News Feed

Opinion: the fight for London's Aylesbury estate – a negative symbol of the Modernist-inspired drive to standardise housing design – is about saving the ideas not the architecture, explains Owen Hatherley. (more…) View the full article

Opinion: the Brutalist architecture of 1960s British university campuses may not have been popular among students at the time, but it gave them space to protest. The trespa-clad towers of student housing that have sprung up since suggest a far more cynical approach, says Owen Hatherley. (more…) View the full article

Architects must act quickly and cooperatively to change cities and make their environmental good intentions reality, says Doug Voigt, urban design and planning partner at SOM. Read more

People have become more sensitive to noise during the coronavirus pandemic, highlighting the importance of good sound design, according to sound artist and designer Yuri Suzuki. Read more View the full article

Opinion: the limitless prosperity once promised by urbanisation has failed to materialise, leaving rapidly growing inequality in its wake. It will take more than some clever technology to solve the problems with the world's biggest cities, says Reinier de Graaf. (more…) [url={url}]View the full article[/url]

Opinion: the photo-sharing site set the agenda at this year's Milan design week and hints at how technology will transform the way we experience the world, says Marcus Fairs, who also shares a selection of his own Instagram images from the week (+ slideshow). (more...) View the full article

Architect Alison Brooks talks about how residents come together in the streets of her firm's Be housing project in Essex, UK, in this movie produced by Living Projects. (more...) View the full article

In the wake of recent controversies surrounding the funding of major institutions – dubbed "toxic philanthropy – we must rethink the system for supporting culture, says Forensic Architecture researcher Robert Trafford. Read more View the full article

Is the nuclear family home an architectural tool of repression and social control? asks Phineas Harper. Read more

London Design Festival 2013: Lebanese designer Najla El Zein has sent us this movie showing her 5000 spinning paper windmills being installed in a doorway at the V&A museum in London (+ movie). (more...) View the full article

News: rapper Kanye West has continued his architectural manifesto by telling students at Harvard University that "everything needs to actually be architected". (more...) View the full article

Interview: we caught up with Miguel Fluxá, head of shoe brand Camper, at the opening of the brand's Nendo-designed boutique on Fifth Avenue in New York last month (below). In this short interview, he explains why the company uses different designers for each of its global stores for cultural, rather than business, reasons (+ slideshow). (more...) View the full article

Awarding the Stirling Prize to Foster + Partners for its Bloomberg building sends the wrong message and risks runaway global warming. We need a new approach to sustainability says Phineas Harper. Read more View the full article

As part of Virtual Design Festival's collaboration with Stockholm Design Week, the founder of the Material Library in Stockholm reveals what Scandinavian designers look for when they visit, and discusses environmentally friendly materials. Read more View the full article

In the final instalment of our exclusive Archigram video series for VDF, architect Dennis Crompton explains that the avant-garde architecture group didn't just want to create conceptual projects and almost realised a building in Monte Carlo. Read more View the full article

Royal College of Art fashion student Laura Kraup Frandsen has refused to present a physical collection at her graduate show as a protest against overconsumption in the climate crisis. Read more

In this week's comments update, readers are debating CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Andrew Morlet's statement that plastic can be used sustainably. Read more View the full article

Nike is putting new focus into sustainability, says chief operating officer Eric Sprunk, and has just created a new super material from recyclable natural leather fibre. Read more View the full article

Seed-dispersing robots and file-sharing drones are among proposals to fuse technology and the natural world by Liam Young of Tomorrow's Thoughts Today, presented at our Designed in Hackney Day last summer (+ movie). (more...) View the full article

The Obama Presidential Center will be presented to the Chicago City Council today. But its proposed siting in the city's Jackson Park will both remove acres of public land and blight Fredrick Law Olmsted's historic landscape design, argues The Cultural Landscape Foundation president Charles A Birnbaum. Read more View the full article

Nike's decision to unveil its new Pro Hijab for female Muslim athletes on International Women's Day provoked a mixed response from readers in this week's comments update. Read more View the full article

What could possibly be bad about recreating an example of great design, asks Michael Miner, who was criticised by Aaron Betsky for wanting to resurrect a Frank Lloyd Wright building. Read more

In the first of three exclusive video interviews with Dezeen for Virtual Design Festival, fashion designer Iris van Herpen explains how her training as a ballet dancer led her to pioneer the use of new technologies and materials in haute couture. Read more View the full article

Pomo summer: in this exclusive interview, architect and planner Denise Scott Brown distinguishes the research-led brand of Postmodernism championed by herself and husband Robert Venturi, from the style employed by Philip Johnson, which she calls "limp" (+ transcript). (more…) View the full article

Opinion: there's no excuse for excluding women from the design conversation in Milan, says Kieran Long who offers a ready-made Rolodex for a fairer male/female split. (more...) View the full article