Martin Filler

Build, Britannia!

As one of England’s foremost authorities on architecture, Gavin Stamp distinguished himself by focusing on how buildings are lived in, rather than how they look.

Eden on Fire

The terrible fires in January were another reminder that urban planning in Los Angeles has long failed to protect the city from the natural disasters that repeatedly threaten the region.

‘Life, Work, and Architecture’

Elizabeth Mock, whose exhibitions on domestic architecture thrilled midcentury museumgoers, believed that contemporary design should be for everyone.

A Cowboy in Winter

The artist Bruce Nauman’s latest exhibition reconfirms that he doesn’t believe in letting his viewers off easy.

The Architect Who Unified America

H. H. Richardson invented a practical, adaptable style for American civic architecture that was used for decades after his death.

A Long Exposure

The pioneering French photographer Hippolyte Bayard has lived in the shadows of his more famous peers. A new exhibition brings him into the light.

Up on the Roof

Carlos de Beistegui’s Parisian penthouse apartment, designed by Le Corbusier, was the product of two supreme egotists squaring off against each other.

Supersize That?

New supertall skyscrapers planned for Manhattan will reduce the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building to the scale of souvenir tchotchkes. With the current glut of unoccupied office space, they may be the last of their kind.

Sublime Detritus

In her witty, poignant assemblages, the late artist Alexis Smith studied the atavistic comforts and persistent myths of home.

Before the Wrecking Ball Swung

A new volume of photographs taken for the Historic American Buildings Survey captures the program’s wide influence on architectural culture. 

The Neotraditionalist

The architect Robert A. M. Stern is America’s most vociferous and successful exponent of a Classicism that would be considered anachronistic in much of the rest of the world.

Oppie’s Problem

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer captures the drama of the physicist’s life to thrilling effect but glosses over an essential part of his conundrum.

Poet of Shubert Alley

The late Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick, in Fiddler on the Roof and above all She Loves Me, gave the musical comedy a rare insight, poetic delicacy, and emotional intimacy. 

Too Good for Hollywood

Despite her long career on stage and screen—from an Oscar nomination to the blacklist—Aline MacMahon never became a household name.

The Gilder Age

The architecture of the American Museum of Natural History’s new addition is as oppressively weighty as its exhibitions are spellbinding. 

The Architect and the Rock Star

Two new books of personal photographs, one by Phyllis Lambert, the other by Patti Smith, have thematic congruities but markedly different tones.  

The Architect of Subtraction

Adolf Loos’s radical designs pared down architecture to its most basic elements.

Beauty and Utility

“A well-executed building or inviting public space can bring people together in ways that strengthen our communal values and at the same time make us more aware of our individuality.”

Whips and Vines

Recent books and exhibitions reveal that behind its undulating lines and swirling excesses, Art Nouveau was far more complex and nuanced than we once believed.

Xanadu’s Architect

Despite designing over seven hundred buildings, the pioneering female architect Julia Morgan is now best known for a single, extremely eccentric commission: San Simeon, the estate of the legendary newspaper proprietor William Randolph Hearst.