The Royal College of Art’s flagship new building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, has been granted planning permission by Wandsworth Council. The building is part of a £108m investment programme in the RCA – the most radical transformation of the institution’s campus in its 181-year history.  — Royal College of Art

London’s suggestive skyline already boasts a Gherkin, a Walkie Talkie and a Cheesegrater. Soon they may be joined by the Golf Ball. According to plans seen by the Guardian, a giant glass sphere taller than St Paul’s Cathedral could be built next to the Olympic park in east London. [...]

One design visualisation shows that the lower half of the orb would be fitted with tiered seating, while the upper half would form a spectacular vaulted roof. — The Guardian

The clown king of novelty infrastructure fantasies has once again stolen the limelight with his preposterous plan for a 22-mile bridge across the Channel. [...]

But none of this matters. In a world where Johnson got as far as flushing £37m of public money into the Thames on another fantasy project, the Garden Bridge, a great Channel crossing could easily be conjured into being. — The Guardian

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has defended proposals for a high-rise, mixed-use scheme in London – described as a ‘breakthrough project’ for the practice – following criticism over its size and location. Shortly before Christmas, the firm submitted plans to Lambeth Council [...] The scheme, the practice’s first major mixed-use residential and commercial development in the UK, has been dubbed a ‘two-fingered salute’ by opponents, who claim the proposals are too big for the site. — architectsjournal.co.uk

A major British construction company is going into liquidation after failing to secure a financial lifeline. Carillion (CIOIF), which employs 43,000 people around the world, said in a statement Monday that rescue talks with stakeholders including the British government had collapsed.

"We have been unable to secure the funding to support our business plan, and it is therefore with the deepest regret that we have arrived at this decision," Carillion Chairman Philip Green said in the statement. — money.cnn.com

London’s new US embassy may be just a glass cube with disguised fortifications, but it is also restrained, efficient, green… the antithesis of Donald Trump [...]

It’s a fortress, of course it is. As the embassy of the Great Satan to the Little Satan – as the unlamented Ayatollah Khomeini would have put it – it couldn’t not be a target and defended accordingly. The architects therefore decided to make it as nice a fortress as possible [...]. — The Guardian

The Queen has appointed Tim Knox, 55, the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, to be the new director of the Royal Collection Trust. He has been the museum’s director since 2013 and is an architectural historian and country house curator. [...]

His early career was spent at the Royal Institution of British Architects. He then served as the head curator of the National Trust (2002-05), from which he went on to be the director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum (2005-13). — The Art Newspaper

Some of the world's biggest architecture firms have been competing for plots in this winter's tastiest property market -- the Gingerbread City.

Recently opened at the Museum of Architecture in London, the miniature metropolis is brimming with contemporary -- and almost entirely edible -- buildings.

Around 50 companies specializing in architecture, engineering and landscaping have baked and built structures for the project. — CNN Style

At $1 billion, it is the most expensive embassy ever constructed. But its designers say the new American chancery on the Thames River marks a paradigm shift: The U.S. Embassy here will exude openness while hiding all the clever ways it defends itself from attack.

After decades of building American embassies that look brutalist or bland, like obvious fortresses, the soon-to-be-opened chancery in London is a crystalline cube, plopped down in the middle of a public park, without visible walls.  — washingtonpost.com

Out of the 208 households that needed rehousing after the fire, 118 will still be in emergency accommodation or with friends over the holiday period, including 29 families with children. A further 48 households have accepted permanent housing offers, but have not yet moved in and are currently still in temporary homes, [support group] Grenfell United said. Days after the fire the prime minister, Theresa May, promised that families would be rehoused within three weeks. — The Guardian

This year, the group has expanded aggressively into the City of London, snapping up floor space usually reserved for large corporates over the year to date, including large offices in Moorgate — its largest site globally — and at One Poultry, a Grade II listed building directly opposite the Bank of England. — Financial Times