The Easel

2nd September 2025

Why museum expansion is the drug architects just can’t quit

Christopher Hawthorne | Punch List | 15th August 2025

What comprises “good” museum design? For some decades, the answer seems to have been ‘bigger is better’. Blame for that can be shared–museum directors wanting a bigger brand, ambitious donors, governments seeking tourists. All that ignores the long-standing criticism that museums are places “artworks go not to live but to die”. They should aspire to be “cultural incubators [offering] encounters with authenticity“. Sadly, there is no spreadsheet function to optimise for that.

26th August 2025

Toward Vertigo

Oliver Renaud-Clement | Ursula | 22nd August 2025

Tōgo Murano is hardly known outside Japan. At home though he is revered. He borrowed freely from brutalist, modernist and symbolist styles without becoming a devotee of any. His true allegiance was to sukiya, a refined style originating from tea house designs that has been “loosened up” to accommodate variation. So, what was the power of his designs? “He harnessed irrationality to form a consistent, highly poetic language, a language that somehow worked”. A backgrounder is here.

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