick @KispiZuerich theguardian.com/artanddesign…

‘Like the Guggenheim!’ Inside Zurich’s staggering, revolutionary new hospital for kids

From the chalet-style patient ‘cottages’ to the walls designed for scribbling on, Herzog & de Meuron’s Kinderspital is a stylish, healing, child-friendly miracle – and it cost less than UK equivalents

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Hanif Kara wins the 2024 Soane Medal - here’s my interview with the man who makes architects’ wildest fantasies stand up theguardian.com/artanddesign…

‘I make architects’ dreams come true’: Hanif Kara, the magician who makes impossible buildings stay...

He has had a hand in some of the 21st-century’s most daring structures – including Zaha Hadid’s Phaeno science centre. We meet the Uganda-born engineer, who has just won architecture’s prestigious...

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Move over, Marble Arch Mound! Shanghai has spent £225m and 30,000 tonnes of steel and concrete to build its very own Twin Hills... theguardian.com/artanddesign…

Is this a mountain? A multistorey car park? Or both? Inside Shanghai’s audacious £225m summit

It’s got winding trails, a gushing waterfall, some 7,000 trees – and room inside for 1,500 cars. We explore the astonishing Twin Hills project, which isn’t even the city’s first manmade mountainscape

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Olly Wainwright retweeted
Tim O'Callaghan@nimtimtim16 Sep 2024
Receiving dozens of speculative job applications each week whilst also losing out on projects to fee percentages that are less than half what the RIBA fee scale indicated in 1982 tells you everything you need to know about a profession in existential crisis...
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A costly carousel of bollards: how the decade-long £132m rebirth of the Old Street roundabout went so badly wrong theguardian.com/artanddesign…

Total bollards: the iconic ‘eco-Blade Runner’ roundabout that became a grim £132m ‘abomination’

Boasting hovering haloes and futuristic forests, Old Street roundabout was meant to be a shining beacon for Britain’s very own Tech City. Instead, we have 120 hefty bollards and paving built to deter...

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Two very pertinent letters, following the Grenfell inquiry report 👇
Art and design@Gdnartanddesign10 Sep 2024
Grenfell inquiry has shone a light on architecture profession’s flaws | Letters theguardian.com/artanddesign…

Grenfell inquiry has shone a light on architecture profession’s flaws | Letters

Letters: Kerr Robertson and Catherine Brownell on the structural defects in the training and fees of architects

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‘There’s a lot to be built still’: architect Mariam Issoufou on excavating the past to build Africa’s future theguardian.com/global-devel…

‘There’s a lot to be built still’: the architect Mariam Issoufou on excavating the past to build...

One of the continent’s most-sought after designers draws inspiration from the traditional mud-brick building to create modern, sustainable structures

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"An aggressive act of teeth-whitening in the mouth of a much-loved and elegant friend" – on the bleaching of the Sainsbury Wing, and a missive from the grave 👻theguardian.com/artanddesign…

Monstrous carbuncles to talking columns: the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing is still a controv...

Prince Charles detested the plans for its extension. Now its major donor has criticised it from beyond the grave. So what’s coming next? Something that looks a lot like an airport lounge …

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Explore @ollywainwright's collection on alternative ways of living in the city. programme.openhouse.org.uk/c…
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Looking back, I think I got it right about Trump all the way back in 1988. It was all there then: the greed, the deceit, the total absence of any belief in the common good. ARCHITECTURE VIEW; Trump: Symbol of a Gaudy, Impatient Time - The New York Times nytimes.com/1988/01/31/arts/…

ARCHITECTURE VIEW; Trump: Symbol of a Gaudy, Impatient Time (Published 1988)

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New London Vernacular delivery.
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From splashing in the Seine, to diving in the Danube: the drive to make cities swimmable theguardian.com/artanddesign… 👏@chrisromerlee et al 💦

Splashing in the Seine, diving in the Danube: the drive to make cities swimmable

Campaigners and architects around the world are turning previously polluted rivers and harbours into the perfect places for a refreshing dip. So will we soon be swimming to work?

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Why Eric Parry's gigantic orthopaedic toilet seat must be scrapped theguardian.com/commentisfre…

The City of London’s tallest skyscraper could look like a toilet seat in the sky – and that’s not...

As more and more giant towers are squeezed in by developers, open spaces and natural light are becoming things of the past, says Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright

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This year's Stirling Prize shortlist revealed: can a tiny dairy farm beat the epic Elizabeth Line? theguardian.com/artanddesign…

Britain’s best new building: can a tiny dairy farm beat the epic Elizabeth line?

From increasing the National Portrait Gallery’s wall space to revitalising a notorious estate, this year’s finalists for the RIBA Stirling architecture prize couldn’t be more different

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Paris’s department stores transformed urban life. What can they teach today’s struggling shops? theguardian.com/artanddesign…

Paris’s department stores transformed urban life. What can they teach today’s struggling shops?

Inspired by opera houses, the grands magasins were astonishing spectacles, built on a pharaonic scale. A new exhibition in the French capital charts the golden age of a dying concept

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After finally visiting Azabudai Hills I can say with certainty that @ollywainwright is right is his article and that I can't really understand how this Heatherwick charlatan can still get work (or even have people listening to anything he says). theguardian.com/artanddesign…

‘Dangerously misguided’: the glaring problem with Thomas Heatherwick’s architectural dreamworld

The designer’s new book Humanise spearheads a campaign excoriating decades of bad building. Has he forgotten his own expensive disasters? Our critic hasn’t

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"You travel five million years a metre" – inside @FeildenFowles and @JLG_London's magnificent new gardens for the Natural History Museum 🦕🌴 theguardian.com/artanddesign…

‘You travel five million years a metre’: inside the Natural History Museum’s mind-boggling new...

It has giddying cliffs, three-billion-year-old rocks, a prehistoric forest – and a giant bronze dinosaur called Fern. Our writer hurtles back through millennia as the beloved museum’s five-year...

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Bridges, bike lanes, wooden pools and a (maybe) swimmable Seine... How will Paris's Olympic legacy stack up? theguardian.com/artanddesign…

Plastic-bottle seats and wooden pools: can Paris deliver the leanest, greenest Olympics yet?

The Paris Olympics vowed to build as little as possible, using the city’s landmarks as a backdrop instead. Has it worked? We check out the bold new venues, upgraded old ones – and the athletes’...

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