Thanks for this brilliant review of what remain one of my favourite buildings also.
Just to play devils advocate for a minute a number of apparent contradictions you bring up in your review could be resolved by reading the building in Baudrillard’s Postmodern way.
Lloyd’s actually really is an oil rig or rather an insurance rig. It symbolises the Lloyds market much better that the clasisist buildings it replaces. The image of the old fashioned, insurance man or banker is actually the fake and the ‘oil rig’ the real Lloyds. It expands or contracts with the ravenous market it houses. Sometimes growing in good times when it hits seam of easy insurance money and sometimes almost engulfed by the waves of unforseen risk like a huge wave of asbestos litigation for example.
The insurance men living the lie of the stuffy responsible reliable middle age underwriter naturally rebel against this exposed reality and seek refuge in keeping their trinkets, a bell here, a dining room there, all struggling against the deep truth they can barely acknowledge…that this unsatiable market and indeed themselves are perfectly represented by Rogers’ design.

If a decision was made to build an undersea rail tunnel between the two cities, the price tag of that might be in the region of two to three billion euros (via)

Someone is still dreaming about this it seems.

Architects Tuomo Siitonen Architects

Finland rightly deserves attention today as a nation that treats its children as a precious resource and that honors the adults who make education their passion and their career. – Diane Ravitch in Ed Week

A good article with interesting comments ranging from the excellent to the downright racist. For the record as a father of two bringing up kids in Finland I have nothing but praise for the education system here at least in the early years.

…if a detached house here in Finland wanted to produce all of its electricity using solar power, an investment of some 6,000-7,000 euros would grant cost-free electricity usage for the entire household from that point onwards - Peter Lund from the Aalto University

So it may not be unreasonable here in Finland after all to have some significant solar power use.

An Apartment Building in an old block By DaM studio (via arch daily). I really like because of  its Metabolist leanings like something inspired by the Nagasin Capsule Tower. Strong forms and uncompromising materials, maybe a little uncompromising to the site.