Hal Foster in his new book The Art-Architecture Complex turns his attention to how art and architecture have informed each other over the past 50 years. He argues that their fusion has become a defining feature of contemporary culture and provides a scathing critique of the post-industrial cultural economy in which art prompts the transformation of disused warehouses and factories into galleries, and depressed, run-down working-class areas are reborn as stylish art-tourist destinations.

Tracing the connections informing the style of architecture as practiced by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano - architect of the London Bridge Shard - Foster identifies the latest trend in high-octane architecture: the 'global style,' which in its scope and reach is comparable to the famous 'international style' of the Bauhaus, Gropius Mies and Le Corbusier in the 20th century but, he believes, is primarily characterised by 'banal cosmopolitanism.'

Hal Foster is author of the acclaimed Design and Crime, Townsend Martin Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University and an editor at the seminal art journal October. His latest book is The Art-Architecture Complex.

Fee: £6.00 full / £5.00 concessions.