Villa Necchi is both a masterpiece of residential design by one of Italy’s greatest ever architects Piero Portaluppi… and an utterly remarkable time capsule from 1930s haute-bourgeois Milan….

I bloody love these evil neoliberal blocks of luxury flats in Milan City Life by Zaha. Bite me They are pretty mesmerizing, like yacht spaghetti

Lots of progress on the Croydon Colonnade, with the pavement (sidewalk for you Americans) now going in… Here you can see the first nearly completed columns

One of the world’s great anomalies, Kyoto Station by Hiroshi Hara (1997) is a town-sized, public megastructure, fully built in one go to the coherent and total vision of a brilliant architect, effectively acting as a vast manifesto… or maybe as close as one might get to actually BEING inside the architect’s imagination… not only is it almost too vast to fully comprehend, like Lutyens’ great design for Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, it knows how to emphasise its scale…

Awesome metabolist building developed by my grandfather (opened 10th June 1974) outside Tokyo Station, by GKK Architects They both adored modern design, but my grandmother disliked very angular buildings, loving curves instead, hence the architect was asked to incorporate some in the design which led to its unusually organic shape

One of Shin Takamatsu’s most important surviving buildings, the tiny, packed, positively vibrating-with-dark-energies Pharaoh Dental Clinic in Kyoto from 1984 Its details recall steampunk visions of the future from long ago, 20,000 leagues Under The Sea windows and enlarged metal bolts that look like they’re holding everything together…

I am totally obsessed with this building, Kenzo Tange’s imperiously elegant Tokyo Metropolitan Government complex from 1990 that is a Akira-style fusion of intricate granite ornament that recalls circuit boards and the towering profile of an ancient gothic cathedral… Here you can see the overall profile

Iv been in love with, & mesmerized by the Thompson Center since I was a child. The most important postmodern public building in the world by far, it is an incomparably complex, virtuoso & ambitious symphony of geometry, polychromy, structure, space & ornament… & is testament to Chicago’s architectural genius… by the great maverick Helmut Jahn who mixed Hi-Tech structural gymnastics with Miesian sophistication and postmodern richness of effect to create absolutely singular spaces

It is difficult for me to put into words quite how radically sophisticated I find the Charnley-Persky House by Louis Sullivan in Chicago, it is a veritable pandora’s box of architectural delights Sullivan uses oversized archways without doors to form sequences of interconnected spaces that create a powerful sense of constant & dramatic transition

Hey Italians, is there any substantive public discussion/accounting of colonial-era oppression by Italy in the public arena there? Im just noticing that the architectural discourse there seems to be lacking most of the burning topical discourse that is finally being taken seriously in architecture over here in the UK, from gender to race, colonialism and sexuality...

THREAD: the Italians have a very special way with their apartment buildings, with do many of them almost being pieces of art for the city... lets start with Condominio in piazza Carbonari, 1960 - 1961, Milan, by Luigi Caccia Dominioni (7/12/1913-13/11/2016)  Look at this ‘everyday beauty’ (of which there are soooo many) with a slice taken out of it, in Milan, by Giancarlo Malchiodi

After this the doors were closed to Jewish asylum seekers, leading to millions being exterminated. The best comparison for Britain today is not the Nazis, but Britain in the 1930s, a shameful and disgusting period that is completely hidden behind the minuscule Kindertransport It is not taught in schools and is known but virtually no one in this country, which is why we are dooned to repeat it, and why people jump to comparisons with the Nazis, because people aren’t aware of just how bloody repulsive we ourselves were.

Westminster Cathedral is my favourite space in London. It is where I go when I need to deal with unbearable emotions, particularly sadness, getting lost in its murky, bejeweled vastness… It is experienced as an incredibly rich and layered series of interconnected spaces which make it feel like an entire interior city in some alternative universe of marble, brick, and mosaic…

THREAD… Hiroyuki Wakabayashi is 1 of Japan’s great, but sadly underappreciated architects, 1 with a razor sharp vision that powerfully straddles the boundaries btwn science fiction, architecture, set design & sculpture. This is his incredible Humax Pavilion in Shibuya, from 1992 Here are some other views of this extra terrestrial colony in the heart of Tokyo

Sir Terry Farrell’s iconic, brilliant, complex, and slightly mad Alban Gate (125 London Wall), one of London’s two most important Postmodern office buildings, "postmodernism at its most exuberant" in Deyan Sudjic’s words… 1 of the world’s most important buildings in the style, its perfectly preserved. There are plans currently being drawn up by @bgyarchitects & owners @blackstone that are putting its artistic integrity in danger… this building’s future must be guaranteed @c20society @owenhopkins

So excited about this glassware… 1.5 years in the making… Includes recycled glass…

What a joy: I overheard an elderly lady in a local grocer, & politely interjected to ask where she was from. Argentina. I say my father too, from Entre Rios. Turns out she was from the same little city as my family, & of course they all knew each other back in the day... number taken down, my father who is in the country atm is overjoyed, and they are all of two or three blocks away from each other...

THREAD. Shin Takamatsu is 1 of Japan’s greatest living architects, with an incredibly unique & beautifully executed body of mysterious & pregnant work that ought 2b far better known, & probably would be if they fit a more stereotypical idea of Japanese design.... This detail & the previous image are of his Kirin Plaza in Osaka from 1987, sadly, like several of his best works, demolished (in 2009)

THREAD: Unbuilt projects proposed for London could make a whole city themselves, and i just love to imagine “what if”... here is “Watkin’s Folly” a tower taller than the Eiffel that was partially built in Wembley, never finished, then torn down bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-en…




The London Millenium Tower proposal was for a gargantuan, but super unusual double-ellipse-plan curving 386 metre superskyscraper by Norman Foster on the site of what later became the Gherkin. English Heritage actually enthusiastically supported the scheme...

THREAD Fantastic Public Art in Britain, my favourite decorative artwork has to be Eduardo Paolozzi’s incredible Tottenham Court Road Station mosaics in London, made in three phases in the 1980s...





Although sadly my favourite elements, the six kaleidoscopic arches that welcomed all arrivals into Soho at the top of the escalators, were demolished to upgrade the station

THREAD: The classical language of architecture has come to be thought of as at best pedantic & at worst reactionary, but both its contemporary detractors & fans often ignore the incredible richness & contradictory complexity of its use to embody all kinds of meanings in the past Creatively reinventing its own language, breaking its own rules and reformulating them for different contexts & circumstances again and again in ways contemporary ‘traditionalist’ practitioners rarely touch upon... from great temples to capitalism, to monuments to fascism, stalin