This year's Designs of the Year jury have chosen their crème de la crème of the world's most cutting-edge design. Since London's Design Museum announced the 76 nominees in February, the competition has narrowed down to seven category winners. In the final step of the competition, one of these category winners will be announced as the overall winner by June 30 at an event hosted by St. Martins Lane London. — bustler.net

Whenever a campaign wants to stop some new development it will use the phrase "tower block". This isn't what the developers would call them – they prefer "stunning developments" or "luxury apartments".

There is a national campaign afoot against new towers, specifically against the astonishing 230 mostly residential ones planned for the capital. Inevitably, the campaign has referred to tower blocks and "the mistakes of the 1960s" knowing this is emotive language [...]. — theguardian.com

In so-called hot cities [...] battles are raging over height limits and urban density, all on the basis of two premises: 1) that building all these towers will increase the supply of housing and therefore reduce its costs; 2) that increasing density is the green, sustainable thing to do and that towers are the best way to do it.

I am not sure that either is true. — theguardian.com

Dear Boris,

Let's agree that towers can be beautiful. Let's also agree that London needs new homes and plenty of them. It may well be that many of the 200-plus tall buildings now proposed can play a useful role if, as you say, they are "sensitively managed, well designed and in the right place".

London is not Amsterdam nor Vienna, cities whose inherited profile is retained at all costs. But neither, as you once put it, should it be Dubai-on-Thames. — theguardian.com

With titanium facades swinging like jiving skirts and windows staggered like towers of toppling coins, the chaotic energy of the latest apartment designs for Battersea power station can only mean one thing: Frank Gehry is in town.

As the 85-year-old visionary architect behind the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao outlined plans for 700 apartments in London – his first English buildings – he walked straight into a raging debate about the capital's affordable housing crisis. — theguardian.com

Almost 10 years and £12bn in the making, the full extent of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park will finally open to the public on Saturday, revealing "the biggest new park in Europe for 150 years", magicked from the mud at the bottom of the Lea Valley.

Stretching for 230 hectares (568 acres) around a knotted tangle of waterways and rail lines, it is, says its maker, the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), the size of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens combined [...]. — theguardian.com

Britain’s decades-long planning “chaos” has left London a city of great individual buildings, such as the Gherkin and the Shard, standing in a sea of “woeful” architecture, the Government’s design czar said today.

Marylebone-based architect Sir Terry Farrell called for a “revolution” in the planning system, to end the culture of Nimbyism and put the creation of well designed places to live, work and shop at the heart of policymaking. — London Evening Standard

Seventy-six people were injured when part of the roof came down during a performance of The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time in December.

BBC Radio 4's You and Yours has seen a letter from Westminster City Council saying hessian wadding embedded in the ceiling was getting weaker over time.

The material's deterioration led to the collapse, the council said. — bbc.com

The White House may be the centre of great power, but it is not in itself that big or that shouty. It’s just a nice, white house, rather elegant, with a fine sweeping drive, but utterly dwarfed by the US Treasury next door – a fact that is, in itself, a bit of a clue to the relative significance of wealth in American society. [...]

If the White House gleams simply because of the influence of the man inside it, the rest of the Washington complex is designed to make its case for significance. — telegraph.co.uk

[...] Dutton and Piper have traced a path, broadly following the Meridian, extending from the 02 Arena in Greenwich across the Thames by cable car to the Olympic Park in Stratford: a largely flat and buggy-friendly three-hour meander through an extraordinarily varied and little-known urban landscape that will be punctuated by striking pieces of modern sculpture. They’re calling it the Line, and the hope is that it will be up and running by midsummer. — telegraph.co.uk

Up until recently Canary Wharf was the only place for skyscrapers in London. [...]

Now it seems that London is going to receive a more cohesive skyline, with a new study produced by the New London Architecture (NLA) thinktank suggesting that at least 236 tall buildings (those over 20 storeys in height) are currently proposed, approved or under construction in the capital. — independent.co.uk

Is London in danger of losing its soul? The question may sound melodramatic, but this is just what many of the British capital’s commentariat have been discussing over the past few days. [...]

Barely a day goes by without a local news story about the phenomenal rise of London property values. In just the past few weeks, we've learned that price levels are "approaching madness." [...]

London buyers start to bid consistently 25 percent above the asking price. — theatlanticcities.com

London’s 200 new towers are something different. Virtually every one contains “luxury” apartments. This new residential upsurge in London is echoed across the Atlantic in New York – as property in both cities becomes a global reserve currency. New York, once the city of the commercial skyscraper, has become the city of the condo tower and the penthouse. But where does that leave commercial architecture? — ft.com