The Irish, the San Diegans and the Scots have something in common.

We are all are able to register our approval of excellent new architecture.

Architecture Scotland are on a quest to find the best buildings in Scotland, as voted for by viewers of their website. Check it out here.

The results of the poll will be announced in October and will be included in the published annual Architecture Scotland 2008.

How do the nominated Scottish buildings compare with the San Diego nominations on our website?

Gerding Edlen on the left, Hines on the right

Proposals are in from the two developer teams vying to revamp the Civic Center.

The Union Tribune are running a poll - in true Orchids & Onions style.

Currently the results are:

For Gerding Edlen: 60.2% (1606 votes)

For Hines: 32.2% (858 votes)

For leaving it be: 7.6% (202 votes)

View the Union Tribune story here 

More images are available here

The full proposals are available here

Take a look and tell us what you think!

San Diegans are not the only ones able to express their approval of excellent new architecture.

For the first time, the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI) included a Public Choice category in their annual architectural awards. Almost 5,500 people voted in the online public choice. The contenders can still be viewed on the voting website, although voting is obviously closed.

A private house overlooking Lough Swilly in Co Donegal is the first winner. The house is rooted in the landscape, with its zig-zag roof angled to catch both the rising and the setting sun. From the sea, it is virtually invisible. See more images of the house here.

Architect Tarla MacGabhann, who designed the house with his brother Antoin, said the public award was “profoundly more important” to them than awards they have won from their peers. “What we do as architects must be experienced and encountered by the public on a daily basis. That’s what really matters. This is a public endorsement,” he said.

See television coverage of the 2008 RIAI awards here.

Even Prince Charles weighed in on the discussion about the London skyline. A notorious and colorful critic of modern architecture, his recent comments echoed his famous 1984 speech when he described a planned extension to the National Gallery as "a monstrous carbuncle" - shredding confidence in modern architecture.

He expressed concerns that the London skyscraper boom would result in "not just one carbuncle on the face of a much-loved friend, but a positive rash of them that will disfigure precious views and disinherit future generations of Londoners".

Going head to head with Lord Richard Rogers, the architect of numerous London towers and the chief architecture adviser to the London mayor, the prince complained that architects were indulging in a "free for all [that] will leave London and our other cities with a pockmarked skyline".

Leading architects rebutted the prince's claims and claimed Britain was leading the world in skyscraper design.

"He's wrong," said Ken Shuttleworth, lead designer of 30 St Mary Axe, also known as the Gherkin. "London is not a museum. It has to be renewed for the next generation, especially as it attempts to become the world's leading city. We can't leave it as it is in medieval times."

The prince's remarks generated sympathy among some architects who have grown quietly concerned that tower proposals have spread to the traditionally low-rise areas and even to suburbs, breaking the unwritten rule that towers should be built in clusters to limit their impact.

"There is no great clarity about where we build towers and where we don't," said Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. "What we need is a policy that supports principles like building towers in clusters and next to major transport interchanges."

Read the Prince's speech here

There's a rash of montrous buildings on the horizon of another great city - London. The blog Gridskipper solicited opinions from some of London's top architects about the monstrosities in their own city.

Though many mention the ego-driven towers that dot the skyline, the biggest offenses seem to come from lazy and uninspired projects.

Sam Jacob, founding director of Fashion, Architecture, Taste summed up what's wrong with many new London buildings in two sentences. "Ugliness isn't an aesthetic," he said, "it's about a meanness, a lack of generosity. In urban planning terms, a grabbing of public resource for private gain."

He thinks a candidate for this crown is St. George Wharf, located on a prime stretch of the Thames riverfront. "These are yuppie ghettos. Designed from the brochure outwards, they bristle with balconies that rubber-neck the river. It's not their greedy maxing out of volume that's the problem. Or the crashing together of economic circumstance (cheap loans, post-industrial rehabilitation, exponential rise in property value). It's the fact that it tries to look nice. That it does 'architectural' things (a touch of modernism, a little dash of High Tech, a dose of Pomo). It's their desire to please that is so despicable. They capture an anemic, generic marketing-led reductiveness. If James Blunt were a building, he'd be these. If they were food, they'd be coffee-chain sandwiches."

Read more comments from other London architects here

Orchids & Onions awards are only one way of attributing praise and concern for the built environment. Others have chosen to highlight the continuum of quality on Flickr or by launching a site addressing the whole enchilada. Check out the world’s Good, Bad and Ugly (architecturally speaking that is…) HERE.

French architect Jean Nouvel, has received architecture’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize. At age 62, Nouvel is the second Frenchman to take the prize - Christian de Portzamparc won in 1994.

While many agree that Nouvel’s designs have no readily identifiable signature, each is strikingly distinctive.

Imagine such diverse projects as Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater, Arab World Institute in Paris, Agbar Tower in Barcelona, KKL cultural and congress center in Lucerne, New York’s 40 Mercer, the Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi, a concert hall for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, as well as Parisian designs - Quai Branly Museum and Philharmonie concert hall.