A London architect firm has been declared the winner of an international competition to design a new $1bn Iraqi parliament building in Baghdad.

Assemblage architects was one of 130 firms to put forward a design for the £620million scheme.

But while Assemblage received its $250,000 prize in August, the designs have only just been released as the Iraqi Government had remained in talks with a rival, which came third place in the competition, Zaha Hadid Architects, The Guardian has reported. — dailymail.co.uk

In 1958, Baghdad was featured in Time magazine—not as a hotbed of revolutionary, civil or sectarian strife, but for its ambitious plans for the world's most famous architects, among them Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto, to recapture through their modern buildings the city's former glory. — online.wsj.com