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

Napoleon III’s remodelling of Paris in the last decades of the nineteenth century – managed by career civil servant Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Prefect of the Seine département – changed the face of the City of Light. The most wide-ranging programme of urban renewal ever carried out in a modern city is best known for its broad, straight boulevards driven through tightly-packed mediaeval neighbourhoods. Easing the connections between districts but also creating dramatic views an