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Australian architecture has had an impressive start to 2012, already boasting a globally recognised industry award. The architectural firm in question is Australia's own HASSELL who have been ranked as the number one practice in all of Australasia at this year's BD World Architecture survey. Managing Director of the firm Robert Blackhouse indicated that the achievement is a testament to the works, both nationally and internationally, that HASSELL has been producing.

The idea that the environment can aid healing is not a new one. In her book 'Healing Spaces", Dr. Esther M. Sternberg has explored the health benefits to patients on both a mental and physical level when exposed to plants and larger organic environments. Australian industry giants Brookfield Multiplex and HASSELL are taking on these principles and shaping their design and construction processes with environmental healing as a key foundation of their latest Perth healthcare development.

China's twelfth 5-Year Plan (released in 2011) addresses the country's rapid urbanisation by including a target to deliver 36 million new social housing units by 2015. Shenzhen in southern China, located in the Pearl River Delta in the Guangdong Province, is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. It has a large stake in this project and is aiming to deliver 240,000 new units which will house approximately 800,000 people. At the vanguard of China's economic reform, Shenzhen has grown 400 times its original size in the last 40 years, following high levels of investment by the government and through mass migration of workers from all over China. The city has a huge transient working population comprising mostly young people, in particular single women. Most residents come to the city from various parts of the country, leaving family, friends and other support networks. Shenzhen is rapidly running out of space, with only limited land available to house future population growth.