I was able to visit Mount Herzl in Jerusalem a couple of days ago. The Mount’s best known feature is the Holocaust History Museum, usually referred to as Yad Vashem, but that is just a part of an extensive complex of museums, memorials and parks.
Impressions of a visit to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth: geometric modernism in the heart of the ancient city.
What might a non-capitalist architecture look like? Owen Hatherley’s Landscapes of Communism surveys the architectural legacy of the old Soviet Bloc for clues.
I’ve taken some time to get round to it, but here, finally, are some photos of a memorable trip to the Kennedy Space Center during my holiday in Florida last month.
A delayed flight home at the end of a holiday can have its benefits if the airport is Newark-Liberty, a few miles from Manhattan Island. I’ve spent innumerable hours in the airport en route to and from my wife’s family in Virginia, but had never had the opportunity to visit the city shimmering on the horizon through the terminal windows. An unexpected 24-hour stop-over due to east coast storms gave me the opportunity, at last, a couple of days ago, to spend a few hours in downtown New York, on a blue Spring morning.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been glad to help with the development of a new current affairs website, Sceptical Scot, which launched this week. The site hopes to bring more light than heat to the ongoing, intense discussion over the future of Scotland in the wake of last year’s referendum.
The stars finally came into alignment and I was able to take a brief trip to London last week to see a couple of exhibitions. They were excellent, and I’ll have a few things to say about them here when thoughts crystalise. But as ever with London, I also wanted to go just to wander and watch, to sink into the city.