Opinion: despite significant improvements last year, architecture's archaic equality problems haven't gone away. The American Institute of Architects' decision to award its 2015 Gold Medal to another mature white man isn't helping, says Alexandra Lange. More about "Was it too much to hope for first a woman and then a partnership?"
Opinion: the visual style associated with cinema's super-villains has been transformed into a marketable asset for house builders, says Owen Hatherley. More about "More frightening than American Psycho"
Opinion: the UK is one of only three European countries failing to protect designers from intellectual property theft – damaging both their income and the reputation of their products, says Tony Ash, managing director for design brand Vitra. More about "Copyists are eating away at the creativity of our industry"
Opinion: the now-defunct architecture firm FAT proposed a green bridge for London's River Thames in the 1990s as a form of social criticism. Now life is imitating art with Thomas Heatherwick's Garden Bridge, FAT co-founder Sam Jacob feels an apology is necessary. More about "The Garden Bridge is a magic bullet for a certain idea of the contemporary British city"
Opinion: unbridled materialism, technology and design combine to challenge the meaning of personhood in William Gibson's latest sci-fi novel. The foundations for this future are already being laid in real life, says Justin McGuirk. More about "Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk"
Opinion: the Brutalist architecture of 1960s British university campuses may not have been popular among students at the time, but recent styles of education architecture suggest a far more cynical approach, says Owen Hatherley. More about "The project of education-via-marketisation has had ugly results"
Opinion: why have architects and designers been so quiet about America's recent clashes over race and police violence? asks Mimi Zeiger. More about "Koolhaas may think we're past the time of manifestos, but that's no reason to play dumb"
Opinion: the legacy of the Modernist movement is a "God complex" among contemporary architects that is turning architecture into its own worst enemy, says OMA partner Reinier de Graaf in his first column for Dezeen. More about "The vast majority of the built environment is of an unspeakable ugliness"
Opinion: mobile products have a short lifespan, but Apple has invested heavily in turning them into desirable design objects. For some "luxury" customers that just isn't enough, finds Alex Wiltshire. More about "Even obsolescence is worthy of incredible expense"
Opinion: when the team behind the Rosetta space mission landed Philae on a moving comet last week, they celebrated in a grey control room – the kind of uniquely bland space that has been the backdrop to some of the 21st century's most iconic moments, says Will Wiles. More about "The control room is a highly charged mythic space"
Opinion: an unloved relic of 1950s socialist Yugoslavia is one of the finest buildings of its era. But in modern Serbia, its overtly political message doesn't chime well with the prevailing ideology, says Owen Hatherley. More about "It's no surprise that the government were reluctant to let members of the public in"
Opinion: sometimes it becomes important to save a building that doesn't seem to work. Such is the case for Michael Graves' Postmodernist exemplar, the Portland Building, says Alexandra Lange. More about "History does change perception"
Opinion: from Chicago's rat problem to transport startups like Bridj and Uber, data is being used to predict behaviour and manage our cities. But the idea of the "Predictive City" should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism, argues Dan Hill. More about "A city is more than just the sum of its previous behaviours"
Opinion: the refurbishment of London's Imperial War Museum by Norman Foster is a "botched" job, but it's hardly surprising given the UK's strange attitude to its own history, says Owen Hatherley. More about "So spectacularly ill-judged that you almost long for Libeskind's earnestness"
Opinion: designers today are being swamped with visual information that has been stripped of its historical context. Making personal connections across generations can help fill the gaps, says Mimi Zeiger. More about "History has become a trove of artefacts ready for appropriation"
Opinion: with the petrol heads stuck firmly in rut, there's an opportunity for designers to do something different with the new wave of electric cars. Elon Musk's Tesla is among those leading the way, says Lucas Verweij. More about "The car is dead, long live the car"
Opinion: driven by economics and overly concerned with "iconic" design and star names, international design fairs have lost their way. But BIO 50, the design biennial in Ljublana, offers a refreshing alternative, says Louise Schouwenberg. More about "Design fairs fail to represent what's going on in the rest of the world"
Opinion: with the opening of the latest attention-grabbing attraction at a skyscraper in Melbourne, Will Wiles asks if the advent of Google Maps has created a public too jaded to simply appreciate a spectacular view. More about "Have we reached peak peak?"
Opinion: the way we consume architecture online has changed thanks to social media, creating a new genre of imagery – meme-tecture. Alexandra Lange offers her guide to making an architectural meme. More about "Six points of viral architecture"
Opinion: Apple's latest launches show it has become reactive rather than innovative, but after leading the market for 30 years it could still have an important role to play, says Karim Rashid. More about "Apple has taken the minimal aesthetic too far"