The trustees of London’s garden bridge, including actor Joanna Lumley and the former Labour minister Lord Davies, could have breached their legal duties over the failed project, that cost taxpayers more than £40m, according to a leading lawyer.

The legal opinion comes as pressure mounts for a formal investigation into how the charity behind the abandoned scheme spent so much money without construction work even beginning. — The Guardian

Southern England has been particularly parched, enjoying the driest June on record, but the hot weather has lead to an array of unlikely discoveries across the British Isles. Outlines of ancient and historic sites are being revealed – some of which haven’t been seen in living memory. — The Telegraph

Liverpool City Council (LCC) has announced a new partnership with a blockchain platform company to offset more than 110% of its carbon emissions, with the city announcing its bid to become the world's first climate-positive city by the end of 2020. LCC will conduct a year-long trial with the Poseidon Foundation to use a blockchain platform to offset the carbon impact of all products and services in the city by supporting global forest conversation projects. — edie.net

Facebook is doubling its presence in London by acquiring office space across two buildings in King's Cross.

The 600,000 square feet (56,000 square meters) of office space will be enough for more than 6,000 workstations. [...]

The expansion follows the 2017 opening of its site at Rathbone Place, which added 800 jobs and opened its first in-house incubator program for startup businesses. It also has a location on Brock Street. — CNET

There is no single showstopper and it will be a difficult year for the judges, weighing up the varying shades of reticence on the list. Together, the buildings make a bit of a dull group, celebrating the mute and austere over the bold and expressive – repeating the tenor of last year’s list, which scandalously failed to include Herzog & de Meuron's Tate Switch House. — The Guardian

A 56-storey tower called The Diamond is set to join the growing cluster of skyscrapers in the City of London and will be the financial district’s third-tallest building when completed.

The planned 263.4m tower at 100 Leadenhall Street will rank behind 1 Undershaft at 290m, nicknamed the Trellis, where work is yet to start, and 22 Bishopsgate, the reworked Pinnacle at 278m, which is under construction. — The Guardian

Tate St Ives has been announced as Art Fund Museum of the Year 2018, the largest and most prestigious museum prize in the world. Anne Barlow, director of Tate St Ives, was presented with the £100,000 prize by artist Isaac Julien and the ‘world’s best teacher’ Andria Zafirakou at an award ceremony at the V&A, London. — Art Fund

Nearly 94% of British architects are white, despite 14% of the UK population being of a black and minority ethnic background. [...]

Warren is featured [...] in a new film due to premiere at the Royal College of Art (RCA) this month. Celebrating Architecture, which aims to encourage diversity in the profession, will be accompanied by architecture workshops for around 80 pupils from communities under-represented in the profession. — The Guardian

The public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster has sacked its expert architectural witness after it emerged he was not a registered architect.

John Priestley, who was appointed on Wednesday to produce a report into the architectural design of the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower, was sacked on Friday. [...]

According to the inquiry, before he was instructed, Priestley told officials he was a UK registered and chartered architect. — The Guardian

The UK’s largest practice, Foster + Partners, says it would consider moving its headquarters from London if Brexit meant it could no longer attract the world’s best architects [...]

Less than a quarter of the architects based at Foster + Partners’ huge Battersea head office are UK nationals – with around a half from EU countries. In total, the firm employs 1,061 staff in the UK including 353 architects. — architectsjournal.co.uk

What most caught [German critic Hermann Muthesius's] eye was the work of a young couple, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, who were quietly making wildly original furniture, buildings and interiors. These struck him as utterly “divergent from everything that is familiar”. Fusing the sinuous forms of art nouveau with rugged Scots baronial motifs and exotic Japanese touches, their designs were a startling sight – too much for many British critics to stomach. — The Guardian

Selfridges department store in London has teamed up with Yorkshire Sculpture park on a new contemporary sculpture initiative. New works will be unveiled every six months on a marble and steel monolith designed by the UK architect David Chipperfield as part of his commission to create Selfridges’ new accessories hall. The joint project, known as the Art Block, has been dubbed Selfridges’ version of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. — The Art Newspaper