Centre Point and the Hoover building review – from beasts to beauties

Denounced as vulgar when they were built, these newly desirable London landmarks have been reborn as luxury flats boasting distinctive dimensions as well as chequered pasts

Why wood is back at the top of the tree for architects

Strong, clean and versatile, engineered timber is the ‘new concrete’. With wooden skyscrapers in the offing, could it be the answer to the global housing crisis?

Rowan Moore’s best architecture of 2017

Postmodernism returned in style, Liverpool’s Welsh Streets were saved, but Grenfell Tower defined the year

• Observer critics’ reviews of the year in full

The Bilbao effect: how Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim started a global craze

Opened 20 years ago this month, the glittering titanium museum had a wow factor that cities around the globe were soon clamouring to copy

The Spanish holiday home as an architectural collectible

In rural Aragon, the Solo Houses project is giving international architects free rein to create the buildings of their imagination

Thomas Heatherwick: Pied Piper who has the very rich under his spell

Despite the collapse of his plan to build a garden bridge across the Thames, the ambitious designer still has projects aplenty across the globe, thanks to those who admire his talents