London’s inaugural Design Biennale is set to open at Somerset House this September, based around the idea of Utopia to coincide with the venue’s year-long events programme.

The biennale is headed up by London Design Festival director Ben Evans, biennale director Christopher Turner, former editor of Icon, and London Design Festival co-founder Sir John Sorrell. More than 30 countries are taking part in the event. — itsnicethat.com

The cartoon drawings and graffiti scrawled all over the 1970s hangout of the Sex Pistols - a former silversmith’s workshop attached to a townhouse in London’s Denmark Street – have helped the building be awarded Grade 2* Listed Status.

The decision by the Department of Culture, Media & Sport, on advice from Historic England, is a major victory in the campaign to maintain Denmark Street, known as “Tin Pan Alley”, which is widely seen as a spiritual home for British popular music. — independent.co.uk

Rapidly rising property prices and rents, combined with the loss of social housing through right to buy, have put councils under growing pressure to find new ways to help people off their housing lists.

In Lewisham one solution is a £4.3m scheme to provide 24 homes and 880 sq m of business space that can be picked up and moved at a later date, allowing the council to make use of vacant brownfield land while longer-term projects are finalised. — theguardian.com

As the number of people moving to cities continues to rise, with 66% of the global population expected to live in urban areas by 2050, it is critical to understand how urban living is affecting us — Urban Mind

English cities and towns left without planned flood defences by government cuts will now get the projects after a surprise £540m boost in funding in Wednesday’s budget.

The north of England, devastated by winter floods, will get at least £150m of the new money, giving better protection for thousands of homes.

The Guardian had revealed that 294 projects in line for funding were left stranded after heavy cuts by David Cameron’s coalition government... — the Guardian

Google has been granted planning permission for an office in the King’s Cross area of central London.

The 180,000-square-foot building, which is to be known as “S2”, will be designed by UK firm Mossessian Architecture. [...]

It will be based near the site of the firm’s defunct Google Glass store and DeepMind, its artificial intelligence start-up. [...]

The property is expected to be completed by 2017 “at the earliest”. — globalconstructionreview.com

Tens of thousands of hard-working families will be forced to leave their council homes and find themselves unable to afford a local alternative as a result of government plans to restrict social housing to the poorest, according to research obtained by the Observer.

The devastating figures...show that almost 60,000 households in England will be unable to afford to remain in their council properties from April next year, as a result of George Osborne’s reform, called “pay to stay”. — the Guardian

Graham Fink has been documenting the demolition sites of Shanghai for five years, trying to capture the state of flux during this period of rapid urbanisation. His Ballads of Shanghai exhibition is at London’s Riflemaker gallery until Sunday. — the Guardian

The number of premature deaths attributed to particulate pollution has risen, government figures show.

According to Public Health England, the percentage of premature deaths attributable to minute particles known as PM2.5s rose to 5.3% in 2013 in England from 5.1% in 2012. The death rate in London rose to 6.7% from 6.6%. The figures follow significant improvements in air quality across England in 2010 and 2011. — the Guardian

Hey London, how do you feel about a major span across the Thames being corporately sponsored? Because that's what's going to happen with the Garden Bridge.

It's just been announced that Sky, the media behemoth owned by Rupert Murdoch, has given an undisclosed amount to the Garden Bridge Trust. But this is no altruistic gesture: one of the gardens on the bridge "will be named by Sky". — Londonist

Whereas residents were once all long-term tenants, in the 35 years since Margaret Thatcher encouraged people to buy – and therefore sell – their council flats and houses, the population of places like this has become ever more transient.

In particular, homes that were once council properties are now often owned by buy-to-let landlords who rent them out on a short-term basis. — The Guardian

If there is one thing Britons dislike more than their country’s housing shortage, it is the idea of building more houses. Even as a lack of homes has sent prices through the roof... cities have remained ringed by protected “green belts” of land that are off-limits to developers. Attempts to build on them provoke outcry. But on December 7th the government published a consultation on letting councils allocate “appropriate small-scale sites in the green belt specifically for starter homes”... — the Economist

The 18 members of London-based Assemble were named winners of the 31st Turner prize on Monday night, receiving their £25,000 prize from the Sonic Youth co-founder and artist Kim Gordon at an awards dinner broadcast live on Channel 4 from Tramway, Glasgow.

Assemble are the first non-artists, in the strictest sense of the word, to win the prize. They were nominated for their work tackling urban dereliction in Toxteth, Liverpool... — The Guardian

[Elsie Owusu] alleged that the election [for Riba’s vice-president of practice and profession] was rigged in favour of a rival candidate, and in a complaint to Riba’s president, Jane Duncan, she claimed it was “tantamount to institutionalised racism in my view”. [...]

“The banter, discrimination and treating black people worse than other staff goes through architecture like a stick of rock. It’s absolutely disgraceful and it starts at the top with Riba." — theguardian.com