Workers who spend a lot of time on tasks requiring focus find them difficult to complete when too close to colleagues

Brad Pitt has revealed the £130,000 home he asked star architect Frank Gehry to design to revive New Orleans. Simon Usborne looks at the results

It's not just about height and speed – big rides can say a lot about the places they're built in. Chris Beanland discovers how ambitious new theme parks reflect economic ups and downs

Out of America: Swearing eternal fealty to Reagan, presidential candidates try to outdo each other in an insane stampede to the right – leaving Obama delighted

Less than £200...Basque break

Bilbao offers playful modernity in the form of Frank Gehry's landmark Guggenheim Museum, along with Gothic churches such as the Basilica de Begoña and a terracotta-roofed Old Town. EasyJet Holidays will fly you out to this intriguing Spanish city next weekend with three nights' B&B at the Petit Palace Arana, for £192 per person. The deal includes flights from Stansted departing Friday 25 November. Holidays.easyjet.com

Branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim art museums being built as part of an ambitious cultural district in Abu Dhabi could now open at least a year later than planned, the developer and an official with knowledge of the projects said today.

It's the ninth tallest building in the world, with 400ft on The Shard and room for the dome of St Paul's in its atrium. Jay Merrick climbs the Guangzhou tower

If the cover star of the current issue of the Radio Times happened to be watching the box last night, he doubtless enjoyed what he saw. The Secret Life of Buildings was right up Prince Charles's avenue, with the architectural critic Tom Dyckhoff skewering a variety of extravagant modern buildings for being soulless novelties rather than functional spaces. Top of his hate list, the building that he thinks made it acceptable for architects around the world to indulge their fantasies at the expense of what actually works, was Frank Gehry's famously outlandish Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Dyckhoff thinks that "architects have forgotten the purpose of social buildings" and that "the Bilbao effect" has produced an epidemic of Guggenheim clones, turning this memory lapse practically into a credo.

A new TV series explores the impact the built environment has on the way we live. By Yvonne Cook

The opening of the 11th annual Serpentine Gallery Pavilion on Friday marked what has become a celebrated event in London's summer diary.

Why Maggie’s is the charity of the design industry, by Annie Deakin

A handful of living architects – notably Frank Gehry, Oscar Niemeyer and Alvaro Siza – can be described as unique. The word seems crude when applied to Peter Zumthor. With him we are, to borrow a Van Morrison album title, into the mystic.

1 Miami

A visit to the Frank Gehry New World Center (nws.edu) will be as much about admiring Gehry's architecture as the music made within.

Frank Gehry's New World Center is the latest example of culture regenerating Miami's streets