The sweeping form of Snøhetta’s cancer care centre in Aberdeen is designed to calm, but the building lacks the warmth of some of its peers.

Whether they are fitting out a Savile Row shop or adapting a grade I-listed house, London duo 6a Architects take a radical approach to history and conservation, cherry-picking elements of the past to weave into new narratives

Hadid, who recently opened a huge shopping complex in Beijing and launched a sculptural shoe, has had a prolific year. Brand Zaha is now a formidable, swooshing global force.

The contradictions that run through the Royal Academy’s retrospective sum up the architect perfectly, says Charles Holland.

Coop Himmelb(l)au tests the limits of large-scale parametric design by landing a spaceship-like civic centre in northern China. 

This collection of essays and interviews sheds much-needed light on an era of radical sociopolitical change, says Steve Parnell.

Dutch practice DUS proposes an alternative architecture through social networks, temporary interventions and open sourcing. Now it is printing its first building, a canal house in Amsterdam, which it hopes will be replicated and reworked along the city's northern waterways

On 6 December we launched the first ever Icon Awards at an Awards evening for all our nominees, where the winners were announced and presented with their trophies. It was a great evening and our guests enjoyed Ketel One cocktails, Asahi beer and canapés from Ginger Jar Food.

The December issue is all about “Weather”. From the efforts of Brad Pitt’s Make it Right Foundation to rebuild a hurricane-flattened neighbourhood in New Orleans, to “Snow World” in Hyderabad, we look at how architecture creates environments that are insulated against the weather and ask how successful these can ever be.

Jean-Louis Cohen’s history of avant-garde architecture in the 20th century explores how ideas are conceived through buildings, providing fascinating insights into more familiar narratives, says Tim Abrahams.

With the 1948 “Austerity Olympics” as its starting point, the V&A surveys 60 years of British design, architecture and fashion. From punk posters to Laura Ashley florals, the exhibition questions contrived notions of national identity to reveal a country caught between modernity and nostalgia. Here’s our review.

Hal Foster turns a spotlight on famous buildings, but pays no heed to their contexts, says Kieran Long.

David Adjaye’s seven-volume taxonomy of African cities covers settlements in forests, mountains, grasslands and deserts. But is this huge collection of the architect’s photographs guilty of overlooking the problems of mass urbanisation on this understudied continent?

By dressing themselves in outscale vernacular references, big box supermarkets in the suburban hinterland inhabit the same psychotic territory as serial killer Ed Gein.

For our special 50th issue we asked 50 of the most influential architects, designers and thinkers to tell us what they believe in.

"To work with machines has the danger of monotony. The new building should be a bulwark against this, but also a building that is representative of the city"