London's Blackfriars Tube station is on its way to becoming the world's largest solar bridge. Stretching across South Bank a stone's throw from the Tate Modern, the busy station, built by Solarcentury, has already reached the halfway point to completion. Construction on the world's largest solar bridge began on October 2011. Blackfriars Tube station is still fully functioning, ferrying Londoners and tourists from the popular South Bank promenade to areas all over the city. Yet construction is still underway across the bridge's rooftop. Heavy scaffolding is slowly being removed to reveal the 4,400 solar panels that will serve the station, pumping 900 thousand kWh of solar energy back into the grid each year. The solar powerhouse will also reduce CO2 emissions by 511 tons per year, all while promptly serving commuters with uninterrupted service around the city. The gorgeous Victorian bridge is the only bearing solar panels along the River Thames. With stellar city views, boats pass under the bridge's arches throughout the day, while the station serves 24 trains per hour. Pedestrians strolling along the South Bank walk way pass under the historic bridge, check out the progress of its solar modernization. The idyllic scene could be just a glimpse of London's future. With over 100 bridges crossing the River Thames throughout the city, adding additional solar arrays on any of them could drastically reduce the city's consumption of fossil fuels, and ensure a source of clean energy for generations to come, reducing emissions and overall carbon footprint.

Future plans for London's 2012 Olympic Park have been unveiled, and James Corner-the landscape architect behind the famous suspension park High Line in New York-will be taking his talents across the pond to turn the park's south plaza into 222 thousand square meters of "active spaces", reported The Inhabitat. Due to be completed by spring of 2014, the redesigned park will include areas for public performances, picnics and even rock-climbing within the vast urban green space. The redesigned Olympic Park will include a 12-metre wide tree-lined promenade that will open up to a series of outdoor "rooms", separated by tall grasses. These active spaces will host a classic carousel, an amphitheater and a play space with a climbing wall. There will also be spaces reserved for picnics, concerts and other events. The design also includes the addition of variety of trees and plants native to the local area, with planting and horticulture by Piet Oudolf , who also lent his design talents to The Highline. We think London is pretty lucky to be receiving such talent! So for those of us who didn't make it to the Olympic Games this year-no worries-here is a reason to plan a visit to the park grounds for future years to come.

The US Government has unveiled more detailed plans for its new embassy complex at the heart of London's Nine Elms regeneration area. The scheme was awarded outline planning consent in 2010 and the new plans provide detail on the proposed appearance of the buildings, site layout, landscaping and access arrangements. Philadelphia-based architects Kieran Timberlake won the competition to build a new US Embassy in London, with a design that concentrates on environmental issues two years ago. The victorious design, to be built in Nine Elms on the southern bank of the Thames, combines energy efficiency with improvements to the post-industrial landscape of one of London's last big undeveloped city-centre sites. The new 11-storey building, which will be able to house 1,000 staff, covers 45 thousand square meters. The north facing elevation is largely glazed, while the other three sides of the building have a distinctive outer shell made from a transparent material called ethylene tetraffluoroethylene (ETFE), with integrated photovoltaic panels to harvest solar energy. Photovoltaic panels would be installed on the roof and the main vehicle access to the site would be from Ponton Road which is currently being realigned. The glazed box sits atop a colonnade intended to create a feeling of civic engagement and openness which has been pointedly lacking in recent US embassies and which became one of the reasons that the state department took the decision to vacate its existing building in central London's Grosvenor Square. Three single storey entrance pavilions would be located on the perimeter of the site to control access to the main building. The scheme would provide new public open space including landscaped gardens, walkways and a large pond designed by Olin landscape architects. A semi-circular pool protects the building on the side facing the river, which features a new road passing between the embassy and the Thames, while the building itself is slightly elevated atop a mound to avoid the possibility of ramming the structure with the car bombs which became such a favoured terrorist mode of attack in the 1990s. The pool and the grassy mound combine to create a parkland setting which, it is hoped, will both help provide a green heart for the redevelopment of this long-neglected part of the city but which also subtly protects the embassy without the creating the impression of a walled compound - which was one of the fears about the viability of this building as an anchor for the new Nine Elms. Earlier the cost of construction of the new embassy is estimated to be about US$ 500 million, but now it doubled. With a US$ 1 billion budget the embassy is set to become one of the most expensive in the world, cheaper only than America's fortress-like outposts in Baghdad and Islamabad. The building work on one of the most expensive embassies ever built is due to begin in 2013 and be completed in 2017.

After six years of planning, preparation and construction, London's Olympic Park hosts its first non-athlete visitors. The US$ 11 billion Olympic Park contains several of the 2012 Games biggest sporting venues, including the Olympic Stadium and the Zaha Hadid-designed Aquatics Centre, as well as the Olympic Village. In addition to the Aquatics Centre, the Olympic Park also includes the Wilkinson Eyre Architects-designed Basketball Arena, a large 12 thousand-seat temporary structure that will be taken apart and recycled once the games have ended. And towering over the Olympic Park is Anish Kapoor's controversial ArcelorMittal Orbit observation tower, which is made from recycled steel and has received mixed reviews from observers. Today the Opening Ceremony will mark the start of the 2012 Summer Olympics, and visitors will get their first look at the Olympic Park. Hosting the Olympics is a massive undertaking for the host city. In 2006, London demolished more than 200 buildings to make room for what would eventually become the Olympic Park. When those buildings were demolished, an impressive 98 percent of the materials were reused and recycled in the construction of the Olympic Park and elsewhere. The Olympic Park was built on former industrial brown fields, which cleaned up before the games. About 1.4 million cubic meters of contaminated soil was excavated from the site, and five enormous soil washing machines were brought in to wash the soil and filter out oil, tar and heavy metals. After the 2012 Summer Olympics are over, the Olympic Park will again be transformed. In 2013, the roughly 500 thousand square meters Park in East London will reopen as Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The 114.5-meters tall ArcelorMittal Orbit will still tower over the park, and the Olympic stadium will be downsized to a permanent stadium that will seat 25 thousand people.

The BBC has sold its historic Television Centre premises in west London in a deal worth more than US$ 310 million. The historic doughnut-shaped building, which dates back to 1960, has been bought by property developer Stanhope plc, the corporation confirmed on Monday. BBC director general Mark Thompson said the deal was secured after the First Night of the Proms on Saturday. TV Centre - once the home of TV classics from Top of the Pops to Blue Peter and which once bore the blast from a car bomb - was put up for sale last year as part of the BBC's latest cost-cutting drive. Thompson said its sale "represents another milestone in the way the BBC is changing" from a number of broadcasting bases to key HQs in the capital and around the country, including the newly-refurbished Broadcasting House in central London and BBC North in Salford. The BBC's chief financial officer, Zarin Patel, said the corporation's property footprint had been reduced by a third, although in the short term spending on property has increased, by £37m to a total of £187m. Spending on technology was also up, according to the corporation's annual report published on Monday. Many programmers have already left TV Centre, including Blue Peter which was relocated along with its famous garden and the rest of the BBC's children's output to Salford. The sale did not go down well with everyone, however. Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman criticised the decision in February, saying: "What organisation - at a time when it has no money, allegedly - would move from cheap square footage in west London to Oxford Circus?" In a statement, the BBC said TV Centre had been sold to Stanhope plc "for a total price in the order of £200m. Full details of the sale will be available on completion." The sale of the site, parts of which were given Grade II listed status by English Heritage in 2009, prompted an outpouring of nostalgia on Twitter, including many who worked there and one who had slept under her desk. The 14-acre site will be empty by 2015 with staff moving to the newly-refurbished Broadcasting House in central London as well as the BBC North HQ in Salford. The BBC originally announced it wanted to sell the building, which opened in 1960, in 2007.