Hasta La Ideas

This week on Dezeen, architects and politicians praised Mikhail Riches’ “ground-breaking” Goldsmith Street after it became the first social-housing scheme to win the RIBA Stirling Prize.

Goldsmith Street, a Passivhaus and high-density residential project in Norwich by Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley, was awarded the UK’s biggest architecture prize on Tuesday after being the first council-housing scheme to have ever been shortlisted.

The project was hailed by RIBA president Alan Jones as “a beacon of hope” in the ongoing housing and climate crises, and a “ground-breaking” contribution to British architecture by the Stirling Prize jury.

Over the week, the news was widely celebrated by architects, critics and politicians as a significant moment in the 23-year-history of the prize, with TV architect George Clarke hailing it as “a game changer” and Architype saying it “puts Passivhaus in the spotlight – exactly where it needs to stay”.

In an opinion piece for Dezeen, architect Piers Taylor added that “Goldsmith Street offers an incredible and uplifting vision for how things could be in the future in the UK if there was the political will”.

Another award-worthy project in the spotlight this week was Copenhill by BIG, which opened in Copenhagen with a giant, green ski slope on its roof. It has been dubbed as the “cleanest waste-to-energy power plant in the world”.

In New York, new visuals were revealed of both David Chipperfield’s Rolex USA headquarters and Thomas Heatherwick’s first residential project in the US that will flank the High Line park.

Records were broken in Beijing as the 528-metre-tall CITIC Tower reached completion, becoming the tallest skyscraper in the Chinese capital and eighth-highest worldwide.

It was also reported that Czech Republic could soon welcome its tallest building named Top Tower, which has been designed by Black n’ Arch and David Černý to resemble a giant shipwreck.

In design news, Virgil Abloh took centre stage this week when he unveiled his full collection for IKEA ahead of its launch in the US next month.

Technology company Dyson also hit the headlines after scrapping its electric car project ahead of its launch next year, claiming the concept was not “commercially viable”.

Two graduates from the University of Hong Kong’s shared their design of a “self-sanitising door handle” that uses light to constantly sterilise itself, in a bid to replace public door-handles that are hotspots for bacteria.

Dezeen also reported on the latest innovation by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – an experimental way of manufacturing cement that releases no carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The Architectural Association, the oldest independent school of architecture in the UK, was granted the right to award bachelor’s and master’s degrees for the first time in its history. Director Eva Franch i Gilabert said it “marks a new era” for the institution.

Artistic director of The Royal Academy of Arts, Tim Marlow, was also named the next director of London’s Design Museum, after current co-directors Deyan Sudjic and Alice Black announced their departure last week.

Projects that were popular with readers this week included two self-sustaining cabins on a tiny Finnish island, two gabled, black cabins on an Estonian beach and a concrete house with a huge chimney by Alejandro Aravena leans on the coast of Chile.

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