All articles by Amanda Levete

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Rulers were made for…

    2010-12-17T00:00:00Z

    You can’t measure the value of design with any kind of measuring stick - and anyone who suggests you can deserves a rap on the knuckles

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Why we should train architects on the job

    2010-11-19T00:00:00Z

    Higher education is going to become increasingly inaccessible, so why don’t we create ways of training while working

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Second best is no good at all: impressions from the Labour party conference

    2010-10-08T00:00:00Z

    Fresh from the Labour conference, Amanda Levete muses on the pointlessness of second place, the deviousness of committees and the role of a great leader in making great buildings

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Donkey work and urban planning

    2010-09-17T00:00:00Z

    A Kenyan island with an unusual freight-transportation system has inspired Amanda Levete to think again about designing for cities without cars

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    How does the state imagine?

    2010-07-23T00:00:00Z

    The next decade is going to reinterpret, reorganise and abolish much of our familiar world, so we’ll need creative thinking from government. Which could be a problem

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Up for the cup

    2010-06-17T18:05:00Z

    Goal celebrations are brilliant expressions of national identity (but not you, Clint Dempsey). How does architecture reflect where a nation has come from and where it’s going, asks Amanda Levete

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Choice in an age of uncertainty

    2010-04-30T00:00:00Z

    These days it seems nothing can be taken for granted, whether its simple travel plans or the fact that the Lib Dems are bound to come third. Which can be a good thing

  • Comment

    Amanda Levete: What Japan can teach us

    2010-03-05T00:00:00Z

    Or, as the atlases have it, Japan: a country that endlessly contradicts itself, but does so with such artistry that it hardly matters. But what can it teach us

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Amanda Levete: why architects know best

    2010-01-22T00:00:00Z

    Give Britain’s best architects the final say in what gets built. Amanda Levete explains why this modest proposal is neither elitist, utopian, nor politically impossible

  • Comment

    They know how to use the sky box

    2009-11-06T00:00:00Z

    That’s just one of the benefits of having children. But the struggle to combine work and reproduction is rewarding, exhausting and different for everybody

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    The academy in peril

    2009-10-02T00:00:00Z

    If you find yourself with a spare hour in Piccadilly, go and see Anish Kapoor at the RA: it’s disturbing, even violent, but it has a lot to say about how art fits into buildings

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Where are we now? How architecture is understood and consumed

    2009-07-24T00:00:00Z

    The way architecture is produced, consumed and understood in the 21st century has been transformed – for better and worse – by digital technology

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Dining and designing

    2009-06-26T00:00:00Z

    ºÃÉ«ÏÈÉúTVs are consumed by the eye in the same way that food is consumed by the organs of digestion. And in both cases, the important thing is that they’re tasty

  • Comment

    We can't afford cheap and nasty

    2009-05-15T00:00:00Z

    The recession is turning us, and our politicians, into mean, short-sighted people. And this is exactly the right way to make sure it lasts a long, long time

  • Amanda Levete, principal of Amanda Levete Architects
    Comment

    Australia's grand opera house

    2009-04-09T00:00:00Z

    Sydney is finally going to restore Jørn Utzon’s awesome opera house to his original design – but there is a big price to pay

  • Jan Kaplicky and Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Jan and me: Amanda Levete on Jan Kaplicky

    2009-03-06T00:00:00Z

    Jan Kaplicky, who died in January, was a visionary architect whose creativity drove him to test the bounds of the possible, says his former wife and design partner

  • Amanda Levete
    Features

    Nothing could be better

    2008-12-19T00:00:00Z

    Empty sites and redundant buildings can be colonised for all kinds of creative purposes, says Amanda Levete. It just needs a little imagination on the part of government to get them going

  • Comment

    A question of charisma

    2008-09-19T00:00:00Z

    Some regenerated areas become fizzing centres of creative energy whereas others are, well, a bit dull. But what is it that makes the difference? Amanda Levete has a theory …

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    The uses of adversity

    2008-07-11T00:00:00Z

    The Great Depression brought destitution to millions. It also transformed politics and society and produced great architecture. Amanda Levete asks: could the present downturn do the same?

  • Amanda Levete
    Comment

    Darwin and design

    2008-05-09T00:00:00Z

    A week in the Pacific archipelago that inspired the theory of evolution also inspires thoughts about survival and extinction in the architectural world