Last year I stumbled upon the greatest forum thread I’ve ever seen. It belonged to 28dayslater.co.uk, a community of ‘urban archaeologists’, who explore abandoned industrial buildings across the country. One of their raisons d’etre is to capture what they find in stunning images. This particular thread is of the protagonists – the urban archaeologists themselves – in the places they explore. The majority of the images deliberately obscure their faces, as the pursuit is of dubious legality. The effect is captivating, rendering the explorers as mysterious, Gotham-esque vigilantes.

I also covered the explorers for the Guardian, joining them on a exploration of a Victorian culvert underneath Coventry, and an abandoned textiles plant in Leicester. Check out some more of the best images from the thread after the jump.

Archigram was a seminal avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960′s that came to fruition with its technology-inspired, pro-cosumerist visions of how the world should be. Their work changed the world of architecture and has served as inspiration for countless understudies ever since.

EXP, an architectural research group at the University of Westminster, has recently launched this online archive, which makes all of their works, ideas and incredible drawings available to the public the peruse through as they wish. Not only is this undoubtedly a brilliant resource for practising architects it is generally a very inspiring site to look through. Each and every architectural drawing is like a piece of art in its own right. Check it out.

Okay, so it looks like a giant sea urchin or something, but ‘Seed Cathedral’ as it is know, is a pretty insane piece of architecture/modelling/engineering… whatever you want to call it.

Housing over 60,000 transparent rods, each of which containing varying types of seeds placed in the tip, the building draws daylight through the fibre optic rods to illuminate the interior naturally during the day. At night the internal lighting makes the whole thing glow with radiating effect… pretty cool! The building was designed by Heatherwick studio for the UK Shanghai Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo. A couple more pics after the jump.

Via Yatzer