Northampton Greyfriars: Watch one of the Britain's starkest examples of Brutalist architecture as it is demolished

One of Britain’s starkest examples of Brutalist architecture died a suitably brutal death as 2,200 small, precisely placed charges ignited in a dull roar, bringing down in ten seconds Northampton’s 175m long Greyfriars bus station.

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Architects plan to stop skyscrapers from blocking out sunlight

To some, they are shimmering visions of the future which hold the answer to the question of the UK’s expanding population. But others view modern skyscrapers and high-rise towers as eyesores that literally darken British cities by blocking out sunlight.

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German architect Frei Otto, 89, dies day before winning Pritzker Prize

Pioneering German architect Frei Otto has died aged 89 just a day before he was announced as the recipient of this year’s prestigious Pritzker Prize.

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Sir Norman Foster warned by human rights campaigners after he wins bid to design Qatar World Cup stadium

The architect Sir Norman Foster must ensure his firm is not “complicit” in human rights abuses in Qatar, campaigners have said. The warning came after it was announced that his firm will design the 80,000-seat Lusail Stadium near Doha that will host the final of the controversial 2022 World Cup.

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London's galloping high-rise developments face a backlash from protest movement

London is starting to look like Dubai or Shanghai – even Oz's Emerald City. Shimmering skyscrapers soar from sooty arterial roads. These glass and steel spores are encroaching on other cities, too; meanwhile rural towns are being circled by speculative housing. As the UK emerges from the crash, building is looking healthy. Construction employs 2.5 million people, it's a highly visible totem of economic dynamism, and the Government's stated need to build 290,500 homes each year until 2031 – 49,000 of this rolling total in London alone – finds few critics.

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Shoreditch skyscrapers: Home of the hipsters is under threat from development plans

Shoreditch, London, home of the hipster; tech start-up companies; pop-up cafes and extravagant facial hair is being threatened by developers who want to build two skyscrapers in its creative heart, it has been claimed.

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Tunnel renaissance: Why cities are hiding roads down in the ground

In JG Ballard's biting satire Concrete Island, architect Robert Maitland ploughs his Jaguar off the M4 and wakes up trapped within a tangle of slip roads. The novel was published in 1973, when motorways were all the rage. But that dystopian vision of chunky flyovers and tangled roads in the sky is disappearing, as cities around the world are electing to hide roads down in the ground.

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Architects are branded ‘arrogant and egotistical’ – by one of their own

One of the country’s leading architects has launched a blistering attack on his own profession, branding his colleagues “arrogant” and “egotistical” and accusing them of “taking all the credit” at the expense of Britain’s under-valued engineers.

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Battle of the skies: London and New York compete for starchitects

When Sheikh Hamed paid £100m for the best residence at London’s One Hyde Park apartment building in 2007, it confirmed the city as the world’s premier deluxe property investment honeypot.

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Tower blocks: do we love them or hate them?

Rodney and Del Boy's flat in the fictional Peckham tower block Nelson Mandela House was the butt of jokes in the 1980s. But if the Only Fools and Horses pair had bought and stayed put, their dream of becoming millionaires next year might have come true. Because today, tower blocks are desirable again – as a new project to celebrate them is rolled out.

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Charles Rennie Mackintosh: First retrospective reveals tantalising glimpses of what might have been

In 1909, two architects, born within a year of each other in the late 1860s on either side of the Atlantic, were engaged in the final stages of work that would define phases of their careers. The long life, large output and worldwide fame of the American, Frank Lloyd Wright, are well documented. For the architect working in Scotland and completing his most famous project, the Glasgow School of Art, the year would mark the end of the major commissions he would receive. When Charles Rennie Mackintosh died in London in 1928, he had built nothing of significance in his last 20 years. His entire estate was valued at £88.

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Carbuncle Awards: Aberdeen named Scotland's most dismal place

A string of planning blunders has won Aberdeen the dubious prize of Scotland’s most dismal place.

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English Heritage adds 14 post-war office buildings to its protected lists

"It's one of the more daring buildings in the City, one of the more assertive," says Roger Bowdler. With his jacket and Likely Lads grin, he looks like an architect from the 1970s. Which is appropriate, because we're standing, looking up at 30 Cannon Street. Built as an outpost of French bank Credit Lyonnais in 1977, it was the first building in Britain to use glass-reinforced cement.

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High and Over for sale: Amersham's modernist gem where architecture students pay homage goes on the market for £2.8m

Amersham in Buckinghamshire is quintessential commuter land, full of unremarkable homes built in the 1930s for the middle classes to travel into the capital on the Metropolitan Railway.

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Prince Charles discovers 10 ways to antagonise architects with list of 'geometric principles'

The Prince of Wales has been dismissed as a cranky elitist who believes that architecture should reinforce hierarchical society, after he outlined his 10 “geometric principles” for urban design.

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Hitler’s holiday paradise is reinvented as condos, hotels and a spa

Built by the Third Reich in the run-up to World War II, the Strength Through Joy resort was a Nazi vision of tourism’s future. Happy, healthy Aryans would stay and play at the 10,000-room complex on the Baltic Sea, eating, swimming and even bowling for the Führer. Think Hitler’s Cancun.

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Garden Bridge: St Paul’s adds to £175m project’s troubled waters

When the designer of London 2012’s Olympic Cauldron laid out plans for a unique pedestrian bridge across the Thames, thickly adorned with trees and plants, he might have thought it would be a walk in the park.

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Bulldozers move in on Earls Court leaving legacy of weird and wonderful exhibitions

It has housed the world’s largest water chute, welcomed the Empire of India Exhibition and hosted the most disastrous concert of David Bowie's career.

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Current Affairs: The stylish electricity pylons sending shockwaves through the National Grid

Every Christmas, Norway gives us a spruce tree to decorate Trafalgar Square. But this year the Danes are giving us something for Christmas too: new electricity pylons. Work has just begun to install half a dozen new ‘T-pylons’ at Eakring, near Southwell, Nottinghamshire. This is where the National Grid trains engineers to work on the pylons and power lines that criss-cross the country.

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Russian Orthodox Church condemns Moscow's 'Eye of Sauron' art installation celebrating The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Plans for a skyscraper art installation inspired by JRR Tolkien’s ‘Eye of Sauron’ to open in Moscow tomorrow night have angered the Russian Orthodox Church.

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