“A Word …” is my quarterly column for Landscape: The Journal of the Landscape Institute. Here in the Autumn 2014 issue I demolish a couple of Norman Foster buildings and “…that awful loopy red thing”.  Our cities are places defined by what the architectural historian Spiro Kostof called ‘a certain energised crowding’. This is an […]

This is an article that appeared in last month’s Garden Design Journal in their ‘Talking Point’ opinion section.  I love to travel by train, because of certain negatives – because I hate car traffic and airports and because I’m too tall to fit into the aeroplane seats that I can afford. There are also distinct […]

The superlatives of contemporary expression reach as far as possible to the extremes of human experience. The sheer awesomeness (or awfulness) of everyday life leads us to select descriptors such as ‘epic’ or ‘iconic’ for every object or environment or atmosphere we encounter. An offhand internet search for ‘iconic pencil sharpener’ and ‘iconic toilet’ yields […]