Opinion

Quality is key to unlock the housing crisis

What lies behind Michael Gove’s U-turn on housing targets?

How the Gothic style bound ghosts to buildings

Will Wiles approaches the haunted house from the other direction

Learning from our heroes: in search of inspiration

Eleanor Young tries to put her finger on that special something

How to create local spaces that are there to be shared

Questions that help turn public spaces into cohesive communities

Other-worldly ideas help point a route to effective climate action

Eleanor Young gets sustainability inspiration from Bristol's Martian house

Sinister views lurk in back-to-the-old-ways architectural posturing

Dangerously right-wing polemics have infiltrated some seemingly harmless criticisms

Labour of love: battling for your design is essential

The best building doesn’t come every day, but it’s worth the effort

Adapt to thrive: ways to evolve in a changing world

What we can learn about survival from an old fungi

Balkrishna Doshi’s story has meaning for us all

Balkrishna Doshi’s story has meaning for us all

Regional awards gain an added sense of purpose

Eleanor Young relishes the extra dimension that a year of living has given the RIBA Awards

Why rebellion chooses to act out its protest on the streets

Highways are the arena for protesters from left and right

The importance of maintaining standards

Standard formats don’t have to be obeyed but knowing those rules makes it a whole lot easier to design

Maintaining perspective

The world has changed dramatically. What does this mean for architecture?

Hooray for despotism? A stereotype points to architects’ real value

The myth of the architect-dictator reflects the importance of the job

Colour, pattern and texture from nimtim.

In praise of colour, texture and pattern

Today's young practices cheer us with real brio

The 16 prints of Piranesi’s Carceri d’invenzione – imaginary prisons – depict labyrinthine subterranean structures, whose claustrophobic intensity is not allayed by their seemingly endless extent

Irritating bowel disorder

The bowels of the building are a disorientating, claustrophobic labyrinth, says Will Wiles

Top 5: Culture stories 2021

Getting to know Simon Allford better, who is Manchester developer Tim Heatley, 2021’s Eye Line longlist and more

Owen Luder, painted in 1978 by June Mendoza

Owen Luder, charismatic outsider turned RIBA president

OLP founder, 1928-2021, who produced acclaimed brutalist buildings

Harbison brought new encounters with architecture, including James Wines’s jokey superstores for Best Products in Sacramento, California.

Closing the door: how architecture became that special Something

How Will Wiles arrived at architecture’s world of delight

Protection or subjugation?

Why Charlie Edmonds gave up on architectural qualification

Never stop talking to the community

Ongoing engagement will keep architects connected and relevant

Skaters do a 360 on public space

The Grove is a grassroots challenge to the privatisation of public space

Climate action is an legislative issue

Regulation not conviction is needed for effective climate action

Backward glance into private places

Reasons to sneak around the back

The dome of Oasis Swindon, as designed by Gillinson Barnett & Partners.

Untypically tropical: Swindon’s threatened leisure centre

Demolition of the 1970s pleasuredome would destroy the last of an entire typology, says Will Wiles

Psychogeography allows us to explore the sensory city

The radical practice of psychogeography could bring a renewed energy to urban planning, says Tszwai So

Batteries recharge the green transport debate

And after transport… buildings?

Pandemic has forced us to reinvent the outdoors

Restrictions on indoor hospitality have raised questions over what constitutes an outdoor structure

Don’t let consumption be all-consuming

Keep the climate in mind when you're specifying

What does a comfortable space sound like?

From courtrooms to restaurants, Eleanor Young can’t help hearing the echoes of spaces in sound

Hand drawing makes you look, learn and immerse yourself

Tszwai So on what he discovered learning to draw by hand

Palaces, plots and the power of architecture to intrigue

Grand intrigues need grand designs

Ready to load.

Let’s beef up the supply chain

Could architects deliver warehouses we can be proud of?

How the AA is well placed to bring disability into design

AA’s progressive teaching conflicts with its inaccessible premises

'I can’t breathe' – how Grenfell highlights racial inequalities in housing provision

Is there a racially-charged explanation for the Grenfell tragedy, asks Eilidh Allan

Preparing for re-entry

Shemol Rahman offers ways to end the ‘equal opportunities’ cop-out