Discover the most read stories on the AR’s website from the past 12 months
In the past year, the AR has published thematic issues on Repair, the Mediterranean, Democracy, Sports, the Ground and Concrete, as well as editions highlighting the exemplary work of shortlisted architects and projects in the AR Public, Emerging, House, and W Awards. With an emphatically international scope, each issue contains multitudes – but some pieces stand out for how widely they were read online. Below is a list of the AR’s most read pieces of 2024, free for all registered users until 6 January 2025. Happy reading!
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1. Revisit: Meskel Square in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, AR July/August 2024, Rahel Shawl
‘Access to the square is now subject to payment – this simple act rejects the notion of free and equal access for all the city’s residents’
2. Rebuilding Gaza, AR February 2024, Nadi Abusaada
‘When the bombardment ceases – and it will cease – who will rebuild it? And on whose terms?’
3. Alberto Ponis (1933–2024), AR April 2024, Sebastiano Brandolini
‘The subtle and articulate conversations and love affairs Ponis had with local Sardinian culture and nature are today not only discouraged, but inconceivable’
Ponis took interest in the local vernacular architecture, in particular the stazzo, which heavily influenced his houses, such as Casa di Pepita, completed in 1969
Credit: Alberto Ponis / Archivio Ponis
4. Revisit: High Line by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and James Corner Field Operations, AR July/August 2024, Peter Lucas
‘It has been argued that neoliberalism is dying. Perhaps, then, we can move beyond neoliberal approaches to urban design that foreground the interests of massive developers’
5. Architects’ games: what do you want, a medal?, AR June 2024, Kristina Rapacki
‘It is a fact, unlikely though it sounds, that Walter Gropius competed in the Olympic Games’
The High Line culminates to the north at Hudson Yards, which includes The Shed, also by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The site was previously an industrial backwater
Credit: Dean Kaufman / The Architectural Review
6. Portfolio: Nguyễn Hà, ARB Architects, AR March 2024, Hiếu Y
‘The architect cleverly combines the poetic materiality of used tiles with her own interpretation of place’
7. Depth unknown: the archaeology of resistance, AR September 2024, Dima Srouji
‘The ground serves as a witness to the cycles of destruction and rebuilding that have characterised Gaza for millennia’
8. Abdel Moneim Mustafa (1930–), AR May 2024, Esra Akcan
‘Moneim Mustafa was well versed in the techniques and ideologies underpinning “tropical architecture” – a term used during both colonial and independence eras’
Moneim Mustafa’s most striking exterior is undoubtedly El Ikhwa Building, which combines retail and apartments
Credit: Ahmed Abushakeema
9. Geology of the anthropocene: Château de Beaucastel winery in Châteauneuf‑du‑Pape, France, by Studio Mumbai and Studio Méditerranée, AR October 2024, Eleanor Beaumont
‘Jain prefers to consider the contemporary notion of sustainability in more primordial terms: “Output must far exceed input. It is simple maths”’
10. Revisit: Meisterhaus Kandinsky/Klee in Dessau, Germany by Walter Gropius, AR December 2023/January 2024, Florian Heilmeyer
‘Since both artists had their own theories on colour and space, their interiors clearly differ from each other. Kandinsky preferred cool, clear colours, while Klee chose a palette of warm and earthy tones’
In comparison to Klee’s staircase, Kandinsky’s is slightly more subdued
Credit: Thomas Wolf © Wüstenrot Stiftung / DACS
11. Capital gains: ZIN by 51N4E, Jaspers-Eyers Architects and l’AUC, AR May 2024, Christophe van Gerrewey
‘It is questionable whether the process justified publishing a book entitled How To Not Demolish A Building’
12. Lin Huiyin (1904–1955) and Liang Sicheng (1901–1972), AR February 2024, Tao Zhu
‘Between 1932 and 1941, Liang and Lin visited more than 200 counties across 15 provinces and examined more than 2,000 structures’
13. Revisit: James R Thompson Center in Chicago, US by Helmut Jahn, AR May 2024, Zach Mortice
‘This cocaine‑boardroom behemoth bellows “1985!” with the swagger of a Huey Lewis and the News chorus’
The Thompson Center’s kaleidoscopic 17-storey atrium is its centrepiece
Credit: Michael Weber / imageBROKER / Shutterstock
14. A Threshold, India, AR November 2024, Reuben J Brown
‘The first thing Avinash Ankalge and Harshith Nayak designed together as A Threshold was exactly that: a threshold’
15. Rubble with a cause: Warsaw Uprising Mound by Archigrest and Toposcape in Warsaw, Poland, AR September 2024, Adam Przywara
‘Situated in the south‑east of the city, the Czerniaków mound remained a landfill of demolition waste and domestic rubbish until the 1970s. Once it was abandoned, the mix of soil and rubble that made the mound started to nurture life’
16. Breaking convention: Chapex in Charleroi, Belgium, by AgwA and Architecten Jan de Vylder Inge Vinck, AR February 2024, Eleanor Beaumont
‘The palatial car park serves as a reminder of western capitalism’s inability to respond quickly to the demands of decarbonisation’
The city of Charleroi is encircled by the disused infrastructure of coal‑powered industry. Its convention centre, Chapex, is pictured in the middle distance
Credit: Filip Dujardin
17. Surveillance space: urban infrastructures of control, AR July/August 2024, Shannon Mattern
‘Spaces where gathering and governance happen – the park, agora, town hall, parliament, college green – can be orchestrated to facilitate surveillance’
18. Salt of the earth: the past and future of building with brine, AR April 2024, Daniel Bell and Henna Burney
‘In the southern Mediterranean, the Shali Fortress and its surrounding buildings, near the Siwa Oasis in the Egyptian desert, were constructed in the 12th century out of karshif blocks – a material consisting of salt crystals, clay and sand’
19. Outrage: paralympic obstacle course, AR June 2024, Natalie Kane
‘The courtyard that leads from the athletes’ accommodation to the centre of the Village looks more like an obstacle course than a place of respite’
20. Pier Luigi Nervi (1891–1979), AR June 2024, Catharine Rossi
‘What Nervi argued was an architectural expression driven by structural logic’
Nervi’s big international moment came at the 1960 Rome Olympic and Paralympic Games, for which he designed several buildings, including the Palazzetto dello Sport
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