Tim Abrahams

Europe, United Kingdom

Architecture Writer at Freelance

Contributing Editor at Architectural Record

Articles

Preview the Royal Academy summer show’s heady new architecture-and-art mix

1 week ago | wallpaper.com | Tim Abrahams

The Royal Academy summer show (aka the institution's Summer Exhibition) has a unique take on architecture this year. Co-ordinated by Farshid Moussavi – the first architect to do so since Eva Jiřičná in 2013 – the show stands apart for the way in which architecture has been mixed in with the artworks at this famous annual open event.
Islamic Arts Biennale gives Saudi Arabia a cultural leg-up

2 weeks ago | ribaj.com | Tim Abrahams

With scenography by OMA, the second edition of the event is a fascinating exploration of what temporary architecture could mean in the modern Middle EastEven for those who live and work in the Middle East, the Islamic Arts Biennale remains, both in concept and in existence, rather hard to grasp – perhaps because of its ingenuity and subtlety. Its location is key.
The maverick of Venice

2 weeks ago | thecritic.co.uk | Tim Abrahams

This article is taken from the June 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25. What has been whispered for a while on podcasts and in the books of ideologues on the fringes of power has come to pass. Gramsci is the thinker of the day.
Marina Tabassum’s 2025 Serpentine Pavilion Opens at Kensington Gardens

3 weeks ago | architecturalrecord.com | Tim Abrahams

Architecture News The 2025 Serpentine Pavilion designed by Bangladeshi architect and educator Marina Tabassum and her firm, Marina Tabassum Architects, opens to the public in London this weekend. Named A Capsule in Time, it is the 25th structure in a series that began with a Zaha Hadid creation in 2000. With a monumentality that suits the milestone anniversary, Tabassum’s charming pavilion is composed of two half domes and two arches, arranged in the form of a capsule.
Architecture has hit a nadir at the Venice Biennale

1 month ago | spectator.com.au | Tim Abrahams

Much of Venice’s Giardini this year was as boarded up as a British high street. The Israeli pavilion was empty, apparently awaiting refurbishment.
A New Book Examines the Link Between Archigram’s Radical Vision and High-Tech London Architecture

1 month ago | architecturalrecord.com | Tim Abrahams

Architectures of the Technopolis: Archigram and the British High Tech, by Annette Fierro, Lund Humphries Publishers, 224 pages, $99.99. Annette Fierro’s Architectures of the Technopolis explores the often manic impulses of postwar Britain, as expressed in its capital’s built fabric.
Architecture has hit a nadir at the Venice Biennale

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Tim Abrahams

Much of Venice’s Giardini this year was as boarded up as a British high street. The Israeli pavilion was empty, apparently awaiting refurbishment. (At the 2024 art biennale, the curators had closed it in the face of pro-Palestinian protests, prompting the latter to demand it should be opened, presumably so they could protest its closure.) The Russian pavilion has been shut, by order of the Biennale, because of the Ukraine war.
Who will rescue Britain’s gardens?

1 month ago | unherd.com | Tim Abrahams

GardeningHorticulturesuburbsPlantsSocietyChelsea Flower ShowUK Like the blooming of wisteria, it is the brevity and intensity that makes the Chelsea Flower Show the most compelling, and revealing, horticultural show on earth.
OMA/AMO curates a love letter to the diagram at the Prada Foundation

1 month ago | wallpaper.com | Tim Abrahams

You will look long and hard for any OMA/AMO drawings at ‘Diagrams’, the new show at the Fondazione Prada event in Venice, even though it is curated by Rem Koolhaas, the practice’s lead partner. The foundation’s show, which coincides with the Venice Architectural Biennale 2025, does feature one image, amongst nearly 200, of the Scalo Farini masterplan for Milan by the Dutch studio.
National Gallery Sainsbury Wing: much-discussed design opens

1 month ago | wallpaper.com | Tim Abrahams

The criticism Annabelle Selldorf received for her National Gallery Sainsbury Wing conversion plans was unprecedented when they were first presented. In October 2022, eight former presidents of the RIBA signed a letter to Westminster City Council criticising the proposals of her New York-based practice Selldorf Architects’ proposals for changing 'a finely conceived space into an airport lounge'. Critics and conservation bodies waded in.