The global reference for architecture

Smiljan Radić's architecture often begins elsewhere: in a memory, a journey, a material, a stone, a half-seen structure, or a situation not yet organized as an architectural idea. In "Architecture: Distraction and Knowledge," his 2026 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate Lecture, distraction does not appear as a lack of focus, but as a way of receiving the world. It is through these peripheral encounters — travel, ruins, cities, stories, industries, and materials — that architectural knowledge slowly accumulates.

When Radić was announced as the 2026 Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, the recognition did not simply confirm a body of work already known for its material strangeness. It also clarified an architectural position that has long resisted easy translation into theory, or style, or spectacle. Radić's work is often described through oppositions: heavy and light, primitive and industrial, fragile and monumental, shelter and object, ruin and apparition. Yet these terms only partially account for the force of his architecture. What makes the work difficult, and increasingly necessary, is its refusal to become fully legible as a claim of certainty.

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The FIFA World Cup 2026 will take place from June 11 to July 19, 2026, across North America, with matches hosted at 16 venues in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. For the first time, the tournament is being co-hosted by three countries: 11 venues in the United States, 3 in Mexico, and 2 in Canada. Since the 2018 FIFA Congress selected the venues to host the 2026 World Cup, the three North American countries have been working to deliver the tournament. This edition will be the first to feature 48 competing teams, expanded from 32. Unlike the 2022 Qatar World Cup, which required the construction of entirely new stadiums, the three host countries already have the necessary infrastructure in place, though several venues are taking the opportunity to upgrade their facilities, including Mexico City's Estadio Azteca, Arlington's AT&T Stadium, and Toronto's BMO Field.

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Environmental justice confronts a simple but uncomfortable truth: the benefits and burdens of the environment are not shared equally. Marginalized communities bear a disproportionate share of polluted air, unsafe water, toxic land uses, extreme heat, and the accelerating risks of climate change in cities around the world. These are the consequential products of decades of policy decisions, investment patterns, exclusionary planning practices, and planning choices that have consistently favored certain communities over others.

In cities and landscapes alike, these injustices are written into the physical fabric of places, even revealing extreme differences in environmental conditions between neighborhoods and districts. Dense neighborhoods with little tree canopy, for example, absorb and hold heat, exposing residents to higher rates of heat-related illness. Highways, industrial corridors, ports, and waste facilities cluster near low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, shaping conditions of health, air and soil quality, and long-term safety.

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