What distinguishes these from a street of shops is that somebody built a roof over the whole thing on purpose, and then trade organised itself underneath. Here are seventeen.
1.…
A stepwell solves a practical problem beautifully: the water table falls in the dry season, so the structure must reach down to whatever level the water has retreated to, and…
Subtractive architecture has one unforgiving property: there is no correcting a mistake. Everything below was carved from the top down, in solid rock, by people who could not revise. Here…
Two kinds of place are worth visiting: working research sites at altitude, and historic instruments in cities that show how the work was done before electronics. Here are eleven of…
The difference between a preserved windmill and a working one is the noise. Inside a mill under sail, the whole building shakes, the gears roar and flour comes out warm.…
The engineering logic is entirely practical, and once you know it the buildings stop looking quaint and start looking sensible. Here are eleven still standing.
1. The Kapellbrucke, Lucerne, Switzerland…