Anticipation of a potential showdown between the “Daily Show” host and the SpaceX CEO has been brewing ever since Musk last week signaled his willingness to appear for an interview.
Jon Stewart agrees to do ‘unedited’ interview with Elon Musk
Jon Stewart criticized Elon Musk after highlighting a contradiction in the billionaire’s claim of political neutrality. Musk said he would appear on “The Daily Show” if the interview aired “unedited.”
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Jon Stewart has made it clear: Tech billionaire and White House ally Elon Musk has a formal invitation to appear on “The Daily Show.”
Anticipation of a potential showdown between the “Daily Show” host and the SpaceX CEO has been brewing ever since Musk last week signaled his willingness to appear for an interview – on one condition. Answering calls from his supporters to go head-to-head with Stewart, a frequent critic, Musk said on social media site X he’d do it, “if the show airs unedited.”
Stewart then began his monologue Monday night by addressing Musk’s terms for coming on Comedy Central’s flagship satirical news program.
“After thinking about his offer, I thought, you know, hey, that’s actually how the in-studio interviews normally are – it’s unedited – so, sure,” Stewart said, followed by a round of applause from the audience.
The potential showdown between Stewart and Musk would come after the “Daily Show” host delivered a tirade last week of the richest man in the world’s efforts to slash federal spending under President Donald Trump’s administration. Were Musk to accept Stewart’s invitation, the two would discuss cuts made under the Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk unofficially leads.
“I am game,” Stewart declared. “I think it’ll be a very interesting conversation.”
‘We’d be delighted:’ ‘The Daily Show’ accepts Musk’s terms for interview with Stewart
Musk appears to cast doubt on whether he’d go on ‘Daily Show’ after all
But Musk, who recently sat down with Joe Rogan on an episode of his popular podcast, appears to be throwing cold water on an interview with Stewart, even after he accepted the challenge one week ago.
In recent posts on X, which Musk owns, he called “The Daily Show” host a “propagandist,” and claimed Stewart “used to be more bipartisan.”
Stewart addressed Musk’s claims Monday night, theorizing that the tech mogul was setting the stage to back out of an interview. Unconvinced by Musk’s argument, Stewart poked fun at Musk’s “Dark MAGA” hat and the hundreds of millions of dollars he spent on Trump’s campaign.
“Look, Elon,” Stewart said. “I do have some criticisms about DOGE … If you want to come on and talk about it on the show, great. If you don’t want to, sure.”
He continued, “but can we just drop the pretense that you won’t do it because I don’t measure up to the standards of neutral discourse that you demand and display at all times?”
Musk, Trump, tout DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts
Musk’s supporters and fans of “The Daily Show” have been clamoring for the showdown ever since Stewart railed against Musk and DOGE in an episode that aired Feb. 24.
During the segment, the comedian slammed the firing of tens of thousands of federal employees across multiple agencies and levels of importance before slicing his hand open on a prop mug.
After Musk agreed to do an interview, “The Daily Show” responded from its official X account, “We’d be delighted!”
A staunch ally of the president, Musk has routinely defended his efforts to reduce the federal workforce – an initiative that included a controversial email for employees to outline their accomplishments or risk termination. Trump has also defended Musk’s efforts, arguing his administration is seeking to downsize government by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.
Democrats and other critics, however, have noted the potential benefits Musk’s companies stand to gain under some of his targeted cuts.
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]
The FT commenting names of readers have been given in bold type at the end of each entry. Where readers gave details about what they love about a particular place, that has been included as a quote.
“The Eero Saarinen-designed chapel at MIT is otherworldly. It’s based on circles (the structure is a circle) with the only light coming from a circular skylight that creates a columnar shaft of light that reflects on an extraordinary installation of suspended reflecting pieces. This is what spiritual contemplation probably looks like in another galaxy.” Early sitting Foodie
Sitting on a promenade of ornate white buildings, The Golden Temple in Amritsar stands out like a gleaming gold tooth. It has four entrances, one on each side, signifying that people from all walks of life are welcome. Textex
Basilica, Weizberg, Austria
“There are so many old churches in Austria and Bavaria that are located in beautiful locations that hold a strong sense of spirituality, history and connection to another world. This church in Weiz Styria [Austria], the Basilica at Weizberg, took my breath away as a child.” Mon_2021
“In a city with many far more opulent churches, this ninth-century building tucked away on a side street still manages to surprise and inspire with its vibrant mosaics and side chapels. The last time I visited, in 2019, you still had to put a coin in the meter to illuminate them. Well worth it!” Occasional Observer
San Josemaría Escrivá Church, Mexico City, Mexico
This church, built in 2008 over a landfill site in the southern outskirts of Mexico City, is formed primarily of two huge curving plinths designed to evoke the Christian Ichthys symbol. Judge_Holden
This non-denominational chapel in Sonoma County, California, was built by a local couple in honour of Kirk Ditzler, an artist, zoologist and navy aviator who inspired architect James Hubbell’s design. The structure appears like something from a fairy tale, with a roof shaped like a witch’s hat, a ceiling inlaid with shells, redwood benches and stained-glass windows in shades of fuchsia and sea green. Professor Scott Talan
Everything in the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, found in the hills above Nice, was designed by French artist Henri Matisse. It features a simple white interior, line-drawn murals depicting biblical scenes and geometric stained glass windows, which cast dappled light across the floor. “I’m irreligious but it brought tears to my eyes.” JMF
Twenty seven wooden beams driven into the cliff face work to support the Hengshan Hanging Temple, built 1,500 years ago on a rock face in Shanxi province, northern China. “Stunning, and certainly very memorable.” Claudius Donnelly
This church, with its elegant yellow brick pillars inspired by Gothic architecture, was designed by the famed Danish architect Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint in honour of the Danish priest, poet, and reformer NFS Grundtvig. Jensen-Klint died before he could see it completed, so the project was finished in 1940 by his son, who also designed the simple wood and wicker chairs used for the congregation. It is “beautifully plain inside”. Jimmy Jones
The fire inside this temple, a place of worship for those who follow the ancient Zoroastrian religion, has been burning continuously since AD470, making it the longest running fire temple in Iran. Fire has long been an important symbol for Zoroastrians because it symbolises truth and purity. Lapras
This “confraternity church”, established in the 15th century by a group of middle-class Venetians who wanted to play a part in civic life, is home to the remains of its titular saint, St Roch, as well as paintings by Titian, Tintoretto and Tiepolo. It features “wildly bizarre wood-carved figures in the main room along with famed paintings”. Professor Scott Talan
This mosque features a “clever plan that swings you around from the east-facing entrance (iwan) to the Mecca-facing mihrab of the chamber, and the handling of its faience-lined space whose origins can be traced back to the simple four arched kiosks (chahar taq) of the early fire temples to be found in the mountains around”. Pause for a moment
St Sophia’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral, London, England
“Very beautiful. It was consecrated as the Church of the Holy Wisdom on 5 February 1882 and has superb late-19th-century iconography”. aegian
Die Wieskirche bei Steingaden, Oberbayern, Germany
This rococo confection, adorned with gilded stucco and trompe l’œil frescoes, was built in the mid-18th century and all but bankrupted the Steingaden abbey that funded it. Certankile
The conjoined octagonal structures that form the San Vitale Basilica in Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna, offer a clue to the artistry of the mosaics found within. Decorated with different marbles and mosaics depicting scenes from the Old and the New Testament, it will “blow you away”. Fredaugust
The oldest temple in Kyoto, dating to AD603, is said to have been founded by Korean immigrants to the city. It is best known for an elegant wooden sculpture of the Miroku Buddha in half-lotus position, which is thought to have been gifted to the Japanese regent Taishi Shōtoku by the Korean court. International Economist/Observer
Founded in AD324, this is the oldest public church in Rome and the oldest basilica in the western world. “This is where even the Pope goes as a humble priest to pray in the most spiritual of churches.” JHK2
A church was first built on this site in Toledo, central Spain, in the 6th century. It later became the city’s central mosque, before being converted back into a church in the 11th century, and then destroyed. The version we see today dates to the 13th century, and is considered “a stunning example of Spanish gothic”. TheDubliner
Begun around 1175, Wells Cathedral is home to the second oldest clock mechanism still in use in Britain and one of the finest examples of medieval stained glass: a huge window depicting a Jesse tree and Christ with his family in shades of green and gold. “By accident it has a wonderful central tower buttress in the crossing, put in because it was thought the tower was in danger of falling. An example of anxiety becoming inspiration.” Cassandra and Iphigeneia
St Thomas Aquinas church, Berlin, Germany
Built in 1999 from granite and glass, the St Thomas Aquinas church is “modern, sparse, true to its materials but profoundly settling and open to the immanent”. Hillgate26
“A Baroque façade stuck on to the end of Gelon’s Temple of Athena, which still forms the bulk of the main body of the church. It is a stunning survival, and has a remarkable atmosphere.” Al MacBee
Though the outside appears almost austere, having been designed by a military engineer, the interior of this church is fabulously ornate, gilded and decorated with frescoes depicting the life of John the Baptist. The floor is made up of around 400 marble tombstones commemorating the Knights of Malta, the order who built the church. Window dressing
When it was constructed in the 1670s, the Badshahi Mosque was the largest in the world. Rather than being adorned with intricate mosaic tiling as some Lahori mosques are, this design uses red sandstone inlaid with white marble patterns as decoration. Rightoutofhand
“Have lunch in Cafe 1901 afterwards. A beautiful and peaceful place with a very interesting history, 30 minutes’ walk from the Forbidden City”. Huntington was right
“An early-18th century Balinese Hindu temple. Not so much for the beauty of the building but for the way Balinese Hindus worship. The combination of gamelan music, the reading of Vedic text and the trance-like Balinese dancing mesmerised me. I never thought spirituality could be so visually and aurally breathtaking. There is a spring within the temple complex that is also considered holy by followers of the local Muslim sect, and once a year Hindus and Muslims have a festival together.” 97% human
Found seven miles outside of Edinburgh, in rural Midlothian, the 15th-century Rosslyn Chapel is home to many mysteries and myths. Some say that the Holy Grail was once held here. Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code described a crypt beneath the church where the body of Mary Magdalen was thought to be held. The stonework and decoration also contain their own folklore: visitors are invited to spot the carvings of green men, a figure symbolising good, evil and the fecundity of nature (there are said to be 100). “A little gem.” TheGreenMachine
St Leopold am Steinhof, Vienna, Austria
St Leopold am Steinhof was originally built as a church for a psychiatric hospital in Vienna when it was constructed in the early-20th century. The architect, Otto Wagner, a leading figure in the secessionist and art nouveau movements, placed the building on a hill overlooking the facility, and designed a beautiful white marble façade and golden mosaic dome. It’s now considered one of the first ever modernist churches. “Ranks near the top for its unmatched aesthetic simplicity inside and out.” Robert and iamalwaysright
Jake Bongiovi married Millie Bobby Brown in ‘small family wedding’
Jon Bon Jovi has confirmed his son Jake Bongiovi married actress Millie Bobby Brown in a “small family wedding” and revealed the bride “looked gorgeous.”
Bang Showbiz
Millie Bobby Brown is fighting back, once again, against hateful comments on her appearance.
The “Stranger Things” star issued a public service announcement about the “bullying” comments she has gotten about her appearance. In an Instagram video posted Monday, the 21-year-old actress slammed comments about her “aging badly,” calling the issue “bigger than me” and “something that affects every young woman who grows up under public scrutiny.”
Brown has grown up working on the sci-fi series, which wrapped filming its final season in December. She was 12 when the first episodes hit Netflix, which she said has made people have unrealistic views on how she “should” look.
“I grew up in front of the world, and for some reason, people can’t seem to grow with me,” she wrote in the caption. “Instead, they act like I’m supposed to stay frozen in time, like I should still look the way I did on ‘Stranger Things’ Season one. And because I don’t, I’m now a target.”
The actress previously called out people who claimed she looked older than she is. Brown seemed to respond to the brash negativity in her comments with a since-expired post on her Instagram story to kick off the New Year. At the time, she succinctly wrote in black text over a white background: “women grow!! not sorry about it :)”
Millie Bobby Brown gives defiant response to criticism of her looks: ‘Women grow!’
Millie Bobby Brown hits back at Daily Mail writers: ‘This isn’t journalism’
Now, the “Enola Holmes” star has time. She called out writers of Daily Mail headlines like “Why are Gen Zers like Millie Bobby Brown ageing (sic) so badly?” and “Millie Bobby Brown mistaken for someone’s mom as she guides younger sister Ava through LA” for their “horrible” and harmful coverage.
She called out the writer of a Daily Mail article dubbed “Little Britain’s Matt Lucas takes savage swipe at Millie Bobby Brown’s new ‘mommy makeover’ look” for “amplifying an insult rather than questioning why a grown man is mocking a young woman’s appearance.”
Brown continued: “This isn’t journalism. This is bullying. The fact that adult writers are spending their time dissecting my face, my body, my choices, it’s disturbing. The fact that some of these articles are written by women? Even worse.”
USA TODAY has reached out to the Daily Mail for comment.
She continued: “We always talk about supporting and uplifting young women, but when the time comes, it seems easier to tear them down for clicks.”
The Florence by Mills founder, who has previously opened up about being a feminist, emphasized her agency over her appearance.
“Disillusioned people can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman on her terms, not theirs,” she said. “I refuse to make myself smaller to fit the unrealistic expectations of people who can’t handle seeing a girl become a woman. I will not be shamed for how I look, how I dress, or how I present myself.”
Brown ended with a call to action: “Let’s do better.”
She added: “Not just for me, but for every young girl who deserves to grow up without fear of being torn apart for simply existing.”
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There is a fevered rush in schools of architecture to steer the direction of the proposed 1.5mn new homes promised by the new government. There is hardly a discussion or student review where this ambition isn’t dropped into the conversation. The opportunities seem limitless but, dig a little deeper and the excitement disguises quite a bit of uncertainty. How on earth will we build at this scale, and where, and who is going to steer decision-making and determine whether what we plan is any good?
This is a huge and baffling number, particularly given the knowledge that, according to government published tables, England alone had more than 700,000 “vacant dwellings” in October 2024. The character of their vacancy is hugely varied, as is the viability of these properties, either in quality or location. Around 37 per cent — some 265,061 — are empty long-term. And they aren’t all in remote locations; more than 38,000 are in London boroughs; 1,700 in Manchester. In March 2024, 1.3mn households were on the social housing wait-list in England. It seems tragic that the UK can’t accommodate some of its extensive need with what it has.
It is an arresting thought that we could keep building and that even if we meet the numbers, we might be left with the basics of habitation, but without homes that anyone wants or can afford. When George Orwell wrote of the Corporation houses in The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) he complained of virtually the same lacklustre character that seems to typify so much rapid development: the remoteness and the absence of community, independent pub or shopkeeper.
Building new developments is hard, labour intensive, materially exhaustive and expensive. The G15 (a group of the largest London housing associations) has reported an average cost of £450,000 per affordable home. Furthermore, the building industry is hugely land and carbon hungry at virtually every stage from construction to demolition — accounting for just under 40 per cent of global carbon emissions. And while we can’t simply shoehorn households into vacant properties, we can take a hard look at the intelligent reuse of what we already have.
We have the tools to do so, not just by making vacant homes warm, dry and bright but by addressing the root causes of abandonment and exploring opportunities for staged and continuing revitalisation of neglected spaces and communities.
Alongside this we need to look equally hard at how we want to live. We need to be a great deal clearer about what shape our families might take through their various stages of supporting relationships, babies and dependent adults, and creating homes that meet those changing needs. While the traditional terraced house has been bashed about to suit our needs, it is only adaptable because we have been permitted to adapt it. Its long narrow spaces enhanced by numerous extensions produce lightless homes with peculiar spaces, tiny bedrooms and oddly large bathrooms. It is time to think again and to raise our expectations of the spaces we spend so much time in.
Architects have spent decades trying to define how space, light, layout and location shape our experience. We keep hoping to be brought to the table with policymakers to share this knowledge and visualise a viable alternative
The licence given to change of use through “permitted development”, which relaxes the usual case-by-case constraints of the planning process, has made a number of conversions of abandoned office spaces to residential use possible, but few have created homes of desirable quality. The freedom associated with planning reform has been welcomed by many, but in too many cases, without any criteria to follow, these new developments risk adhering to the most rudimentary safety regulations and the whims of the free market.
Careful conversion, adaptation and reuse can be cumbersome and slow, but with limited available affordable land, or land that’s suitable for development and that’s where people actually want to live, we can and should try to do more and to do better.
But the criteria for what is important and valuable can also feel subjective and difficult to define. It is also what we as architects are best at identifying. We have spent decades trying to define and understand how space, light, layout and location shape our experience. We keep hoping to be brought to the table with policymakers to share this knowledge, help shape strategies, and articulate and visualise a viable alternative, which is what we do best.
For the majority of recent political and architectural history, most communities and governments have tried to reduce constraints — the red tape holding back progress. But cutting through the bureaucracy has also meant cutting down our expectations. Removing standard regulation has also meant lowering standards, and thereby what we feel we have the right to expect from our built environment.
In a culture where there is a broader enthusiasm for make do and mend we seem to have forgotten what’s worth mending and risk producing a great deal more that isn’t. A serious look at vacancy, its patterns and promise, and its contribution to the housing crisis is an essential precursor to building our way out of it.
This is a question of generational responsibility, to our families, our towns and the climate. If we can do more to encourage the reuse and cyclical adaptation of existing buildings we give individuals, businesses and communities the chance to increase both value and worth, building a property ladder into the fabric of the places we already have, alongside a forward-focused resilience at a moment of uncomfortable uncertainty.
Ingrid Schroder is director of the Architectural Association School of Architecture
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Liam Payne’s blood alcohol level before death revealed
New details have emerged about former One Direction star Liam Payne’s condition at the time of his death. According to a report, the 31-year-old had a blood alcohol level of .27%, which is classified as “severe intoxication” according to Stanford University’s Vaden Health.
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Liam Payne’s family is speaking out against the “constant” media coverage surrounding the former “One Direction” star’s death.
“Liam’s death was an unspeakable tragedy. This is a time of tremendous grief and pain for those who knew and loved him,” they wrote in a statement provided to USA TODAY Monday.
Payne’s death has unspooled as a multi-pronged tragedy with details emerging of heavy drug use and a high blood alcohol content. The singer, 31, died in October after falling from a Buenos Aires, Argentina, hotel balcony.
Payne is survived by his son Bear, 7, whom he shared with ex-partner Cheryl Cole; his parents, Geoff and Karen; and two siblings, Ruth and Nicola.
“Liam ought to have had a long life ahead of him. Instead, Bear has lost his father, Geoff and Karen have lost their son, Ruth and Nicola have lost their brother and all of Liam’s friends and fans have lost someone they held very dear,” the family said.
In the aftermath, five people were charged in connection with his death, three with negligent homicide, or unintentional manslaughter, and two with supplying drugs. Among those charged were hotel employees, and a friend of Payne’s. In February, charges against three of the defendants were dropped − but those accused of supplying the drugs remain legally liable.
“We understand that the investigation into Liam’s death was absolutely necessary, and the family recognises the work done by the Argentinian authorities,” Payne’s family continued in their statement. “However, the family accepts the Court of Appeal’s decision to drop all charges.”
Roger Nores, a friend of Payne’s, was among those who saw his charges dropped after a panel of judges ruled that Nores did not contribute to Payne “obtaining and consuming alcohol” and could not have prevented the singer’s death even if Nores had “stayed in his company at all times” to prevent his “state of intoxication.”
Nores is now suing Geoff Payne for alleged defamation, claiming he shared “false” and “misleading” information with Argentine prosecutors in the death investigation of Liam.
“The constant media attention and speculation which has accompanied the process has exacted indescribable, lasting damage on the family, particularly on Liam’s son who is trying to process emotions which no 7-year-old should have to experience. The family has always wished for privacy to grieve and asks that they be given the space and time to do so,” the statement continued.
Payne, one part of a five-man boyband that upended the pop-sphere, has existed in the public eye since he was 16. That One Direction was a cultural phenomenon is an understatement, and the interest around his death has matched some of the manic and microscopic attention garnered at the height of the group’s fame.
Liam Payne Brit Awards tribute: Watch
“This weekend, at the Brit Awards, Liam was remembered for his phenomenal contribution to British music and for his wider, positive impact on millions of adoring fans the world over,” his family concluded. “We joined in that celebration of his life and will forever remember the joy that his music brought to the world. Liam, you are so loved and missed.”
The tribute, introduced by host Jack Whitehall, featured a video of Payne singing “Little Things,” one of One Direction’s most famous songs. The montage layered reflections from Payne about fame and his talent for singing over photos throughout his career. Whitehall called Payne “a supremely gifted musician” and “an incredibly kind soul.”
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When construction began in Bloomsbury in 1823, the British Museum was said to be one of the biggest building sites in Europe. Two centuries later, it is destined to become a huge construction site again as Britain’s largest cultural capital project. It was announced last week that the winner of a competition to reimagine the museum’s western maze of galleries is Paris-based Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh.
It is a good thing that, at 44, she is relatively young. Because this might take a while. Fending off competition from better-known architectural names including David Chipperfield, OMA, Eric Parry, Jamie Fobert and 6a, this will be a remarkable leap in profile for Ghotmeh, who has been building a reputation as an intriguing designer for a decade or so.
It is a monumental commission; perhaps a lifetime’s work and certainly a once-in-a-generation attempt to redesign and redefine the museum. And the British Museum needs it. Mired in bad news stories — from the theft and loss of hundreds of artefacts, some allegedly sold on eBay by a curator, to an IT hack and the ongoing issues of BP’s sponsorship and the fate of the Parthenon Marbles — the museum is due a rethink. Under new director Nicholas Cullinan, it will get one. He has suggested that this will be “the biggest transformation of any museum in the world — not just physically, but intellectually too”.
Lina Ghotmeh’s British Museum design . . .
. . . has the feel of a structure in the desert
There is not yet much detail about what that intellectual reinterpretation might entail. Debates around restitution, the display of human remains and the very idea of a universal museum continue to rage, and it will be intriguing to see how architecture can address them. Perhaps the choice of a woman architect from the Middle East can itself begin that redress, a shift of perspective from Beirut via Paris, one an ancient city constantly being destroyed and rebuilt, the other the home of the Louvre, the former royal palace which was the ideal against which the resolutely civic British Museum had set itself.
This project is being billed as the museum’s biggest transformation in decades. That may surprise visitors who are familiar with Norman Foster’s massive intervention in the form of the glass-roofed Great Court, which opened in 2000, but this is a more complex, intricate project. It involves excavating, opening up, linking through and rationalising the galleries on the western side of the building, one-third of the museum’s exhibition space. The “Western Range” accommodates the museum’s most impressive artefacts — huge stone pieces from Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome — and forms a complex tangle of spaces condensed into an entirely enclosed area between the Great Court and Bloomsbury Street.
The British Museum is itself an artefact. The institution, dating back to 1753, was the world’s first public national museum, established by an act of parliament. Like its 8mn artefacts, of which only about 1 per cent are on display at any time, the museum building is a collection of architectures illustrating changing tastes in conceptions of culture and material, lighting and labelling, colonisation and collecting.
Ghotmeh’s approach (gleaned from a few tentative renderings) appears to acknowledge the status of the museum as a site of archaeology itself, with a treatment that scrapes away at layers and strata in the structure. There is an echo here of the building she became globally known for: the Stone Garden apartment tower in Beirut. This super-solid structure appears almost as a cliff, a quarry or perhaps an old fortified tower, a mass of stone that has been carved out to create living spaces.
Unlike the massive capital projects of the millennium, there should be no desire here to create any kind of icon. This is an architectural intervention with no external manifestation, an inward-looking project which, although it might have radical aims in its intent to reimagine the displays for the future, is entirely contained within a structure with an existing and powerful identity.
The dangers of imposing too much of a new agenda are clear in past projects. The Great Court was seen as necessary to create a space for a growing numbers of visitors (5.8mn in 2023) to orientate themselves, a central public plaza. But it fell into a trap of becoming a kind of mall-space, a huge, rather banal volume at odds with the dark intensity of the rest of the interior. It also managed to somehow emasculate the otherwise awesome reading room, now utterly overwhelmed by the white doughnut of space around it.
Ghotmeh will need to excavate the museum to make full use of the constricted site, exposing the museum’s extensive vaults to public use, burrowing down and connecting in three dimensions. The designs presented so far appear to show only a scenographic effect, an impression of a huge courtyard topped by a gently draped roof. It has the feel of a building in a desert, sandblown and supported on squat, rather fashionable (though utterly unfashionable by the time this is complete) arches below. There seems to be some kind of filmic desire to recreate the conditions of a Middle Eastern archaeological setting here, an “Indiana Jones” outfitting. There is suspiciously little on display apart from a few carefully chosen and picturesque fragments. I might suggest that it ought to display more of the 8mn objects, not fewer.
I wonder whether the real archaeology here, the layers of existing brick vaults and courts, might have presented a more ready-made archaeology than an imposed and confected one. Think of David Chipperfield’s work at the Neues Museum in Berlin, which revealed the traces of war and damage to create a highly theatrical series of spaces born out of the material itself. Nevertheless, Ghotmeh, a thoughtful architect who also designed London’s Serpentine Pavilion in 2023 and the striking Estonian National Museum in Tartu, will be able to refine the design, rethinking as she encounters the actual conditions.
It will be a long while before we see the changes sketched out here as a reality, and they will change and shift along the way. But I hope the museum can appreciate its own place as a critical part of history itself. This should be as much a project about appreciating an intensely used, debated, visited and loved slice of the city as it is about displaying the treasures of the world.
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This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Singapore
Characterised by its cocktail of colonial heritage, sleek skyscrapers and lush, seemingly unstoppable outbursts of tropical greenery, Singapore can look like a fantasy future city, almost unreal at times in its contrasts and juxtapositions of the picturesque and the hyper-modern.
The island city-state has made and remade its identity through striking landmarks and strange, sci-fi architectures. It can appear visionary, a gleaming model of a sustainable city, and it can appear disheartening, littered with buildings conceived as statements yet with apparently little interesting to say.
Nevertheless, Singapore has become a kind of laboratory, a testing ground for extreme architecture, the success (or otherwise) of which filters out increasingly rapidly to the rest of the world.
With a need to develop a postcolonial identity in the mid 1960s, both government and business decided to seek that new image through the construction of an architecture as modern as any elsewhere. Much of what was built was housing to replace the city’s sprawling informal settlements, and it remains a city where most people live in good-quality government- subsidised housing (a fact often ignored by the free-marketeers who hold Singapore up as an exemplar of market freedoms). But there were also office towers, Brutalist buildings (often designed by major international architects), slick skyscrapers and generous public spaces. Then, in the 21st century, the architecture was turned up a notch with blockbuster spectacles including Marina Bay Sands and Gardens by the Bay — the advent of fridge-magnet architecture.
This mix of bizarre form-making and high-tech, of biophilia and occasional real innovation, makes it a place of architectural pilgrimage, a blend of the radical, the comical and, very probably, the future.
If Singapore is aiming for its defining characteristic to be its greenery, the sales pitch starts as soon as you land. At the centre of Jewel Changi Airport is the gushing sound of the world’s largest indoor waterfall (the HSBC Rain Vortex) cascading from the centre of the latticed dome and a tropical forest, all beneath a doughnut-shaped glass roof. Changi has long been recognised as one of the world’s most remarkable airports but this centrepiece really is breathtaking, even for the most jaded of global travellers and transiters. It was designed by the Israeli-Canadian-US architect Moshe Safdie, who also redefined Singapore’s skyline with the Marina Bay Sands (see below). The airport also, incidentally, features an enchanting and improbable butterfly garden. Perhaps, when the planet has overheated and has been extracted to death, this is what nature we will have left. Website; Directions
A high-tech Stonehenge with a surfboard balanced on top, Marina Bay Sands has become Singapore’s most visible landmark. Containing a vast casino (owned by Las Vegas Sands), super-luxe hotel towers, shops, celebrity-chef dining spots and one of the world’s most spectacular, if anxiety-inducing, infinity pools, it is the work of the Jewel Changi Airport designer, Moshe Safdie. For better or for worse, it transformed the city’s skyline, propelling it into a space age future. Impossible to ignore. If you’re there anyway, it’s worth checking out Foster + Partners’ Apple store, sited on its own island accessible by a walkway and beneath a glass dome, a little like the one he designed for Berlin’s Reichstag. Probably the slickest and most exclusive tech shop on the planet. Website; Directions
Greenery was clearly not enough for this botanical garden sited on land reclaimed from the Singapore Strait. The fantastic flowers are supplemented by a barrage of spectacular structures, from the “Supertrees” that sprout from the earth as alien-looking armatures for creepers and climbers (as well as supercharged multicoloured lampposts) to the humpbacked greenhouses that (this is the tropics, after all) emulate the planet’s more temperate environments. If they look like a 21st-century response to the great glasshouses of London — the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Palm and Temperate Houses at Kew — it is no accident. Their designer, Chris Wilkinson, is a Brit who draws influence from these incredible feats of Victorian engineering. Lit up like a gaudy Christmas wonderland after dark and buzzing with colour, flower and insect life, the Gardens by the Bay reinforce the super-modern unreality of Singapore, like a place that seems CGI’d, as if it might not actually exist yet. But it absolutely does. Website; Directions
The former Supreme Court building reopened in 2015 as a huge art gallery, designed by French architects StudioMilou. The colonial-era classical building is a solid, frankly dour structure, but the architects managed to inject a little tropical flair with a slender, sweeping entrance canopy and sun screening that dapples the floor in light throughout. Really very nicely done. It houses a huge and impressively varied collection of south-east Asian art, vibrant and mostly unfamiliar to westerners. Website; Directions
It’s not contemporary but it is modern, a prefabricated cast-iron structure made from components manufactured by the Saracen Foundry in Glasgow in the 1890s — an excellent example of modular colonial construction. It has proved a fantastically resilient and well-used building, and its hawker stalls prefigure the modern food court: open, airy, hygienic and efficient. Its plan is radial, with arms shooting out from a central clock tower (very Victorian) and, although it isn’t a huge building, it has an array of stalls and seating around it that allow it to radiate out into the city. It is now a last remnant of low-rise construction, dwarfed but not overwhelmed by the surrounding towers. This is an architecture as much of scents and sounds as it is of shelter, a good opportunity to escape the air-con and one with a terrific choice of cuisines, fast-noodle spots and ruggedly unluxurious communal seating. Website; Directions
This visionary Brutalist structure dates from 1973, and in its mountainous stepped form you can see hints of the early-20th-century Futurist architect Antonio Sant’Elia and of contemporary developments in the UK (such as the Brunswick Centre and Alexandra Road estates in London), Italy (the “Lavatrici” or “washing machines” in Genoa) and the US (Paul Rudolph’s unrealised megastructure for the Lower Manhattan Expressway). Designed by Design Partnership Architects, it housed a mix of apartments, offices, shops, a large supermarket and outdoor recreation spaces. Once the heart of the island’s Thai population, it closed in 2023 but is being redeveloped with plans to preserve its historical structure. Directions
This odd stack of buildings by OMA and Ole Scheeren in the west of the city is both bizarre and brilliant — it represented an entirely new way to arrange blocks in a big development to break up the mass and create a sense of place through enclosure without any concomitant claustrophobia. The residential blocks wrap around a series of interconnecting courtyards, with pools and play areas and drum-shaped lights for the levels below. Extremely striking and still cool. Scheeren was also responsible for the Duo towers, back nearer the centre of the city, a distinctive pair of skyscrapers wrapped in a honeycomb grid curving around a shady tropical garden and containing apartments and a hotel. Website; Directions
Built around (and over) a group of surviving 1930s shophouses in Singapore’s Chinatown, this aluminium-swathed boutique hotel is a surprising and deft new piece of work. It was designed by local practice WOHA, which has been responsible for some of Singapore’s most striking contemporary buildings and a lot of the neighbourhood’s lushest luxury hotels. 21 Carpenter is screened by its perforated metal facade upon which punched quotes occasionally appear. The historic buildings were a remittance house where Chinese labourers would send their wages home, and the phrases are taken from some of their accompanying letters, which were typed up by clerks: poignant and deeply affiliated with place and history. Website; Directions
Also interesting is WOHA’s Parkroyal Collection Pickering, a bigger hotel with sleek towers emerging from a concrete base that looks eroded and ruined, overgrown with vegetation. A kind of optimistic, high-tech vision of the post-apocalypse.
Late modernism
Singapore proved surprisingly receptive to the work of the masters of modernism once they had fallen slightly out of fashion elsewhere. That foresight now means the city-state has some of the best examples of the late style of some of architecture’s biggest names.
Chief among them is probably Paul Rudolph’s The Colonnade (1980), an apartment tower on Grange Road. It was a development from the architect’s unbuilt designs for the Graphic Arts Center of Manhattan. It looks like a stack of prefab pods, but the technology to build them wasn’t quite there so the concrete was poured in situ instead. New York’s loss was Singapore’s gain.
You might also take a look at One Raffles Place (1986), one of the later works of the Japanese great Kenzo Tange. He was well past his more Brutalist (or more accurately Metabolist) phase, and this smooth, slick tower is sharp and a little strange, as if there were a false perspective in play. The spiky, stripy and very striking The Gateway towers (1990) seem to be in a similar architectural idiom. This one is by IM Pei, who worked a lot in Singapore in his later years, including also the OCBC Centre (1986), a solid castle tower of a skyscraper with protruding block bays of fenestration — an intriguing and chunky survival. These are not the usual exuberant buildings that characterise the city, but rather a kind of technocratic modernism that set the background for its reputation as modern, clean and efficient.
There is much modern architecture in Singapore that is billed as cutting edge but is actually pretty daft, superficial or unhelpful. Even the worst, though, is usually striking and may be worth seeking out for the Insta thrill- seekers among you. Among these is Thomas Heatherwick’s 2013 Hive Learning Hub at Nanyang Technology University. It is a tottering cluster of cylinders with insane amounts of concrete bulging out, barely able to contain its interior. The courtyard is, despite my reservations, an interesting space, but the green fuzz on top meant to make it super-sustainable looks like a weak apology for its carbon footprint. (The recent fashion to drape and dangle every new structure with greenery is most visible in Singapore. The upside is that it does hide a lot of mediocre architecture.)
In the Downtown Core, BIG and Carlo Ratti Associati’s CapitaSpring tower (2022) with its fluid, applied facade looks like the work of a Zaha Hadid tribute band. Maybe take a look at the concrete lots of the ArtScience Museum (2011) by Moshe Safdie by Marina Bay if you want to see the downsides of shapism and the relentless and tiring quest for architectural icons. But Singapore remains a place where designers go to try stuff out, a lab in which the experiments, triumphs, failures and the rest all remain on show.
What are your favourite and least-favourite Singapore buildings? Tell us in the comments below.Andfollow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter
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Architecture was not Liu Jiakun’s first choice. Before it on his list of potential subjects to study came medical sciences (to please his parents), storage management and tannery. Even when he did finally commit to architecture in the 1970s, Liu did not immediately take to it. He signed up, he says, because he thought it was mostly about drawing, and was disappointed to find it was not, quitting the profession soon after to become a novelist. It was only gradually that he drifted back. “Life will find its own way,” he says.
Now the 69-year-old Chinese architect has been awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. His designs are thoughtful, considered and intriguing, and his way of working with salvaged and remade materials, as well as with builders and tradespeople, has marked him out from his contemporaries in China’s vast arena of generic commercial construction.
His best known project is West Village (2015) in his home city of Chengdu. A megablock that more closely resembles a kind of urban stadium than a housing development, its design aims to create an almost utopian interior, its deep terraces surrounding a forested, landscaped courtyard with playing fields and parks. A stack of shallow ramps allows residents and visitors to climb the structure slowly and use the top deck as a public space with a view of the city. It became so successful as an attraction that the authorities (always wary of a crowd) closed off public access.
“There is a wisdom in his architecture,” says Tom Pritzker, chair of the Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the $100,000 award, architecture’s most prestigious, “philosophically looking beyond the surface to reveal that history, materials and nature are symbiotic.”
Liu’s approach also reveals itself in his smaller, subtler work. Visiting the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he met a bereaved family and offered to build a memorial for their lost 15-year-old daughter. The simple, grey shed, with its open door and pink interior, is a strikingly personal and emotional work that memorialised not only an individual but all 90,000 victims. Its “everydayness” (his word) is also characteristic. Despite their often large scale, Liu’s works play with ideas about the ordinary, the imperfect and the mundane. At their best, even the biggest works appear self-effacing and attempt to become background rather than monument.
Liu has no single approach. The Luyeyuan Stone Sculpture Art Museum (2002), housing a collection of Buddhist relics, is, for instance, an elegant intervention in a remote landscape that builds on European influences (notably, to me, Carlo Scarpa). Entered via a bridge over a river, it is an omnivorous piece of architecture, its landscaping modelled after a traditional Chinese garden with complex symbolic and iconographic elements. The Suzhou Museum of Imperial Kiln Brick (2016) is made mostly of the material it celebrates, something between a temple and a cavernous warehouse, with a reinterpretation of a Chinese garden on one side, including water features and an exquisite screened bridge. His Clock Museum of the Cultural Revolution (2007) meanwhile is an odd, conceptual thing. Even brickier than the brick museum, its many niches create a columbarium of clocks for a stopped moment in time, but its monumental exterior seems to echo the socialist realist buildings of the Mao era. It suggests a particularly personal project.
Born in 1956, Liu grew up amid the chaos of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. He was exiled to the countryside to labour in the fields for three years as part of the “educated youth” programme and only began to study after the reopening of universities in the 1970s. A feeling of uncertainty seems to permeate his work, which is often constructed using what he terms “rebirth brick”. This is not quite reused material (of the kind that his fellow countryman Wang Shu, another Pritzker winner, has employed), but rather something remade, using rubble (from earthquakes or demolition) and cheap additives such as wheat stalks and rough cement. This shift away from the perfection of the modern manufactured product gives his buildings a texture and grain that imbues it with character and a relationship to what came before. It is also very different from the relentless newness of the contemporary urban Chinese cityscape.
Of his own work, the architect says: “I always aspire to be like water — to permeate through a place without carrying a fixed form of my own and to seep into the local environment and the site itself. Over time, the water gradually solidifies, transforming into architecture, and perhaps even into the highest form of human spiritual creation. Yet it still retains all the qualities of that place, both good and bad.” Join the https://vic2.club/ community and experience the ultimate online betting destination, where excitement and rewards await.”
Drake drops cases over ‘Not Like Us’ before filing defamation lawsuit
Two months earlier, Drake filed petitions in New York and Texas over his claim UMG schemed to “artificially inflate” Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”
unbranded – Entertainment
Drake’s ongoing legal cases now include a federal defamation lawsuit in New York and a petition in Texas, which accuses Universal Music Group of paying off radio stations to play “Not Like Us.”
Drake alleges UMG, which distributes both his and Kendrick Lamar’s music, has continued to defame him with the release of Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” which the rapper performed at the Super Bowl.
Three months after he accused record label Universal Music Group in a Texas court filing of making “covert payments” to radio stations to “play and promote” Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” Drake is letting iHeartRadio off the hook in the case.
Drake and iHeartMedia “reached an amicable resolution of the dispute to the satisfaction of both sides,” according to a Thursday court filing in Bexar County, obtained by USA TODAY on Monday.
The rapper has updated his case – originally filed Nov. 21 – to remove the San Antonio-based company.
“In exchange for documents that showed iHeart did nothing wrong, Drake agreed to drop his petition. No payments were made by either one of us,” a spokesperson for iHeartMedia said in a statement to USA TODAY on Monday.
Drake’s legal team, meanwhile, is “pleased that the parties were able to reach a settlement satisfactory to both sides, and have no further comment on this matter,” according to a statement provided to USA TODAY.
Drake’s Nov. 21 petition, which was not a lawsuit but instead a precursor to potential legal action, sought to depose UMG and iHeartMedia and obtain proof of his claim that his music distributor “funneled payments” to iHeartRadio as part of a “pay-to-play scheme” to “inflate artificially the metrics” and spread “Not Like Us” across the airwaves.
Recap of Drake’s new album: Rapper minimizes ‘beef’ in his first album since Kendrick Lamar feud
What is Drake’s Texas court case regarding ‘Not Like Us’ about?
The song, which was released May 4 and dominated the 2025 Grammy Awards last month, calls Drake a “certified pedophile.” It also drops an incendiary verse that has gone viral and been co-signed by major members of the music industry, if the Grammys sing-along was any indication: “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A-Minor.”
Drake’s petition offers a more detailed look at Drake’s ire toward UMG over the allegations against Drake in Lamar’s song. His petition claimed the company “knew that the song itself, as well as its accompanying album art and music video, attacked the character of another one of UMG’s most prominent artists, Drake, by falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, engaging in pedophilic acts, harboring sex offenders, and committing other criminal sexual acts.”
Due to UMG’s control over the licensing of “Not Like Us” through Interscope Records, Drake’s lawyers said, the company “could have refused to release or distribute the song or required the offending material to be edited and/or removed.”
The latest in Drake’s legal cases over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track
A week after their legal move in Texas, Drake’s team filed a petition in New York Supreme Court that accused UMG and Spotify of engaging in a “scheme to ensure” Lamar’s diss track, “Not Like Us,” “broke through” on multiple streaming platforms.
He claimed UMG used underhanded tactics to garner more listeners for the Lamar song on Spotify and radio stations, which resulted in “Not Like Us” breaking a few Spotify records and landing at No. 1 twice on the Billboard Top 100.
UMG denied the “offensive and untrue” claims in a statement to USA TODAY at the time.
In January, Drake dropped the case and pivoted to a defamation case against UMG.
In a civil lawsuit filed in New York federal court, Drake’s legal team claimed that despite a decade-long relationship, his and Lamar’s shared music distributor “intentionally sought to turn Drake into a pariah, a target for harassment, or worse.” They also wrote the company sought to “profit from damaging Drake’s reputation.”
Drake sued for defamation, second-degree harassment via promoting violence against him and deceptive business practices. “Not Like Us,” he alleged, spreads defamatory claims about Drake, including that he engages in sexual relations with minors and sex trafficking and also harbors sex offenders.
In a statement to USA TODAY at the time, UMG called Drake’s claims “untrue,” denying ever engaging in defamation. The spokesperson said, in part, that Drake is trying to “weaponize the legal process to silence an artist’s creative expression and to seek damages from UMG for distributing that artist’s music.”
Drake: UMG spread ‘defamatory content’ with Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show
A pretrial conference for the case is scheduled for April 2, but UMG’s attorneys have argued the meeting should not take place until the judge weighs the merits of their request to dismiss the case.
Drake’s team opposed the move in a Feb. 24 filing in response to the motion, accusing the defense of delaying discovery, or the exchange of information so both parties can gather evidence.
“At the same time UMG has been delaying here, UMG launched new campaigns to further spread the defamatory content, including at the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, which had over 133.5 million viewers,” the filing stated.
In a Feb. 21 letter to the judge, one of UMG’s lawyers noted Drake’s team “has agreed to withdraw certain key allegations in his complaint.”
However, the “God’s Plan” rapper’s lawyers claimed this was a misleading statement, saying Drake only “agreed to address UMG’s concerns regarding a single factual allegation,” which would at most “result in changes to 5 paragraphs of a Complaint spanning 237 paragraphs over 81-pages.”
