Ian Martin

July

London won the 2012 Olympic Games and got bombed. The government said both the peace process in Iraq and the conversion of east London into Beijing remained on schedule. In Istanbul, the UIA Congress allowed architects from all over the world to look serious, wear headphones and nod.

China built more malls than India. Then India announced it was building twice as many miles of road and a giant Star Wars theme park, Hindu Yodaland. China announced the fast-track construction of 20 eco-megacities, an underground plasma lake the size of the Cotswolds and a facsimile of itself on Mars. India squared up for a response but Japan told India to leave it, China wasn’t worth it.

August

The Architects Registration Board sought an injunction to prevent Brad Pitt touting for bedroom extensions in the Brighton and Hove area.

Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called for a Million Solar Homes fitted with jamming devices and rocket-propelled grenades “for when the machines come”. The world’s first urban skyscraper farm in Romania was shut down after cows clogged up the lift.

Revolutionary 97-year-old Marxist Oscar Niemeyer warned Yankee playboys of the growing might of the Soviet Union. Robert Mugabe defended a township demolition programme in Zimbabwe, Operation Cleanse The Motherland Of Opposition Scum. He then denied it ever happened, then blamed it on the BBC. A design for the British Antarctic Survey’s new base became the first major project to be developed in consultation with shitting penguins.

September

America’s Gulf Coast was hit by Hurricane Katrina, prompting a record 9,500 masterplans for “New New Orleans”. Incredibly, all of them called for solar-powered jazz water taxis. An informal charrette exploring issues of affordable housing was organised by the surviving occupants of a collapsed three-storey timber frame slum in Bangladesh.

The lost city of Wal-Mart was located beneath the sea near Cyprus. Reykjavik city council stunned the world by eschewing a civic landmark by Santiago Calatrava. Pyongyang was voted Can’t-See Destination of the Year by the Totalitarian Society.

October

The World Feng Shui Federation warned that a cooling Gulf Stream could throw everything out by 15%. Prague was trapped for 48 hours when its surrounding heritage buffer zones burst and ran into each other. In Toronto, a postman was shot dead for being obese in a zero-carbon neighbourhood.

Richard Neutra’s classic 1937 U-Shaped Concrete Cradle House in Texas was saved from demolition by stern editorials, Native American ghosts and the high cost of demolition. In Saudi Arabia 1,400 year-old buildings were pulverised to discourage idolatry and to make way for an easyPilgrim hotel.

Royal Gold Medallist Toyo Ito was freed by rescue workers after becoming trapped in an aesthetic of lightweight, permeable membranes. Afghanistan’s first escalator was attacked and occupied by tribal warlords. A massive earthquake in Kashmir destroyed thousands of buildings and killed 50 times more people than Katrina, although few Westerners ever had holidays there.

November

China granted temporary autonomy to Tibet when a river poisoned by a Shanghai chemical plant accidentally flowed into it.

Cesar Pelli said he would design a “themeless casino”, so Philippe Starck said he would do a “pointless apartment block”. Charles Jencks interviewed himself for the New York Times and discovered an inspiring visionary with genuine wit and verve. Rem Koolhaas and Donald Trump beat Christopher Alexander and Daniel Libeskind at golf.

A mystery “billionaire philanthropist” offered to build a 430m office block shaped like a brick next to Moscow’s only 18th century Orthodox brewery, and was saddened by the overnight destruction of the brewery by unidentified Chechen extremists with contacts in architectural salvage.

December

The weblog Bad Architude was voted Best Non-Physical Urban Domain.

An architect in Germany was fined for designing a dramatic copper facade which was unperforated, and which failed to suggest light filtering through a tree canopy. Holyrood won the Stirling Prize and was upgraded to £472 million.

In laid-back Tamworth, a Christmas crib was pimped with a festive recliner.