1950s

Since 1896, The Architectural Review has scoured the globe for architecture that challenges and inspires. Buildings old and new are chosen as prisms through which arguments and broader narratives are constructed. In their fearless storytelling, independent critical voices explore the forces that shape the homes, cities and places we inhabit.

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Green mantle: Hampshire's green belt

Brasilia: The President's Palace

Building Brasilia

Flats at Ham Common by Stirling and Gowan

House at Watford

Paul Klee’s architectural mirages

‘The rock-cut temples in India preceded stone building’

Ronchamp chapel in France by Le Corbusier

‘Motels can develop as a phenomenon as encouraging as our recent schools - or they can tell the sorry story of the filling station over again’

The New Brutalism by Reyner Banham

Outrage: The birth of Subtopia will be the death of us

Ian Nairn’s Subtopia, from June 1955

School at Hunstanton, Norfolk, by Alison and Peter Smithson

Nikolaus Pevsner: In defence of the Picturesque

Grass roots: huts, igloos, wigwams and other sources of the functional tradition

Cast in Iron: New York's structural heritage

Johannesburg: the development of a contemporary vernacular in the Transvaal

Townscape: cross as focal point

Forward to Festival of Britain

The Exhibition as Landscape

Townscape: South Bank translated

Views on Le Corbusier's Unite d’Habitation

Building with wit: Nikolaus Pevsner on Sir Edwin Lutyens

Trees incorporated

Parque Eduardo Guinle housing in Rio de Janeiro by Lucio Costa

Mannerism and Modern architecture

Skyscrapers: the return to earth