The rise of housing followed the rise of a prosperous middle class driven by the Industrial Revolution, an event that helped to reshape architecture from the 18th century until now. — guardian.co.uk

Designed by developer/architect Ian Pollard, it's a brash, grandiose office building on Queenstown Road facing Battersea Park that was completed
in 1987... In short, it's an architectural dog's dinner, one of a very few buildings that can actually make me laugh out loud on the rare occasion I pass it on the bus. — thisislondon.co.uk

Once the definitive bicycle city, Beijing is responding to growing congestion and ongoing smog by setting a new target: for 23% of commuters to pedal to work by 2015. To achieve this target, new infrastructure for cyclists is to be wheeled in, with improved bicycle lanes, more parking facilities and a rental scheme to put a further 50,000 bikes on the roads by 2015. — sustainablecitiescollective.com

Monocle's favourite cities combine small-scale neighbourhoods with green spaces, but not all cities were built with the right foundations for future growth and sustainability. We champion four urban innovators who see potential in derelict spaces and find creative approaches to make some of the world's more challenging neighbourhoods bloom into richer and more pleasant places to stay. — Monocle

In a week dominated by images of buildings burning to the ground, there have been at least a few people out there still building the things. The press was granted a preview of King's Cross station's new concourse, ahead of its opening in time for the Olympics next year. Designed by architect John McAslan, it is a majestically conceived space which stands alongside the Grade 1-listed sheds and replaces the cramped and grotty 1960s extension that currently serves as the station's entrance. — guardian.co.uk

As Europe continues to battle economic and environmental gloom and doom, nations across the continent are re-evaluating how to build the cities of tomorrow with tight budgets and green mindsets. "We are at a key moment, where we as architects must become activists. We must innovate and help to find new solutions for how people can live well and do well," says Enric Ruiz-Geli, founding principal of Cloud9 architects in Barcelona. — online.wsj.com

The role that architecture plays in all of this is of course limited. New business eventually accrued from rebuilding destroyed buildings will have a negligible effect on the construction economy. So far the London riots have claimed two historic landmarks, the Victorian cottages at Croydon’s Reeves Corner (1867) and Tottenham’s Art Deco Union Point (1930), both of which survived the Blitz. — building.co.uk

Winners have been announced in the [LONDON] Information Pavilion. The international ideas competition, hosted by [AC-CA], invited architects and architecture students to design a temporary, freestanding information pavilion within the world famous Trafalgar Square in the Heart of London during the 2012 Olympic Games. — bustler.net

So who did Zumthor call upon to provide the garden, the green hortus at the centre of his conclusus? Piet Oudolf, of course, foremost exponent of the new perennials movement, a low-key Dutchman with the build of a rugby player who has practically cornered the market in high profile planting projects: the Lurie Garden at Chicago’s Millennium Park, New York’s Battery Park and the wildly popular High Line are among his best known works. — telegraph.co.uk

As the architect of such curvaceous London landmarks as "the Gherkin" and the City Hall building described as a "glass testicle", it is something of a Damascene conversion, but Ken Shuttleworth has called time on strangely shaped edifices. — telegraph.co.uk

Peter Zumthor's first completed building in the UK opens this Friday, July 1: the 2011 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. The concept for this year’s Pavilion is the hortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden. One enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London – an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers. — bustler.net

If you're in London this summer, don't miss to check out this year’s Architecture Room at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, curated by Piers Gough of CZWG and Alan Stanton of Stanton Williams. The exhibition opened on June 7 and runs through August 15, 2011. — bustler.net

Dennis Hone, chief executive of the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), said building a temporary indoor venue of its size was unprecedented and could form the basis of an International Olympic Committee plan to bring down the cost of hosting the Games.

"It makes a lot of sense, especially if you want to take the Games beyond the richest cities in the world. To do that, you've got to bring the costs down," he said. — Guardian

The new Ravensbourne campus, a university sector college innovating in digital media and design, at London's Greenwich Peninsula was just recently one of the winners in the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Awards 2011 (previously on Bustler). From a shortlist of 55 schemes, Ravensbourne’s building, designed by Foreign Office Architects, won through in the education and community category. — bustler.net