Architecture professor Richard Weston compares a tiny Spanish island hideaway with a huge English retail landmark
My small wonder is a house perched on a cliff on Majorca. Approached from the road it seems unremarkable: only a tiled bench hints at something special. Entering, you can turn right into a stoa-like space for outdoor living, or left into a tiny patio with a colonnade to one side. It might be a model for a temple, made before the refinements of Classicism had been invented, but within lies an unforgettable room, dominated by large openings in deep-set reveals. In mid-afternoon, a slice of sun enters through a slot in the west wall. Raking across the rough stone it brings 20 minutes of drama before leaving the stage to the captured views of sea and sky.
The house is called Can Lis and was designed by Jørn Utzon, architect of Sydney Opera House - unwitting prototype for today's wannabe city icons, an example of which I choose as my blunder: Selfridges in Birmingham. Not because it's one of the world's worst buildings, far from it, but because of the mismatch between hype and reality. The shiny discs may be pretty, but hanging a gross overenlargement of a supposedly biomorphic surface from hidden steel scaffolding is not exactly my idea of architecture.
Postscript
Richard Weston, a professional research fellow at the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University in Wales, is the co-author of The Complete Handbook of Architecture, available this month from Mitchell Beazley, £9.99
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