Visiting Chichester for the first time in my life recently, I was much struck by the modern building at Chichester Cross, admittedly not nearly as bad as the unbelievably terrible Festival Theatre but nevertheless more than sufficient to spoil the townscape. Any jobbing builder of the 18th century would have done a much better job than any British architect of […]

Bristol University is building a new library. The very idea is enough to send shivers down the spine: any British institution that decides to build something new is almost certain to add to the accumulated ugliness of the world. And so it is in this case. The design that the University has accepted combines banality with monstrosity: a combination that, […]

Anthony Daniels Some years ago, I published an article in which I alleged that one of the most beautiful old towns in England had been devastated aesthetically by corrupt decisions of the council to permit modernist redevelopment. This created a certain stir in the town, and I was asked to appear on the local radio station with a town councillor.  […]

Anthony Daniels One should not speak ill of the dead, of course, but the length of the interval before one may decently do so depends on the public prominence of the deceased. He or she who lives by notoriety asks to be reprehended by notoriety, and alas it is the aim of many artists (I use the term without entering […]

Anthony Daniels I see that the architect, Richard Rogers, is to retire at the age of 87. This is an excellent thing, of course, but unfortunately it comes seventy years too late. Rogers has done as much as anyone to make the world a little uglier (and locally, much uglier); in that sense he has been very successful. He has […]