It has probably been the most tumultuous year for architecture in a decade. In June the Grenfell Tower fire focused attention on the desperate state of housing in the UK and raised fresh questions over exactly what the profession was doing about it — apart from cladding old tower blocks to improve the neighbours’ view. At the other end of the construction dichotomy the number of billion-pound projects continued to mount, with the glass doughnut of Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California (£3.7 billion) being joined by the Bloomberg groundscraper in the City (£1 billion) and countless projects to the east and Middle East. To add to the impression that architects seem to be living on a different planet, their picks for the biggest baubles generated…

Source: The Times December 22, 2017 00:04 UTC