As a child you know that opening your own present is better than buying someone else theirs; as an adult you know that the opposite is true. This life lesson came to mind on Tuesday when exploring (at last) the V&A East Storehouse, since it gives us a dizzying array of cultural treasures – many of which have been hidden for decades – whilst revealing the effort and thought that makes that possible. Both wrapping paper and contents I found fascinating. The forced sale of Bly

The summer is finally over, and not just because of the autumnal fog outside early this morning; I have just found out that a glorious, tropical rain forest hidden within a City of London office block for the last 30 years is no more. This secret garden – occupying every level of an atrium rising from ground floor to glazed roof – included stepped terracing, a waterfall and dozens of mature plants including bamboo, ficus and palm trees. But now all that has gone, as part of

The last time you saw a rainbow – which might have been some time ago given this dry, hot summer – you might not have realised how much technology it represents. I don’t mean the natural phenomenon itself, of course, but the ways in which man has exploited the seven colours that comprise the visible light band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Graphic design, engineering, chemistry and optics have all contributed to the pot of gold. Red… has dominated the history of lasers,

Planning permission for Norman Foster’s crass, sprawling and arbitrary scheme for the Queen Elizabeth Memorial was quietly granted last month, a fortnight before major changes to the published designs were revealed. As a result, even more objects with varying degrees of relevance but a shared level of kitsch will be strewn across a gratuitously large swathe of St James’s Park, turning it into a commemorative theme park. What did it – and we – do to deserve this? The Foster fa

It’s an island country that has a royal family, drives on the left, drinks lots of tea and doesn’t always say what it means. And yet no architect from Japan has ever received a major commission for the capital of the other country my sentence describes – Britain. The recent choice of Kengo Kuma and Associates of Tokyo to design (with British firms BDP and MICA) the new wing of the National Gallery in London is therefore notable even before examination of its proposal. Pleasin

In New York, architecture critics have mauled a new office development in Midtown. In London, residents are opposing a new office development in the Barbican. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is the owner of the former and was client for an abortive scheme near the latter; it also continues to quietly occupy a striking building elsewhere that few seem to notice. So if Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language, is that also true of buildings in both territories co