Stepping out of the tube at Whitechapel in East London, you find yourself in a bustling market, selling everything from fruit and veg to saris and CDs of the latest Bangra beats. Above the stalls and Victorian shop-fronts the colourful glass façade…

Mod Blog contributors, commentators, film-makers, scrawlers and fans, please take a bow as we have been awarded a splendid shiny pink sci-fi-esque cube for our efforts…

Snatching the annual BIMA award for Best Blog in the ‘Social Media’ category, The Great Tate Mod…

Fiona Sibley snoops around offices that pave the way for better working practices

Office life gave us one of the best comedy TV series in recent memory. Inside Ricky Gervais’ tragicomic world of heavy-duty carpets, cluttered desks and claustrophobic meeting rooms,…

I recently visited Berlin and was keen to experience the city’s art galleries. I found them to be some of the most exciting gallery spaces I have ever seen.

Hamburger Bahnhof , Berlin (© Alexey Moskvin)

One of them is Hamburger…

Sheffield, for me, is a city that would be impossible to sum up in one blog. Then again, I’m slightly biased in my love for the place, having spent the last seven years there. It’s definitely a city where all…

For some truly off-the-wall ideas take a trip to Psycho Buildings, the Hayward Gallery London’s mash up of art and architecture.

The exhibition brings together what they describe as ‘habitat-like sculptures and architecturally inflected installations’. This translates into some pretty…

Today, Tate Director, Nicholas Serota and architects Herzog & de Meuron revealed the latest plans for the new development at Tate Modern.

Instead of the glass façade originally envisaged, the building will be enveloped in a textured brick lattice. The…

When it was time to design a forward-looking extension to the already contemporary Tate Modern, the voice of the next generation needed to be heard. So it made sense to invite Raw Canvas – Tate Modern’s youth initiative – on a…

Calling all teenagers: if you could design your perfect space to hang out in at Tate Modern, what would you put in it? What would it look like?

In Channel 4’s Skins, the teenagers hang out mostly in a park in…

We caught up with Renzo Piano to talk about ecological architecture, how to design a “cultural building”, and what it means to build the first skyscraper in New York since September 11th.

The man who built the Pompidou Centre had a…

Fiona Sibley goes in search of interesting signage

Without directions, how would we find our way around? One of the big tasks facing Tate Modern 2’s designers will be to create a neat system of signs to lead people through the…

We managed to catch up with Jacques Herzog for a couple of minutes straight after his talk at Tate Modern as part of our Real Architecture series of spring talks.

We listened to what he had to say about the evolving…

This week, members of the Tate staff who are involved in the project to transform Tate Modern went on a trip to visit the Laban Dance Centre, in Deptford, South East London. The centre opened in 2003 and won the prestigious…

Admit it: half the joy of going to the Tate – or any museum – is browsing around the shop. Am I right? The British Museum plies a fine trade in merchandise, from Elgin Marbles fridge magnets to printed shopping…

© Justine Stoddart

Recently we’ve been out on the front line here at The Great Tate Modblog, approaching visitors to Tate Modern to see if they had any practical and imaginative design ideas for TM2. With an audience of over 5…

‘Oh Manchester, so much to answer for’ Morrissey once said, and just for a change, he’s right.

I like Manchester, I like what it means. Manchester to me conjures up images of music, of artists, of designers, showing the rest…

I recently came across this video of one of architect Rem Koolhaus’s creations, the Maison à Bordeaux.

The house is the subject of a film ‘Koolhass Houselife’ which focuses on the singular house and it’s owner, who is confined to a wheelchair, hence…

Westminster underground station is one of my favourite spaces in London. It is designed to be rushed through without stopping, but it is absolutely stunning and award-winning architecture.

All the supporting beams of the building above have been integrated as…

Why do bars feel so formulaic and boring? Is it because so many offer a slightly different version of the same thing?

It needn’t be so. A good bar should be just as welcoming and difficult to leave as a…

-

-

-

-
It’s a cold February morning as I wander out of New Street station, and I’m greeted by the sing-song accents of the taxi drivers, the blue skies and the Rotunda. All around there’s an architectural mish-mash of the last fifty…