Here are three projects to lift the spirits, particularly spirits trapped in the houses they already occupy: a glass dining room, an extension that takes a house's inside outside and, perhaps most pleasing of all, an idea that turns a bland basement window into a work of art. Not simply a matter of let there be light; also let there be excitement. Nonie Niesewand talks to the architects on site.

The Millennium Bridge, from St Paul's to the Tate at Bankside, would be a wondrous sight and a wondrous walk. It would also be the first Norman Foster work to have a dramatic presence in London.

Stirling prize

...anyone else who wants to avoid the profiteering developers and their mock-Georgian estates. Felicity Cannell on the pleasures of self- build

It arrived as a flatpack. Two years of sawing, drilling and nailing later it had turned into a home, huddled in a community with eight other `self-build' houses.

Only a tiny proportion of architects are women, but their work reveals a huge range of talent, as a new exhibition at the RIBA shows.

When Jane Drew, the brilliant British architect of the Modern Movement, graduated as an architectural student in 1929 no one would give her a job.

Sir: The maiden speech by Lord Rogers ("Labour peer Rogers sets out his vision for an urban revolution", 21 May) was well timed to ride the crest of the wave of Labour's reforming initial surge. He focused on the social, health and amenity benefits of urban regeneration, especially in London.

Revolution is stirring behind the handsome portals of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Some members of Riba, which represents one of Britain's most civilised professions, are plotting to oust their director-general in a coup.

What do the electioneering parties offer for architecture? Not very much at all, says Jonathan Glancey

HOUSING

Should we dynamite the worst of British buildings? Nicholas Roe thinks so, and eight architects tell him what would head their list of the country's greatest eyesores

Ralph Tubbs was just 39 when he designed the Dome of Discovery as the centrepiece of the South Bank site of the 1951 Festival of Britain, a building that established his reputation and for which he would be famous for the rest of his life.

Maggie O'Farrell meets Clare Frankl, who wants to be president of Riba