“We have to think of buildings as material depots,” says Thomas Rau, a Dutch architect who has been working to develop a public database of materials in existing buildings and their potential for reuse. [...] “Waste is simply material without an identity,” he says. “If we track the provenance and performance of every element of a building, giving it an identity, we can eliminate waste.” — The Guardian

It was the year that council housing turned community-minded, King Arthur got a swishy new bridge and the Lake District harboured a gem — The Guardian

This all makes what is happening now all the more remarkable. Last summer, Ford Motor Company announced it had bought the building, with plans to invest $740million to transform it into a world-leading research centre for ‘future mobility’. The very industry that signed the station’s death warrant in the first place is now set on resuscitating it as a beacon of sustainable transport. — The RIBA Journal

Ishigami’s structure is a striking object, but it could have been so much better, and it is a frustrating outcome in what has been a troubled year for the Serpentine. [...] After almost 20 years of commissioning novelty structures to host summer parties for sponsors, it feels like the format could do with a rethink and look beyond the bounds of the gallery’s garden, and the collectors’ estates where the structures end up. — Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian

Any visitor to New York over the past few years will have witnessed this curious new breed of pencil-thin tower. Poking up above the Manhattan skyline like etiolated beanpoles, they seem to defy the laws of both gravity and commercial sense. They stand like naked elevator shafts awaiting their floors, raw extrusions of capital piled up until it hits the clouds. — The Guardian

[...] Peter Barber, one of the most original architects working today. Over the past decade he has built a reputation for his ingenious reinventions of traditional house types and his ability to craft characterful chunks of city out of unpromising sites.

[...] He is a master of humane high-density, designing that rare thing: new housing that feels in tune with the grain of London, in the form of neither alienating slabs nor tacky towers, without resorting to pastiche. — The Guardian

Following a three-year, £50.7m programme of works, dubbed the “Open Up” project, the ROH hopes to have a more visible, welcoming presence. Its motivations have not only been to shed its rarefied reputation, but also to improve crowd flow inside the constricted corridors, inject daytime activity and transform its secondary studio, the Linbury, into a new world-class theatre. Walls have been bulldozed, spaces excavated, and restaurants extended [...] — The Guardian

In a vast expanse beneath the Finnish capital lies a soaring circus-top culture hub. Will the €50m Amos Rex art museum put the city at the forefront of Europe’s art scene? [...]

“It is as if the museum didn’t quite agree to go underground,” says Asmo Jaaksi of local architecture firm JKMM, which masterminded the project, “and it’s somehow bubbling up into the square.” — The Guardian

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

Something of an outsider architect, Fujimoto has never worked for another practice, which perhaps explains his firmly original approach. “I was scared of being rejected,” he says. “And if I had gone to work for another architect, they might have overpowered me because I was so easily influenced.” — The Guardian

OMA’s Blox project stacks a museum, offices, gym, restaurant and housing in a provocative attempt to condense the thrilling energy of a city into a single structure – but the result is a gloomy glass monolith [...]

It is OMA’s first ever playground, and it doesn’t look as if having fun comes naturally. — 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

From Zaha Hadid’s bulbous plaza to a ‘library’ of flora planted across a skygarden, the South Korean capital is using its architecture festival to look to the future – and atone for the costly sins of the past — The Guardian

Architects have a thing for strong men, and the big global practices – from Norman Foster to Zaha Hadid – have piled in in a bid to help Kazakhstan’s dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, build himself a trophy city — The Guardian