Who are the architects, designers, brands and products that Dezeen readers most wanted to read about over the last year? Who made the news and set the agenda in the design world? We've spent weeks crunching the data to find out. More
Our first ever Dezeen Hot List is headed by an architect we lost this year. But the sad passing of Zaha Hadid was the most talked-about topic in architecture and design over the past 12 months and places the late architect at the top of our list. More
This was the year that young Danish architect Bjarke Ingels became a critically acclaimed international superstar. Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people and published a citation by his former boss Rem Koolhaas, who described Ingels as "the embodiment of a fully fledged new typology, which responds perfectly to the current zeitgeist." More
Milan's design week is the biggest annual get-together in the calendar and the highest-ranking event in our Hot List. Its position at number three is testament to Milan's enduring importance to the design world and proof that no other design week comes close to matching its influence. More
Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are perennial favourites among Dezeen readers, completing the trio of most admired practices alongside Zaha Hadid Architects and Bjarke Ingels Group. More
Japanese architect Kengo Kuma hit the news at the end of last year after winning a competition to design a new National Stadium in Tokyo, which will serve as the centrepiece of the 2020 Olympics. More
IKEA is one of the world's most innovative and dynamic retailers – although our two most popular stories about the Swedish furniture giant over the past year were about designers who hacked their products. More
Swiss architect Peter Zumthor is an enigma: he runs a small firm, rarely gives interviews, doesn't build much and doesn't even have a website. He's one of the people we've written about the least – only 28 stories, the lowest of any entrant in our top 10. More
Like Peter Zumthor, Japanese duo Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA enjoy a cult-like status in the architecture world. And like Zumthor, they are publicity shy and haven't built as prolifically as some of their famous peers. More
Dutch studio MVRDV would have been placed highly in our Hot List under any circumstances – but its high ranking this year is due to the extraordinary popularity of its recent Chanel store facade in Amsterdam, which is made of glass bricks. More
London architect David Chipperfield can do no wrong in the eyes of our readers. His quietly austere brand of modernism doesn't scream for attention, yet avoids being formulaic. More
It's a surprise to find Apple outside the top 10, and even more so to find the tech giant trailing IKEA in our brands ranking. Yet while a few years ago our readers couldn't get enough of Apple, we've detected a waning of interest recently. More
Rem Koolhaas and his architecture firm OMA might easily have been two separate entries in our Hot List (his consultancy AMO could have been a third, but didn't get enough search traffic to make the cut). More
Foster + Partners, headed by Norman Foster, is one of the most prolific architecture offices that we write about, with readers visiting 178 stories about the firm over the past year. Among architects, only Zaha Hadid topped this, with 249. More
Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena was relatively unknown until this year, when he achieved the double whammy of winning the Pritzker Prize and curating the Venice Architecture Biennale. More
Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto is best known for the ethereal and ephemeral Serpentine Gallery Pavilion he built in 2013. This year he created an even more intangible installation for fashion brand COS that was literally smoke and mirrors – and light. More
Tadao Ando is the fourth Japanese architect in our overall top 20, and with design studio Nendo at number 20, this makes Japan the leading country for design talent in our Hot List. More
The Serpentine Galleries is the highest-placed institution on our Hot List. This comes as little surprise since the two tiny galleries, set in Kensington Gardens in London, are responsible for one of the the most talked-about highlights of the architectural year: the annual Serpentine Pavilion commission. More
One of the biggest surprises in our list is the fact that sportswear brand Adidas has come in ahead of its arch rival Nike. More
Omnipresent Google pops up all over Dezeen in a variety of guises: as a pioneer of self-driving cars; as a creator of virtual-reality painting software; as a rebranded company with a new logo. More
It's a surprise to find only one designer in the top 20 of our Hot List. We always knew that architecture was more popular with readers than design, but we didn't realise by quite how much. It's less of a surprise to find Nendo, the Japanese studio headed by Oki Sato, at the top of the design pile. More