The top 10 architecture and design events of 2017
It was a year that celebrated new dawns. From plywood to postmodernism, from the return of council housing to a Cornish art gallery, our critic picks his highlights
Oliver Wainwright
Louvre Abu Dhabi: Jean Nouvel’s spectacular palace of culture shimmers in the desert
With its cosmic dome and starry latticework, the French architect’s water-lapped Gulf outpost shuns the petrodollar glitz of its neighbours. But there’s no whitewashing the appalling treatment of the labourers who built its light-filled halls
Meet Liz Diller, the rebel architect behind MoMA, the High Line and now a home for Simon Rattle
Her practice beat Foster, Gehry and Piano to clinch London’s new £250m Centre for Music. She talks about fuelling gentrification – and why arts buildings have to be more than corporate baubles
Mocaa, Cape Town: grain silo reborn as Africa’s answer to Tate Modern
Thomas Heatherwick pulls off an awesome act of architectural mutilation – just don’t mention the luxury hotel upstairs
The V&A’s £55m new courtyard: ‘Like a Marbella beach bar airlifted to South Ken’
Amanda Levete’s dazzling new porcelain piazza brilliantly reunites the museum with the Kensington streets. But the giant new jewellery box of a gallery lurking below ground is the real star of the show
Party on the helipad! My day sipping champagne with the superyacht set
Basketball courts, recording studios, deep-sea submarines, helipad party decks … our writer gets a taste of the latest must-have accessories in superyacht design