The Architecture Foundation has kindly chosen John Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture as one of six books for its Book Week, showing short – well, in my case, not so short – films about what it describes as ‘the best architecture books of the year’.

I hope this will bring the book to the attention to architects as much as architectural historians – and, also, to listeners in the States where it is being published in March, more or less at the same time as the opening of the exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum.

Happy Christmas !

Very sad news that Colin Ford, the former Keeper of Film and Photography at the NPG, has died.

He was an incredibly important pioneer of the study of photography, appointed by Roy Strong who, like Colin, recognised that the NPG should study and collect photography. He was at the NPG from 1972 to 1981 when he left to establish the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford.

Oddly, he came from nearly exactly the same part of north London as Roy, was at school at Enfield Grammar School, and lived there in Gentleman’s Row.

I am posting an unexpected picture of him as a young man in his memory:-

It’s such a beautiful day today (if only it had been yesterday) that I decided to take my still new bicycle out on a spin to Hackney Wick.  I had been tipped off (see Comments) that Simon Goode who runs the London Centre for Book Arts had produced a pamphlet on the industrial history of Hackney Wick or, as he calls it more properly, Old Ford. 

He kindly supplied me with one of the last remaining copies, located in a cupboard.

I half knew, but only half, that Old Ford conceals a rich industrial history, including, from the south, John Kidd and Co., who manufactured printing ink on a site previously occupied by a seventeenth-century dye-works (‘Bow dye’); H.W. Caslon & Co. which inherited the business first established by William Caslon, the great eighteenth-century typographer:-

and the Britannia Folding Box Company, which made cardboard boxes until it went out of business in 1973.  The building then housed Percy Dalton’s Famous Peanut Company until the London Centre for Book Arts took it on in October 2012:-

Back in October, I went on a very enjoyable and interesting trip to Hastings to see the house extension designed by Hugh Strange which had been short-listed for the Stirling Prize. It did not win (nor did it win the RIBA House of the Year), but I still thought it was impressively thoughtful, representing some of the current tendencies in architecture involving small-scale interventions as much as grand statements.

I wrote about it for the December/January issue of The Critic and the piece has just been posted online:-

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-january-2026/recognition-that-small-is-beautiful/

A benefit of going to Cambridge on a cold, wet day in December was that I was able to spend time in Kettle’s Yard when it was nice and empty – so calm, as ever:-

Some time ago, but I have been unable to find it, I was struck by my first sighting of Renzo Piano’s Cube building, glimpsed in the distance beyond the railway tracks from Bishop’s Bridge Road.

Today, I was given a guided tour.

I find it interesting that Piano is perfectly able to design an office block of great elegance and finesse.  What is it about it that gives it a sense of quality ?  Good proportions, of course.  A faint sense of a 1930s liner.  If only there were more like it:-

You get a good view:-

I was asked last week to a party in Camden organised by Vicky Richardson and Tim Abrahams in which Tim did a podcast of what people thought of architecture in 2025.

I had the utmost pleasure looking back on what I have seen during 2025 in order to talk about it with Tim.

Top of what I have seen is the new V&A East Storehouse which was what I talked about on the podcast, now available on Spotify:-

https://open.spotify.com/episode/67pPYHHDqkYWDDX68VMrLx?si=5eb1048058e749ed

I think is a remarkable achievement – a reinvention of the traditional idea of the museum with a strong democratic dimension:-

I was also very admiring of the reinvention of Castle Howard – not just the opening of the Tapestry Drawing Room, which was a mere shell the last time I had seen it, but also the interiors in the west wing refurbished by Remy Renzullo:-

We had a memorable visit to the Cripps Building in St. John’s College, Cambridge:-

And to Walthamstow:-

More recently, I saw the new development by Sergisson Bates in Felsted, new architecture which is thoughtful within the arts-and-crafts tradition:-

But, my time has been devoted as much to Vanbrugh as new architecture:-

Last day tomorrow.

11-4.