It is very difficult to write about a building that feels like a family friend. I have visited the Commonwealth Institute throughout my life, starting with regular primary school trips. We would traipse up Earl's Court Road in twos, to the inspiring building where our very international mix of pupils felt entirely at home. We even used the theatre for school plays. Later I took my children there, we giggled at the cow milking READ MORE

George Pace (1915-75) was one of the most prolific architects in mid-20th century Britain, specialising in church building, for which he was one of the most radically Modern designers of the day. His approach was less-well appreciated at the time than it has come to be recently, as while his clients, churchgoers, often found his work disconcertingly Modern, architects tended to perceive him as insufficiently so, deeming his Modernism too compromised, above all due to his widespread use of traditional materials – notably stone, timber and wrought iron READ MORE

In September 2015, Docomomo-UK hosted an exploration of early 20th century housing in Basel, Switzerland. Because of the focus and brevity of the trip, there was no time to take in what must be two of the most unusual buildings of the 20th century, both of which are nearby. The two buildings have much in common. Both are built on grassy hilltops with panoramic views, both are religious or quasi-religious (one is a Catholic pilgrimage chapel, the other is a temple to an odd form of German nature-mysticism) READ MORE

Le Corbusier lives! The exhibition of his work at the Pompidou Centre was exceptionally well attended and showed that even fifty years after his death, of which it was a marker, his commitment and the breadth of his vision continue to draw crowds, despite five decades of vilification across the whole READ MORE