Boris Johnson today confirmed he would build Europe’s longest segregated urban cycle lane through central London after delays likely to be suffered by motorists were reduced.

The Mayor approved the “Crossrail for bikes” protected route through Parliament Square and along the Victoria Embankment and Upper Thames Street after it won overwhelming public support. — standard.co.uk

Today, the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution authorized museum officials to explore opening its first-ever international exhibition gallery. [...] go-ahead to "develop terms for an agreement" with the London Legacy Development Corp. to create a new exhibition space in London at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, home to the 2012 Games and a new cultural center. In the Smithsonian’s 168-year existence, this site would be the first international venue to house a long-term exhibition. — smithsonianmag.com

Street artists are showing how they’d map cities differently in a new show that lets visitors step into their clandestine worlds.

[...] Mapping the City, an exhibition of the responses by 50 international street artists to being asked to map their cities “through subjective surveying rather than objective ordinance”. Conventional cartography this is not. — theguardian.com

Mace has been appointed to a pre-construction deal to build the much delayed ‘Can of Ham’ project at 60-70 St Mary Axe, Construction News can reveal. [...]

The project was granted planning approval by the City of London in the summer of 2008 but immediately hit delays as the global financial crisis took hold [...].

The Foggo Associates-designed project will join a cluster of iconic towers in the centre of the City, including neighbouring 30 St Mary Axe, commonly known as the Gherkin. — Construction News

The owners of the 222-metre (734ft) “Cheesegrater” building, the second tallest building in the City of London, are to replace dozens of long bolts on its structure after it was revealed that another one had fractured.

The bolts, among 3,000 on the building’s 15,000-tonne frame, are each just under a metre long. Two snapped in November, with some debris falling to the ground from the fifth floor. Nobody was hurt, but an area below the tower is still cordoned off. — theguardian.com

In a warren of rooms inside a 400-year-old townhouse on the Essex-Suffolk border, a counter-revolution against the most dramatic rebuilding of the London skyline in decades is gathering strength.

Eschewing computer power for sharp pencils and tracing paper, father and son architect team Quinlan and Francis Terry are drafting classically inspired designs for some of the capital’s most prominent sites in a fightback against plans for hundreds of new skyscrapers. — theguardian.com

Damien Hirst’s new art complex in south London, which will house Modern and contemporary works drawn from the artist’s collection as well as natural history objects, will be free of charge when it opens to the public in 2015. After more than a decade in development, the gallery, which runs the length of Newport Street in Vauxhall, is due to open in the summer.

[...] design by Caruso St John Architects, which converts and extends three Grade II-listed theatre carpentry workshops, in 2005. — theartnewspaper.com

It is to serve this world that Second Home has come into being, a former carpet factory off Brick Lane in east London within whose seductive interiors a fragment of Superstudio’s techno-nomadism has, possibly, come to pass. [...]

The architects are José Selgas and Lucía Cano [...] who have just been announced as the designers of next year’s Serpentine pavilion. They bring to this, their first UK project, lightness and grace as well as invention, and an awareness of when to stop. — theguardian.com

The British Museum’s round Reading Room might not fully reopen until 2020. One of London’s grandest interiors, it was used by generations of scholars, including Karl Marx, when it housed the British Library. The historic reading desks are currently covered by a platform built in 2007, when the room was temporarily converted into a space for the museum’s major exhibitions. — theartnewspaper.com

The Qatari royal family is planning to convert three of London’s most prestigious addresses into a single mega-mansion valued at over £200 million. The family, which already owns famous London landmarks including the Shard, Harrods and the Olympic Park, has submitted plans to convert three properties in Regent’s Park [...] The Qatari royal family now owns more of London than the Crown Estate. — RT