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Architecture of the Future?

The built legacy of the Soviet Bloc is undergoing a dramatic reappraisal, from crumbling concrete brutalism to Instagrammable socmod chic. Hatherley’s critical survey of a growing body of work in this area—examining modernist constructions from Vilnius to Tashkent—asks the question the new studies largely avoid: what, if anything, makes this architecture socialist?

Labourism: In and Against?

Owen Hatherley on Andy Beckett, The Searchers. Interlinked portraits of the Labour Party’s Bennite bloc, from 1968 to the Corbyn leadership.

The Government of London

The capital of capital, or a melting-pot city of workers, historically governed from the left? Owen Hatherley unearths inspiration for present-day struggles from London’s municipal-socialist past.

A Mud-Brick Utopia

Owen Hatherley on Salma Samar Damluji and Viola Bertini, Hassan Fathy: Earth & Utopia. A full-scale study of the radical mud-brick designs of Egypt’s pre-eminent modernist architect.

Comparing Capitals

In a time of fashionable talk of ‘global cities’, Göran Therborn has produced an antithetical panorama of the capital cities of the world, across all six continents, as centres of political power—combining a sociology and iconography of their lay-outs, buildings, monuments, from DC to Cairo, Brussels to Islamabad. Owen Hatherley reports and assesses his findings.

Post-Postmodernism?

Owen Hatherley on Nicolas Bourriaud, The Radicant. A super-curator wanders in search of art after postmodernism.