Stephen Bayley

2 weeks ago | carmagazine.co.uk | Stephen Bayley

► 25 years on: remembering the Audi A2► Design critic Stephen Bayley on landmark mini► ‘There will never be a small car this clever again’ In the words of architect Heinrich Tessenow, ‘The best is always simple but the simple is not always the best.’Take the Audi A2, 25 this year and still superb. In some versions it was capable of 94mpg and had the lowest drag of any production mini ever. Aluminium construction meant it weighed just 900kg.

3 weeks ago | spectator.com.au | Stephen Bayley

The Manifesto House: Buildings that Changed the Future of Architecture Yale University Press, pp.240, 30 Only when history is decarbonised and decolonised will we understand how architecture should advance. For the time being, the art and science of building design are additionally hobbled by ‘systemic’ gender bias and ‘western-centric’ chauvinism. If the dreary fugue of DEI rhetoric and the baffling clichés of archispeak make you want to scream, this book may not be for you.

3 weeks ago | spectator.co.uk | Stephen Bayley

Only when history is decarbonised and decolonised will we understand how architecture should advance. For the time being, the art and science of building design are additionally hobbled by ‘systemic’ gender bias and ‘western-centric’ chauvinism. If the dreary fugue of DEI rhetoric and the baffling clichés of archispeak make you want to scream, this book may not be for you.

1 month ago | carmagazine.co.uk | Stephen Bayley

► Lexus LS goes off sale in the UK► What it represented► And what it means for the saloon marketTo understand Lexus, start with Sony. Only people old enough to remember The Beatles’ first LP will recall that ‘Made in Japan’ was once a stigma, not a guarantee of quality and refinement. Sony changed that. Its founder, Akio Morita, had vision and guile. Just when Western Electric declared there were no commercial uses for the transistor its labs had invented, Morita found that, indeed, there were.

1 month ago | thecritic.co.uk | Stephen Bayley

More than a survivor of the “sixties” This article is taken from the April 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. This is a story about time travel. In Battersea. I went to visit one of the last survivors of the “sixties”, a cultural commodity, possibly now an antique commodity, not a mere ten calendar years. He is George Ciancimino, aged 97. I have known him very slightly for a long time.