The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
Sketchbook: Robert Cox
The AJ’s Sketchbook series is a showcase of sketches and concept drawings by architects and designers. Today’s sketches are by Robert Cox, a director at ADAM Architecture
Culture
Exhibitions, events and books investigating architecture and culture, including the Venice Biennale and the London Festival of Architecture
Review: Tai Shani’s surreal takeover of The Cosmic House
Teshome Douglas-Campbell explores how a new show, ‘The World to Me Was Secret’, from Turner-Prize-winning artist Shani draws on influences ranging from the myth of Frankenstein to Charles Jencks’ own work
Ad Hoc Baroque: The rediscovery of Marcel Raymaekers, pioneer of Belgian recycling
Looking around Belgium to see who was doing what with salvaged architectural materials, reuse activists Rotor came across something quite unexpected: the prolific, jaw-dropping work of artist-turned-builder Marcel Raymaekers
RIBA exhibition reckons with institute’s imperial past
Raise the Roof: Building for Change, which questions the institute’s own attitudes on gender, ethnicity and race, comes at a time when the RIBA is examining its legacy and its future, writes Derin Fadina
Book review: Atlas of Never Built Architecture packs a satisfying punch
Adding to its series of world architecture atlases, Phaidon’s new volume is dedicated to schemes that never made it to site. Rob Wilson previews it
Enzo Mari: Design for the people
Rakesh Ramchurn visits the Design Museum to see the first UK show dedicated to pioneering Italian designer Enzo Mari
Exhibition review: Studio Mumbai’s Breath of an Architect
The Mumbai practice’s takeover of Paris’s Fondation Cartier galleries and gardens presents objects and installations in a way that makes visitors find their own way through the spaces
The Swiss architect who brought Modernism to the New World
Having worked with Le Corbusier, Swiss architect Albert Frey moved to the US at a time when it was lacking in Modernist architecture and went on to design much of the desert city of Palm Springs, where a new exhibition celebrates his work, writes David Brady
Manplan lost issue resurrected through generative AI
Newcastle University architectural historian Stephen Parnell asked his students to create one of the AR’s unpublished Manplan issues using ChatGPT and Midjourney. Images by Vincent Woehlbier and Arthur Belime
Review: Tropical Modernism at the V&A
Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence has expressive sculpture, carefully curated archival imagery and a particular knack for narration, leaving you wanting to discover more, says Nile Bridgeman