Articles by Phineas Harper

Architects need to rethink their part in Britain’s dysfunctional relationship with laundry, writes Phineas Harper. A tangle of tubes, ducts, and electrical appliances hanging in moist air around a sodden cotton T-shirt is the undisputed highlight of Island, a new exhibition at the Design Museum. Created by design researcher-in-residence Mariana Janowicz and feminist architecture collective Edit,

The post “Britain’s architects should refuse to let moralising snobbery define their approach to laundry” appeared first on Dezeen.

In the face of climate change, Britain’s lawned parks should be replaced with urban forests to help control city temperatures and keep green spaces green during hot summers, writes Phineas Harper. Successive heatwaves have turned England’s formerly green and pleasant land into an arid patchwork of yellow and brown. As the UK government declares droughts

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Rather than spending £20 million to refurbish its headquarters, RIBA should make its spaces freely available for others to host engaging architectural programmes, says Phineas Harper. Barely a week goes by without hearing an architect complaining about the RIBA. Griping over the 184-year-old Royal Institute of British Architects has become the background noise of life in

The post “RIBA upgrading Portland Place is an expensive solution to the wrong problem” appeared first on Dezeen.

Extinction Rebellion’s bamboo protest towers that blocked national newspaper printing presses recall the sustainable motives of high-tech architecture and should win the Stirling Prize, argues Phineas Harper. Last week, under the cover of darkness, a construction team, dressed all in black, set to work in Hertfordshire near London. Within minutes they had erected two bamboo and

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A draft order by Donald Trump to make all new federal buildings classical is the latest example of how traditional architecture is used to disguise racist agendas, says Phineas Harper. Who could have predicted that a president famed for his eponymous sub-Miesian skyscrapers would come out as a classicist? Yet this week, news broke of

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The leading parties manifestos contain bold pledges that will change Britain’s cities for generations, says Phineas Harper. He takes a look at the architecture and housing policies ahead of the UK’s general election. Not for generations have the British faced such a profound political crossroads as the choice they must make on 12 December. Of the

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High-tech architecture has strayed far from its environmentally conscientious beginnings, but could rise again if it returns to them, writes Phineas Harper. The Sainsbury Centre in Norwich weighs 5,618.6 tons. We know this because, when its architect, Norman Foster, took his former mentor Richard Buckminster Fuller to visit the project, the internationally-celebrated inventor and godfather

The post “High-tech is ever edging away from its ecological and humanistic roots” appeared first on Dezeen.

The pursuit of infinite economic growth is driving climate breakdown and producing ecologically toxic architecture, argues Phineas Harper, one of the chief curators of the Oslo Architecture Triennale. Shipwrecked in a storm, you might avoid a watery grave if by chance the top of a mahogany grand piano came floating past. Clambering aboard this improvised

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