As epitomised in the works of Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry, and Daniel Libeskind, the ‘new museum’ of art claims its own architectural typology. With asymmetrical silhouettes, gallery spaces that eschew the much derided ‘white cube’, and cleverly conceived circulation systems, the new museum has been heralded as revolutionising the display of art. Yet its function extends beyond the display and conservation of art. The new art museum is conceived as a multifaceted cultural centre – a public forum – where art and culture are democratised, and families, scholars, students, tourists, and teachers come together. At the same time, the new museum competes with other entertainment venues on a commercial level. As a cultural factory replete with an ambitious programme of temporary exhibitions, media facilities, restaurants, and shops, the new museum emphasises consumption as much as it does contemplation. In fact, the array of non-artrelated diversions contained in the new museum is often more important to the institution’s success than the art itself.

Between 1965 and 1975 there was an intense debate in Italy about theatrical culture, which encompassed theatre building and the urban, social, and political roles of theatre. It was articulated around three terms that imply three ways of relating the theatrical building and the city: the temple, the machine, and the caravan. This unusually rich debate has been largely ignored in the historiography of Italian and European architecture, despite its intensity and the importance of its protagonists for the architectural culture of the twentieth century.

Often thought of in somewhat static, explanatory terms, the typical architectural diagram is used as a form of shorthand to succinctly communicate condensed information about a project and/or its conditions. In this way, the diagram functions as kind of coding device. Contrary to this typical coding function, Georges Teyssot describes the potential of a diagram that functions not as a code (mould) but rather as a modulator: ‘while molding leads to a permanent state of things, modulation introduces the factor of time’.4 Modulating is simply, as Deleuze says, ‘molding in a variable and continuous manner’.5 Critical to the modulating function is a degree of indeterminacy, which allows a diagram to be both responsive and flexible.

Architectural models are reductive representations. Traits included or excluded from a model reflect designer intent as well as broader values held at the time of their construction. As such, models are reflective, acting as cultural mirrors of both conscious and unconscious priorities at the time of their construction. Models are also projective, offering new conceptions and interpretations about the subjects of their representations. Italo Calvino’s character Mr. Palomar reflects on the dialogic relationship between a model and reality.

The history of London has long been entwined with expansions of financial capital and the machinations of global plutocrats and their more proximate counterparts.1 However, what has happened in the decade since the global financial crisis is without precedent. London has been transformed into a city for global capital rather than one designed to meet the needs and aspirations of the majority of its denizens.2

In 1972, David Prichard joined Richard MacCormac and Peter Jamieson to form the architectural practice of MacCormac Jamieson Prichard [1]. He has contributed to the design and delivery of residential masterplans and developments across the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, including in the New Towns of Milton Keynes, Cwmbrân, Warrington, Basildon and the London Docklands, and leading the Ballymun Regeneration Masterplan.