John Pardey on how Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel marked a revolutionary departure from his machine-age classicism — a sculptural, light-filled sanctuary where curved walls, hooded towers and a hovering roof reimagined the possibilities of modern sacred architecture.
John Pardey on how Pierre Chareau and Bernard Bijvoët's Maison de Verre (House of Glass) redefined domestic architecture in 1930s Paris — fusing craft and industry, transparency and privacy, transforming a bourgeois townhouse into a luminous, steel-framed gesamtkunstwerk.
John Pardey on how Joseph Paxton’s pioneering Crystal Palace for Great Exhibition of 1851 marked the end of millennia of masonry and timber construction, ushering in a new era of light, span and prefabrication that would redefine architecture in the age of industry.
John Pardey on Jørn Utzon’s Bagsværd Church, Copenhagen (1976) – a rectilinear, industrial-looking building that conceals a sequence of vaulted concrete ‘clouds’ inspired by nature.
John Pardey on William Morris and Philip Webb’s Red House in Bexleyheath – a home that looked to embody ‘truth’ in craftsmanship and construction and which to some, is the very first modern house.
John Pardey on Hendrik Petrus Berlage's Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (1934) – a building that can be read as a European evolution of Frank Lloyd Wright's work and reconsidered the decorative use of stone and brick.
Architect John Pardey looks back on Arne Jacobsen’s National Bank of Denmark as the Danish master’s most complete gesamtkunstwerk – a building that distils the same unity, elegance and precision found in his iconic furniture.
John Pardey on Johan Otto von Spreckelsen's La Grande Arche in Paris (1989) – a monumental, yet elegant building laced with symbolism that was part of President Mitterand's Grands Projets.
John Pardey on Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio (1936) in Como, Italy – a building that manages to embrace classical proportions and Modernist abstraction while mediating between solid and void as a means of expression.
John Pardey reflects on Mies van der Rohe's Neue Nationalgalerie (1968) in Berlin – a temple to glass and steel that was the German architect's realisation of 'universal space' and his swan song.
John Pardey reflects on Louis Kahn's Kimbell Art Museum (1972) in Fort Worth, Texas – a building with classical qualities that offers a series of exquisite vaulted galleries and which embodies Kahn's approach to space and weight in architecture.
Architect John Pardey introduces his series of short essays, Reflections, where he gives an account of some of the 20th Century's greatest buildings.
