News: campaigners are calling on the UK government to protect and expand minimum housing standards for space and natural light after an RIBA report revealed the average one-bed new build is only the size of a London Underground carriage. More »

This social housing block on the Canary Islands was designed by local studio Romera y Ruiz Arquitectos with a pleated facade and three hidden courtyards. More »

This timber-clad house extension in Norway by Oslo studio Rever & Drage features curvy towers that point outwards like periscopes (+ slideshow). More »

Diagonally stepped floors and ceilings divide triangular zones inside this pair of studio apartments in Tokyo by Kiyonobu Nakagame Architect & Associates (+ slideshow). More »

London firm Farshid Moussavi Architecture has won a competition to design an apartment block in Montpellier with designs for a tower made from a stack of rippling floor plates. More »

Japanese studio PANDA gave this house in Tokyo a glazed ground floor, then enclosed it in a high concrete-block wall. More »

Thatching covers the walls as well as the roof at this house in Zoetermeer, the Netherlands, by Dutch architect Arjen Reas (+ slideshow). More »

News: Dutch city Nijmegen has launched a catalogue of affordable architect-designed housing kits for first-time buyers. More »

This house in Tokyo by Apollo Architects & Associates has skylights in the roof and holes in the floor plates, allowing daylight to reach right down to the basement (+ slideshow). More »

This renovation of a crumbling 1960s tower block in Paris nicknamed "Alcatraz" topped the architecture category of this year's Designs of the Year Awards and is in the running for the top prize to be announced tonight (+ slideshow). More »

This little house in Tokyo by Japanese studio PANDA has a triangular courtyard and an L-shaped roof terrace tucked behind its walls (+ slideshow). More »

Milwaukee office Johnsen Schmaling Architects chose a palette of bare concrete, cedar and anodised metal to construct this small family retreat in a remote Wisconsin forest (+ slideshow). More »

Rooms are contained within wooden boxes inside this long and low concrete house in Brazil by architecture office Studio MK27 (+ slideshow). More »

Dutch studio Personal Architecture has overhauled a traditional townhouse in The Hague by adding mezzanine floors, a glass elevation, a triple-height kitchen and a spiral staircase. More »