A front garden makeover with dinosaurs, a playful addition to a Scottish castle and the latest from Shard architect Renzo Piano all caught the eye

1. Urban Nature Project, Natural History Museum, London SW7
J&L Gibbons and Feilden Fowles
A magical embodiment of evolution and geological time, given spatial and physical form by rocks, plants and buildings. The remaking of the front garden of the country’s second most popular visitor attraction also provides such useful things as a cafe, a learning centre and improved queueing and access. Educational, enjoyable, exotic.

2. n2 office building, London SW1
Lynch Architects
The practice led by serious-minded architect Patrick Lynch produced two exceptional buildings this year in Victoria, London: an extension to a coroner’s court and a new office building. The latter, poised above broad colonnades of sturdy V-shaped struts, with a miniature glade by muf architecture/art, is generous, handsome and, despite its commercial use, public-spirited.