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Facebook is moving into new offices in London’s King’s Cross. The announcement from King’s Cross details the social media giant’s commitment to take over 600,000 square feet (55,000 square meters) of office space across three buildings, namely 11 and 21 Canal Reach by Bennetts Associates, and P2 by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris.

The July 23rd deal between Facebook and King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership (KCCLP) represents one of the most significant such commitments in London in the last decade, encompassing around 15% of King’s Cross’ 4-million-square-foot (370,000 square meters) commercial portfolio.

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The Architectural Review has chosen a Habitat for Orphan Girls in Iran by ZAV Architects as the 2018 House of the Year. A competition staged by the publication every year, the AR House Awards identify “originality and excellence in the design of dwellings,” recognizing private houses which go beyond the core function of shelter, and become “an object of fantasy, a source of delight, a talisman, and a testing ground.

The ninth edition of the awards saw six projects chosen from a shortlist of 16, which contained schemes from the UK, Ireland, Spain, Scandinavia, Canada, Latin America, Iran, Vietnam, India, Nepal, and Japan. Previous winners have included David Chipperfield’s Fayland House in 2015, UID Architects’ Cosmic House in 2016, and the anti-seismic prototype in 2017 by Edward Ng, Wan Li and Xinan Chi.

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About a month before he unveiled his eighth album Ye in June, Kanye West re-entered architectural conversation with the unexpected and mostly unexplained announcement that he intends to hire architects and industrial designers to staff an architecture practice connected to his Yeezy brand. An outspoken fan and admirer of contemporary architecture, Kanye’s fashion and design projects have been a major focus for him since shortly after the prodigious producer started making his own rap albums. Kanye’s architectural ambitions have been an interesting factor in the relationship between architecture and rap culture, which seems to be just coming into focus through programs like the Hip Hop Architecture Camps organized by Michael Ford’s Urban Arts Collective, and the research of Sekou Cooke. Architecture and rap music have influenced each other in ways we’re just starting to notice—with the connection between the two even revealed as consciously and conspicuously as rappers including references to notable architects in their lyrics.

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Architects and designers are turning into their very own version of Midas, everything they touch turns into concrete. With products like concrete coffee machines, concrete garden gnomes, and even concrete jewelry, designers are finding remarkable ways of experimenting with the material, proving that concrete is a lot more than just a bulky, building component.

Los Angeles based architect-designer J.Byron-H, known for his playfulness with material and unexpected forms, have experimented with concrete and glass-fiber and created contemporary, light-weight pieces of furniture, inspired by skateboards and architectural brutalism.

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Russia’s history of mass housing development can be divided into several distinct periods, each manifested by its own specific type of residential building. These houses reveal what lifestyle, comfort level, construction cost and distinctive traits were considered preferable in any given decade. Every new stage saw its own experiments and had its achievements, which together can be regarded as a line of lessons, discoveries, and experiences, helping to understand a specific character of Russian standard housing.

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