London Mayor Boris Johnson has ruled in favour of the controversial Mount Pleasant scheme in North London at a public hearing held earlier today. The scheme was called in for a hearing at the request of the site's owner Royal Mail who claimed that Islington and Camden councils (who are both responsible for parts of the huge site) were taking too long over the planning application, but has been criticized heavily by locals who feel that the scheme is not appropriate for the site, and by the councils who feel that the scheme's 24% affordable housing is unacceptably low. However, Johnson drew criticism in June for apparently “compromising his neutrality” in advance of the hearing when he stated that the redeveloped Mount Pleasant “will be a wonderful place to live.”

Johnson approved the scheme after a heated hearing attended by over 100 members of the public and press, with many in attendance booing and heckling the mayor and representatives of the Royal Mail.

More on the hearing after the break

Joyce Wang Studio’s MOTT32 bar and restaurant in Hong Kong has been named the best interior space of 2014. The news was announced today in Singapore at the INSIDE World Festival of Interiors, alongside the World Architecture Festival’s Building of the Year announcement.

MOTT32, which initially took first in it’s category, was selected as the world’s best interior from 60 nominations and a shortlist of nine. The project was lauded for it's "rich texture", "theatrical environment" and "sophisticated" detail.

More about the “world’s best interior,” after the break. 

Today is National Women's' Day, and what better way to bring the subject forward than by celebrating Denise Scott Brown. It is no secret that the woman has made an indelible mark on architectural history and has significantly advanced the role of women in architecture, though many would argue that her success hasn’t fully been accredited.

In light of Brown’s success, we would like to share some fascinating statistics presented by Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) that measure the progress on gender in architecture. According to the report, women make up 51% of the 316 million people residing in the US, however only 25% of the 193,000 registered architects are women. This presents the question, “Where are all the women?”

The statistics on US women in architecture, after the break.

The National Capital Planning Commission has granted preliminary approval to a modified version of Frank Gehry’s controversial Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial design, which removed two of the stainless steel tapestries to clear views towards the Capitol. The project, which has remained stagnant since 2011, has been shawled in turmoil largely due to criticism regarding its "grandiose" design and focus on Eisenhower as a boy. The vote will now advance Gehry’s design to the Commission of Fine Arts for approval.

More images of the revised design, after the break.

Ohio’s Kent State is set to break ground tomorrow on its New Center for Architecture and Environmental Design. The $48 million building was designed by New York-based WEISS/MANFREDI following a collaboration with Richard L. Bowen & Associates which won first in the project’s national competition.

The design, dubbed the “Kent State Design Loft,” transforms the notion of a continuous studio loft into a three-tiered structure that unites all the college’s programs, including construction management, under one roof. 

New images of the building, after the break.

The 2014 World Architecture Festival (WAF) has announced its second group of architecture award winners, which included two more awards for Vo Trong Nghia Architects and a Culture award for BIG’s Danish Maritime Museum.

The festival will culminate on Friday with the World Building of the Year and Future Project of the Year awards, which will be selected by the festival’s ‘super-jury’: Richard Rogers, Rocco Yim, Julie Eizenberg, Enric Ruiz Geli and Peter Rich.

The winners of day 1 and 2 were selected from a shortlist that included practices from over 50 countries. Among the judges was ArchDaily’s very own David Basulto.

This year’s festival is taking place from October 1-3, featuring three days of talks, key-note speakers- including Rocco Yim and Richard Rogers -  and networking opportunities.  With “Architects and the City” as the overarching theme for this year’s main conference sessions, the festival will focus on the contributions architects can make to cities and how they affect – and are affected by – politics, infrastructure, planning communities and technology. 

Click here to view the full shortlist and here for day 1 winners. And read on after the break for the full list of WAF day 2 category winners.

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CRAB studio’s Abedian School of Architecture and Clive Wilkinson’s “endless” office table are two of four INSIDE Awards winners announced on day two of the World Festival of Interiors in Singapore. The projects join a complete list of nine category winners, all of which will be considered for the “World Interior of the Year” title.

See what was considered the best creative re-use project, civic center, education and office building after the break.

Currently on exhibition at Barbican Art Gallery in London is Constructing Worlds, an exploration of architectural photography from the 1930s to now. The exhibition brings together over 250 rarely seen works by 18 leading photographers who have demonstrated the medium’s ability to look beyond simple documentation of the built world and reveal wider truths about society. Learn more about the exhibition after the break.

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In Berlin, Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie has begun a new phase today with the opening of David Chipperfield’s intervention, a prologue to the imminent restoration which the famed British architect is about to undertake. Completed in 1968, the gallery was Mies’ last project and his final masterpiece; for nearly fifty years, nobody dared to touch it - until now. Marking this event is a large, site-specific installation, created by Chipperfield as an attempt to engage Mies in a spatial experiment (or perhaps a last, apologetic tribute to the 20th-century master) moments before he is about to embark on a mission which will, inevitably, transform Mies’ ultimate legacy.

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Buildings, regrettably, don't last forever. Until recently, the only way to increase a building's lifespan was ongoing maintenance, which can be expensive, time-consuming and in the case of infrastructure such as bridges or roads, inconvenient. Beyond that, periodic replacement of the entire structure was an option, however this is clearly not a sustainable solution, especially considering the amount of CO2-releasing concrete used in modern construction.

But in the 21st century, another alternative is emerging. This article on CityLab uncovers three self-healing materials that could significantly extend the lifespan of a construction, including Erik Schlangen's asphalt that re-sets itself with a dose of induction heating, concrete developed at TU Delft (and elsewhere) that patches up cracks with the help of its living bacterial aggregate, and a recent discovery by MIT scientists that some metals have self-healing properties.

Read the article in full here, or carry on after the break for our own coverage of Erik Schlangen and TU Delft's work in self-healing materials.

This Brazilian bookstore in São Paulo was name the best Retail Interior of 2014 as part of the first round of awards announced at the INSIDE World Festival of Interiors at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Winners have been revealed across five diverse categories, with an addition four category winners to be announced tomorrow evening.

See what INSIDE deemed to be the best Bar & Restaurant, Hotel, and Residence of 2014 after the break.

ADP Ingénierie (ADPI), part of the French airport authority Aéroports de Paris (ADP), has won the competition to design Terminal 1 at Beijing's new Daxing Airport, beating both Foster + Partners, and a team composed of the China Civil Aviation Construction Group Corporation (CACC) and the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design. The design competition for the 700,000 square meter airport was announced in July 2011, with Beijing New Airport Construction Headquarters (BNAH) putting the submissions through "a long and rigorous selection process," according to ADP.

Foster lost out on the competition despite having designed Terminal 3 at Beijing's main airport, which at the time of completion in 2008 was the largest airport terminal in the world. However owing to the rapid rise in use of air transport in China that airport is already running at full capacity, necessitating the creation of another airport at Daxing, 60 kilometres south of Beijing.

RTA-Office has been selected to design and construct China’s 10th International Garden Expo Service Center in Wuhan. The center will serve as the main entrance for pedestrian and public transportation visitors on the edge of the Fuhe River at the 214 hectare site’s north entrance.

The Expo, which will commence in 2015, is one of the largest garden events in China. It will take place within the grounds of the Zhang Gongdi forest park and occupy a vast landfill area, making the Expo’s realization a major ecological restoration project.  

More from the architects, after the break.