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The Heights of Folly and FashionThis was the year that the world's developers went mad about skyscrapers, unleashing a wave of plans to build 1,000ft-plus towers on the London skyline.
Ken Livingstone, casting himself as the most pharaonic of Britain's mayors, halfway between New York's Ed Koch and Francois Mitterrand, enthusiastically embraced them as signs of the city's virility.
Zaha Hadid finally got the chance to build in Britain, winning one competition to do Britain's Olympic swimming pool and another to design a home for the Architecture Foundation's gallery in the shadow of Tate Modern.
In Germany she completed a factory for BMW and a spectacular science centre in Wolfsburg.
The government's plans for building more charter schools have turned into the commission that ambitious young architectural practices would most like to get their hands on, even though Ofsted began to make worried noises about the suitability of challenging architecture for troubled classrooms.
Abroad, Rem Koolhaas finally demonstrated that he was interested in architecture as well as polemics with his impressive concert hall in Porto.
His great rivals Herzog and De Meuron completed two major museum projects, in Minneapolis and San Francisco.
The Swiss partnership also got to stage Tate Modern's first architectural exhibition, dedicated to a display of
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20/12/2005 | Viewed 11,752 time(s)
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