Buildings acquire personality not only through their architecture, but through the events that they witness. In the case of Eero Saarinen's American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, the two are inextricably intertwined. From the anti-Vietnam-War protests of the 1960s, through the anti-nuclear-missile campaign of the 1980s, to the recent fortifications against terrorist attack, the huge golden eagle atop this curious, slightly overwrought building has seen it all - including 50,000 Londoners quietly coming to offer support and condolence in the aftermath of 9/11. Now there is a move to have the building "listed".... (8 October) full article

It's always dangerous to ask architects to do something other than buildings or urban designs. The danger is that they will start to think that they are installation artists. When they do this, it is time to leave. There are rare exceptions of course - Diller Scofidio and Renfro, for instance, manage to bridge the art/architecture gulch with insouciant ease - but as this biennale shows, the outcome is more usually embarrassing. So - after the endless dry global-city statistics of the last biennale, undoubtedly the dullest ever - this time we find ringmaster Aaron Betsky exhorting his troupe to self-indulgence with his "Out There" theme. Please, we really don't need any.... (23 September) full article

The redesigned extension to the Tate Modern contemporary art museum in London, launched today, shows Jacques Herzog moving from what would effectively have been a built diagram of stacked boxes - his first attempt of two years ago - into something considerably more smoothly sculpted. It's turning into architecture. He has also abandoned the somewhat quixotic glass cladding to his Mark One scheme - this is to be a south-facing building, remember - in favour of a considerably subtler perforated brick skin. Homage is thus duly paid to the brickiness of the existing Tate Modern - originally a post-war oil-fired power station designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott..... (18 June) full article

I'm sitting opposite Frank Gehry over breakfast in an impossibly pretty sunlit town square in Arles, Provence. He's here to launch the plans for his "Parc des Ateliers" project, described as a cultural Utopia. But I'm staring at a set of squiggles he's just drawn in my notebook, and wondering if I should ask him to sign them. He'd reached for a pen, as architects in conversation do, and started sketching away. "I'm doing these pop-up stores for Bono," he explains. "They're for his Product Red company. I'm really excited by them. They're like pieces of jigsaw." So he draws a piece of jigsaw, slowly and carefully. Simple enough. (15 July) full article

Nobody ever says - hey, let's go to the Hayward Gallery, the way they do of the Tate or the National Gallery or any museum. Apart from having no permanent display, the Hayward is strangely invisible, considering how powerful its Brutalist 1960s South Bank architecture is. It is not a marketable brand. So is it an insanely rash move for director/curator Ralph Rugoff to ask artists to respond to this gritty building in celebration of the Hayward Gallery's 40th birthday? No, it is not. Artists being alchemists, they have turned the weird concrete monolith into a palace of intriguing follies. "Psycho Buildings" is a brilliant title for a show that deserves to be one.... (11 June) full article