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Architecture

Altared Visions

Hidden in cities and villages around Slovakia, these unique wedding halls, built during the 1960s–1980s, display an usual post-modern design typology. Adam Stech accompanies Sabina Jankovičová, author of a new book on this creative phenomenon, to these altars of aesthetic intervention

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Miroslav Zikmund’s Villa is a modern antithesis of the Communist aesthetic

In a masterful move by Miroslav Zikmund, the adventurer commissioned a bold new house from a pioneering Czech Modernist

Was Friedensreich Hundertwasser high on extra-thick bleach when he designed these wonderfully wonky public loos?

In Kawakawa, a town on New Zealand’s North Island, artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s public loos – wildly tiled and all askew – turned architecture upside down. For all the wonk, it’s pretty flush, says Bill McKay

Thoroughly Modernist milieu: Otto Saumarez Smith’s meticulous makeover of a 1950s flat

How Otto Saumarez Smith’s home in central London became a faithful homage to Modernist aesthetics, from Festival of Britain flourishes to those early-era Corbusian colours

The humanist architecture that inspired Nova Scotia House

Charlie Porter’s latest novel, Nova Scotia House, takes inspiration from the humanist architecture of Berthold Lubetkin’s modernist estates, Horace Gifford’s queer, carefree homes on Fire Island and the riverside warehouses Derek Jarman occupied in the 1970s
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Hawaiian Modernism: a definitive guide

Modernism found a distinctive expression on the Hawaiian islands, thanks both to their isolation and the arrival of immigrant architects. In Honolulu, one can find extraordinary mid-century houses tailored to the tropical climate

Agustín Hernández’s 1970s home that blends Modernist principles with pre-Hispanic influences

The 1970s Valner house in Mexico City displays architect Agustín Hernández’s love of eye-catching geometry. He made Pythagoras glamorous, as Susana Ordovás discovers

One for the birds: the dovecotes of Tinos have a rich history

Scattered across the island of Tinos in the Cyclades are hundreds of ornately detailed dovecotes dating back centuries or, in more Modernist guise, to the 1970s. Coo-ee, exclaims Tom Morris

Hallfield monitor: a radical 1950s primary school designed by Denys Lasdun

In the 1950s, architects Denys Lasdun and Lindsey Drake designed everything at Hallfield primary school in Paddington – down to the trapezoidal tables – with young people’s welfare in mind. One-time supply teacher Ella Blackburn returns to where she was ‘a visitor in the children’s world’

Not any old iron: the everyday charm of ornate metal grills on Greek doors

Christopher Stocks has developed quite an infatuation with the infinite variety of Greek entryways, with their ornate ironwork and fascinating hidden histories

From the archive: architect Terry Dwan’s heavenly hillside home

When she discovered a plot high above Portofino the architect Terry Dwan was truly smitten. No matter that it was full of old washing-machines, subject to byzantine building restrictions and accessible only by buggy. After an epic uphill battle, that fly-tip now feels like heaven

Problem Solvay: this Art Nouveau hôtel complicates our picture of Victor Horta’s idiom

When one of Art Nouveau’s most illustrious architects, Victor Horta, was given free rein on a four-storey house in the centre of Brussels, his vision was perhaps a touch too ambitious. Nevertheless, Hôtel Solvay remains a feat of finely wrought design

Scarpa, quick! Take a tour of a little-known architectural masterpiece in Italy

Despite the political tensions in postwar Emilia-Romagna, accord of sorts did reign in Parma’s seat of power – thanks to architect Carlo Scarpa, whose modernist-meets-classical council chamber there has just opened to the public for the first time in 70 years

The Full Brazilian: Casa Cavanelas is a dramatic piece of Latin Modernism

Just north of Rio, two greats of their field – architect Oscar Niemeyer and landscape designer Roberto Burle Marx – went all out in a triumph of Latin Modernism

What The Brutalist can teach us about good design

The much-celebrated film has also faced criticism from professionals for its departures from industry truths. Kristofer Thomas has concrete proof that its deeper design lesson is based on strong foundations