>I have squeezed myself into a tiny, abandoned, apartment in the backlands behind South London's Elephant and Castle. Abandoned, but mysteriously colonised. Who knows who once inhabited this 1960s bedsit, but since they left, an alien substance has taken over. The entire flat - walls, ceiling, fixtures and fittings - has sprouted not mould, not fungus, not graffiti, but something far stranger and more beautiful. Hard, glittering, jagged, bright blue crystals. A joint product of the fecund Artangel and Jerwood arts organisations, this place of chilly, sinister beauty is Roger Hiorns' Seizure installation. Despite being well out of the way, in a part-abandoned.... (17 November) full article

It takes a certain level of nerve to announce that you are going to reinvent everyone's received notion of what a theatre is. And when it's your first building in Britain, there's a lot riding on it. But nobody ever accused architect Rafael Viñoly of lacking cojones. Thus we find an audacious new regional theatre in Leicester, The Curve, that is a great big transparent gadget-box. Does it work? Well, yes, if your idea of theatre is spectacle rather than intimacy. Yes, if you're the kind of person who likes to have conjuring tricks explained to you. No, if neither of the above. Because what Viñoly - Uruguayan-born, New York based, and one of the world's big hitters..... (4 November) full article

It has run into plenty of criticism over its buildings and had trouble raising money in the credit crunch. But now the London 2012 Olympic authority hopes it can win round the public by creating a new permanent park for London - complete with a half-mile long, 130 feet wide riverside botanical garden to rival historic Kew. here may be no way the Brits can compete with the Chinese when it comes to spending on icon buildings - our main stadium will be workmanlike at best, not a patch on Herzog de Meuron's "Bird's Nest" in Beijing 2008, and even Zaha Hadid's Aquatics Centre has been much reduced from its original ambition.... (2 November) full article

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