8 July 2010 | Yes, we can see it's red. Anything else? Jean Nouvel's 2010 Serpentine Pavilion.

When did I first meet Jean Nouvel? Must have been around 1980. He hadn't built much then, though I have a memory of vaguely postmodern bits and bobs in the Parisian suburbs and satellite new towns, which don't seem to appear in his published oeuvre. Certainly some of what he showed me was the work of his friends. He was a bit surly back then, as befitted a rebel (he'd started a protest organisation, the Syndicat d'Architecture, as a leftist riposte to the moribund official French architecture institute). He was certainly a lot thinner than now, though oddly (given his bullet-headed look today) I can't remember what his hair was like: the arched eyebrows were always the thing. He drove me round outer Paris very fast in a black Renault 5 Alpine, first of the 'hot hatches'. We struggled with my A-level French: he was not comfortable with English until quite recently. Taciturnity was his default mode even in his mother tongue. full article

30 June 2010 | Shakespeare Central: the new RSC theatre at Stratford on Avon

There are two sides to Stratford on Avon. Both concern Shakespeare. They haven't had too much to do with each other over the years, despite being cheek by jowl in a small, pretty Warwickshire town. Tourists are one thing, theatre-goers are another and there's not as much overlap as you might imagine. This, however, is about to change. The Royal Shakespeare Company is opening up its previously hermetic main theatre to embrace the tourist hordes. full article

31 May 2010 | The Norman Foster biography that isn't.

Being the most successful architect Britain has known since the imperial heyday of Lutyens - and arguably since the Baroque brilliance of Wren - ought to make you a very interesting person, but that's no use unless you're prepared to open up your private life a little to reveal it. The trouble with Norman Foster - Lord Foster, OM, in fact, winner of every honour going in his profession and a great many outside it, a man who reinvented modern architecture and sold it to the world, Mr. Gherkin to Londoners - is that he is both very private and a total control freak. He is a biographer's nightmare full article

31 March 2010 | London's Olympic "Orbit" Monument by Anish Kapoor : exactly why is it so bad?

Seconds out, round two. There was It's fair to say that it has not gone down well. The observation tower/giant public sculpture proposed for the 2012 Olympics site by the Mayor of London, designed by sculptor Anish Kapoor with engineer Cecil Balmond of Arup, and largely funded by a steel magnate who happens to be Britain's richest man, Lakshmi Mittal, is widely derided, not least by me. full article