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Oliver Wainwright
Oliver Wainwright is the Guardian's architecture and design critic. Trained as an architect, he has worked for a number of practices, both in the UK and overseas, and written extensively on architecture and design for many international publications. He is also a visiting critic at several architecture schools
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Uruguay opens a swap shop, Australia makes a splash with its pool while Germany and Austria’s pavilions tackle the refugee crisis with varying success – the architectural equivalent of a UN summit is as kooky and curious as ever
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The Chilean architect pitches activism against starchitecture in his central pavilion and uncovers the architect’s role in drone warefare – leaving Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano distinctly out of place
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With its chainmail brickwork, vast spaces and panoramic views, the Tate’s £260m ziggurat is a mesmerising twist on the existing art gallery
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Facebook has wifi-enabled wildflower meadows, LinkedIn an inhouse pastry chef, and Samsung tai chi in the cactus garden. But they’ll all be left behind by Amazon’s jungle biospheres. Take our tour of the tech campuses of Silicon Valley
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Thanks to a new building designed by Snøhetta, the San Francisco gallery has more floorspace than MoMA – but the marriage of old and new is not a happy one
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No visit should be complete without tripping over a skinny-jeaned student clutching a sketchbook. This draconian diktat denies visitors their art education
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From a zigzag extension in Zurich to Basel’s new Kunstmuseum, Christ & Gantenbein’s projects mix the ancient and modern in beguiling ways
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We live in an age of undies innovation: from self-medicating bras to briefs that smell of breakfast or hide a weapon (and that’s not even a euphemism)
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In her best buildings the laws of physics appear suspended, while other designs struggle when forced to meet reality
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The seemingly incoherent sprawl of modern Beijing is based on meticulous plans to bind citizens together under imperial rule. Conceived as a means of enforcing social order, the impact of planning remains strong in the city today
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In one part of London, residents are being bulldozed out of council-built homes to make way for a privately led development most cannot afford. But elsewhere in the capital, a radical scheme is putting residents in control
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The 1975 novel High-Rise depicted an apocalyptic tower that drove its inhabitants insane. As a new film adaptation hits cinemas, we wonder what the author would have made of today’s rash of skyscrapers for the megarich
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In the 1950s, Hollywood decamped to the desert – bankrolling the world’s most daring modernist architects to create ever more experimental boltholes. Welcome to a world of Martian landing pads, clifftop Bond lairs and Flintstones sofas
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Tate Modern architects Herzog & de Meuron have designed a stately new faculty that holds its own against the Radcliffe Camera. But can a hermetically sealed building bankrolled by an oligarch be truly democratic?
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The Danish architect offers a sculptural space ‘like a mountain of ice cubes’ stretching across the London gallery’s lawn, to be complemented by four radical summer houses
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Julia Peyton-Jones’s swansong as gallery director includes four more summer houses in Kensington Gardens, designed by architects aged between 36 and 93
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An ambitious snapshot of three centuries of floods, fires, earthquakes and tsunamis – and how architects have helped (or cashed in) after calamities
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Grand Designs it isn’t, but the singular vision of architect Walter Segal lives on in Lewisham – and the families who built their own homes are inspiring a future generation in search of affordable housing in Britain
Museum of London design shortlist: from luxury boutique to history chic