Author: James Anderson, FRSA, CMgr MCMI

Building Design has spent 2025 visiting some of the UK’s best new buildings, bringing you exclusive stories about how they were designed and built. Here is a selection of our best building studies from the past 12 months. Designing from first principles: Inside David Kohn Architects’ Gradel Quadrangles Published in March Oxford has never been short of architectural ambition. From medieval quads to 20th-century set pieces, its colleges have long used buildings to convey not just status, but evolving ideas about education and community. Although from the street many appear as bastions of tradition, behind the cloistered walls there is…

Emmanuel Macron came back from China in early December empty-handed. The French president’s appeal to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to help stop the war in Ukraine was never going to gain traction given Beijing’s unqualified support for Russia.Urging Xi to address China’s surging trade surplus, the result of the country’s economic and industrial policies, predictably also fell on closed ears.In any event, Xi’s main concerns were the imminent final politburo meeting of the year and the annual Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC) that followed. Centre stage was the passage of the new 15th five-year plan, due to be presented…

Ex-handyman Richard Fox, 62, is being linked to the murders of several women with police suggesting they believe there are other victims of the prolific criminal offenderRichard Fox is also a child sex offender(Image: NY State Sex offender Registry)A handyman, who has pleaded guilty to murdering two women, has been charged with a third murder as police fear he could be a serial killer.Richard Fox, 62, has been charged with second-degree murder over the death of Crystal Curthoys, 32, whose decomposed remains were located at a property he owned at Niagara Falls, in upstate New York. The ex-handyman is serving…

CeraPhi Energy, based in Great Yarmouth, is leading a pioneering project that will transform an existing 550-metre borehole on the site of Scunthorpe General Hospital into a low-carbon geothermal heating system. Scunthorpe General Hospital (Image: Supplied) The company moved to its headquarters to North River Road in Yarmouth this year, which it operates alongside its offices in London and Houston, Texas. Founded in 2020, CeraPhi uses natural heat produced by the earth’s core, known as deep geothermal energy, to generate heat and power. The technology works by circulating a working fluid through deep wells that enable heat to be transferred…

Daily Mail journalists select and curate the products that feature on our site. If you make a purchase via links on this page we will earn commission – learn moreFrom food storage and utensils, to frying pans and air fryers, the products we use in our kitchens come into close and repeated contact with what we eat. As awareness grows around chemicals used in manufacturing and food preparation, many of us are looking more closely at so-called non-toxic kitchen products and what that label really means.I am conscious about how my damaged cookware might be causing me to ingest things I…

A huge illegal waste site that keeps growing and spoiling a beauty spot landscape is being investigated by the Environment Agency.Basser Hill, near Sittingbourne in Kent, has joined a growing number of massive dumping grounds harming nature and the countryside.The EA has now launched an inquiry into the site which is filled with mixed waste, construction debris and potentially hazardous materials.The area is just two miles away from a tip at Raspberry Hill Park Farm.Other nearby dumping areas include Brambletree Wharf in Medway and sites around Ashford and Hoads Wood.The House of Lords’ Environment and Climate Change Committee recently released…

A hi-tech villa designed to resist earthquakes by self-healing cracks in its walls is being built on a Greek mountainside as part of a £9.5m EU-funded project that includes materials specialists from Leeds University.Leeds’ NanoManufacturing Institute (NMI) is playing a crucial role by developing plaster board walls that contain nanoscale polymer particles, which will liquefy when squeezed under pressure, flow into cracks and harden to form a solid material.The team hopes this will help further the development of inexpensive earthquake-resistant structures for some of the world’s most susceptible areas.’The use of micropolymers has been around for quite a long time,’…

Judd Trump aims to defend of his Victorian Plumbing UK Championship title. | WSTSnooker king Judd Trump says he’s putting in the graft to stay on top – and keep hold of his Victorian Plumbing UK Championship title. BUY TICKETS: The world number one and other top stars will battle at York Barbican from November 29 to December 7, with limited tickets for certain sessions and hospitality packages still available – visit www.wst.tv/tickets/uk-championship-tickets-2025.The qualifying rounds of the Victorian Plumbing UK Championship run from November 22-27, with the 16 qualifiers to join the top 16 seeds in York. For all ticket…

The tower of St Peter’s Church, in Brighton, can be seen once again after 11 years shrouded in scaffolding. And the scaffolding has come down at a time when the church said attendances were rising – not just at St Peter’s but across what is sometimes known as Britain’s most godless city. Restoration work is not complete at St Peter’s but significant progress has been made and the church said: “The latest phase of works has seen much of the scaffold finally coming down, allowing a clearer view of the church for the first time in several years. “The lower…

Alex Patel-Wills described selling Class A drugs as a ‘social service’ A former student of the University of Sussex has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for raping and sexually assaulting five women.  Alex Patel-Wills had previously claimed to be “irresistible” to the opposite sex and described dealing Class A drugs to other students as a “social service”.  During the sentencing at Lewes Crown Court, the judge said the 26-year-old showed not even the “slightest remorse” towards his victims, which include four fellow students and another woman he raped while studying in Brighton. The former Sussex student was charged…