Seven carefully chosen pieces that reflect on the stories and ideas behind some AR covers, free for registered users<\/p>\n
The Architectural Review turns 130 this year. To celebrate, British designer Margaret Howell<\/a> has selected five limited-edition cover prints<\/a>\u00a0 from the AR archive, which are available to view at her flagship store in Wigmore Street and to order from our shop. This week\u2019s reading list dwells on stories that have gone behind the scenes to speak with the artists that made the cover, as well as pieces that provide subjective glimpses into the archive of more than 1,500 covers (1,531 and counting).<\/p>\n Curated from the AR archive, these seven free-to-read stories look at some of the abstract, iconic, crafty and edible versions of our cover.<\/p>\n Register for free<\/a> to read today and receive future AR Reading Lists straight to your inbox<\/p>\n 130 years of AR covers with Margaret Howell<\/a>, AR online, May 2026 Cover story: Growth and Form exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London<\/a>, AR October 1951 Cover story: Seher Shah\u2019s graphite garden<\/a>, AR Online, February 2021 Cover story: Bompas & Parr\u2019s terrazzo tribute<\/a>, AR Online, January 2017, Bompas & Parr A cover history: 18 of the AR\u2019s most striking covers<\/a>, AR Online, May 2014, Jon Astbury
\u2018From a microphotograph of a smoke particle to the fishermen\u2019s sheds in Hastings, the collection illustrates a tradition of striking and idiosyncratic covers that the AR continues to this day\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Growth and Form\u00a0afforded a welcome opportunity of entering that \u2018new landscape\u2019 which modern science has opened up for the artist but which the ordinary amateur of the arts seldom finds himself in\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Shah\u2019s long-term interest in the role of drawing works with the historic and intimate through the precise traditions of Renaissance perspective methods with an approach that troubles the rational language of architectural drawing\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Bompas & Parr\u2019s wobbly tribute to terrazzo on the cover of The Architectural Review draws together centuries of culinary and architectural tradition\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The first issue of the AR depicted the fictional muse of Architecture, cradling a building and guiding her sister muses forward\u2019<\/p>\n