Hasta La Ideas

Our most widely read story in March was a tea house and library constructed around a tree by Archi-Union, plus we launched two new projects of our own.

Mirroring February, our second most popular story in March was for a Starbucks branch, this time one inside a historic bank vault in Amsterdam by Liz Muller.

A pavilion-like house by Werner Sobek sits at number three, with glazed panels sandwiched between an overhanging roof and plinth.

193 Shoreham Street in Sheffield by Project Orange comes in at number four, extending a brick building in Sheffield with a powder-coated steel volume.

Finishing off our most popular stories in March is the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena, Italy, by the late Czech architect and Future Systems founder Jan Kaplický, though our readers wondered if it might have been beter in red.

Also in March, we launched our Dezeen Music Project to promote new, original music by upcoming musicians and our Designed in Hackney initiative to promote local creatives, and Dezeen was named #01 in the Best Blogs list of top 50 design blogs.

See all our stories from March 2012 »

See our review of February 2012 »
See our review of January 2012 »

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As 2012 comes to an end we’re showcasing our five most popular stories and the most important news from each month of the year, starting with January featuring Peter Zumthor, Disney and Kanye West.

Our most-clicked story of the month was the Steilneset Memorial by Peter Zumthor and Louise Bourgeois (above) built to commemorate suspected witches burnt at the stake on an island in Norway during the seventeenth century.

The second spot goes to Bird Series by Israeli designer Kobi Levi, a collection of high-heeled shoes designed to look like toucans, swans and mallard ducks.

A new underground entrance to the Joanneum Museum in Graz, Austria, by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos and eep architekten came in third, accessed through cavernous holes in the courtyard.

A set of renders by Swedish firm  Wingårdh of a harbourside house for Sweden was our fourth most popular story.

Rounding up our most popular stories in January is Mirror House by MLRP, a playground pavilion with funhouse mirrors on the gabled end of the building and behind the doors.

It was also a controversial month in architecture and design news: writer Alain de Botton announced plans to build a series of temples for atheists (above), Disney released a T-shirt (below) that bizarrely mimicked the 1979 album cover of Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division – a band named after raped concentration camp prisoners with a lead singer who famously killed himself – and Studio Job were forced to amend designs for a fence to a private estate that intentionally resembled the gates of a Nazi concentration camp.

Meanwhile Kanye West announced his intention to start a design brand in an epic Twitter rant (though we haven’t heard much about it lately), Polly Dickens was appointed as creative director of UK design retailers Habitat (see our recent interview about Dickens’ first collection for Habitat here) and the Design Museum unveiled John Pawson’s design for its new west-London home (the groundbreaking took place in September and included the burial of a time capsule containing a light bulb, a coffee pot, an iPhone and a tin of anchovies selected by leading design figures).

See all our stories from January 2012 »

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