Architecture

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

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

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

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

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

An exhibition of drawings acquired by the V&A shows Augustus Pugin to be a man happy to embrace technological advances as well as devout faith

Designed in 1928, Chochikukyo House synthesises vernacular architecture and innovation – and might just be the perfect example of Japanese Modernism

Following a catastrophic fire that devastated Leuven’s university library in World War II, its reading room, designed by the maverick Belgian architect Henry Lacoste, rose from the ashes in spectacular carved and panelled form

Not for nothing was this Spanish sanatorium nicknamed the Pavilion of the Distinguished. Designed by the great Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner in ravishing Art Nouveau style, it showcased the skills of eminent artisans – and treated the rich. Were the bothered and bewildered ever so bewitched?

Three’s a crowd pleaser in east London, where an architect, a designer and a music producer have turned a grim ‘plasterboard palace’ into something else entirely