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One of two archways regarded as natural wonders comes down at Legzira beach, leaving a pile of rubble on Atlantic coast
One of two rock archways at Legzira beach on Morocco's Atlantic coast has collapsed. A pile of red rubble was all that was left after the natural wonder near the city of Sidi Ifni, 93 miles (150km) south of Agadir, came down on Friday afternoon.
Often cited as one of the world's most beautiful beaches, Legzira is famous for sunsets punctuated by the rock structures jutting out from the cliffs. They were formed over thousands of years by erosion.
Continue reading...The celebrated architect talks about his latest work a new home for the Design Museum and his dedication to clutter-free living
John Pawson is nothing if not consistent. As we sit in his minimalist garden outside his minimalist kitchen, having walked there from the minimalist new premises he has designed for the Design Museum in London, he tells me about his first work, the minimalist apartment for the art dealer Hester van Royen, his then partner and the mother of his first child.
Has he ever designed, I ask, anything not-minimalist in the four decades since, drifting in Japan, seeking an alternative to going into his family's successful textile business or other futures that might have followed his Eton education, he met the kind-of minimalist designer Shiro Kuramata and discovered his vocation?
His wife Catherine likes a sofa, so there is a sofa. She also likes cushions, ‘but they're in the cupboard'
He is aware that ‘there are ironies' in his approach, as ‘building isn't minimal'
Continue reading...Boyd Tonkin finds great buildings, a bold new art gallery and custard pies to die for in Portugal's capital
Everyone in Lisbon says that, since Portugal's great age of exploration, the city has looked far out to sea. It took a hand-written list of pratos de dia outside a little restaurant on the Rua das Janelas Verdes Street of Green Shutters to add spice to that truism for me. Today's specials? “Tandoori chicken €6.50, pork saag €6.50, chicken dansak €6.50, pork biryani €5.50”.
The pork dishes tell the story on a plate. In 1497, Vasco da Gama's first expedition to the Malabar coast inaugurated Portugal's brief heyday as a maritime superpower and began an affair with India (above all in Goa, Portuguese until 1961) that persists until now. António Costa, Portugal's prime minister, comes from a part-Indian family that still has an ancestral house in the south Goan town of Margao.
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