This week, architecture's relationship with culture took center stage through exhibitions, public projects, and new cultural infrastructure that extend architectural discourse beyond the building itself. While major exhibitions from Australia, Shanghai, Barcelona, and Copenhagen examined themes of housing, landscape, and place through research and design, newly unveiled projects in China and Italy demonstrate how museums, performance venues, and mixed-use projects are increasingly conceived as open public landscapes rather than isolated institutions, while new exhibitions and construction milestones reflect ongoing experimentation in adaptive reuse, context-responsive design, and flexible urban environments.
Exhibitions Examine Housing, Practice, and Landscape
Architecture exhibitions this week highlight the role of cultural platforms in expanding architectural discourse through research, historical reflection, and design experimentation. Preparing for the 2027 Venice Architecture Biennale, Australia's "Lived In" draws on the ongoing Housing Atlas of Australia to examine more than a century of multi-dwelling housing, presenting documented projects through drawings, photographs, film, and data while contributing to broader conversations around housing, density, and urban change. The relationship between architecture and cultural production also frames "Jean Nouvel: Without the Artist, Architecture Disappears" at Shanghai's Museum of Art Pudong, where models, archival material, films, and a reconstruction of the architect's Paris studio are presented within the museum he designed, positioning the building itself as part of the exhibition. In Barcelona, "Parlour Gardens: Dreams from the Rooftop" similarly uses exhibition as a medium for exploring contemporary challenges, inviting fourteen landscape architects to reinterpret the century-old jardinets de saló tradition through living ceramic rooftop gardens that connect climate, ecology, and domestic landscapes.
Cultural Projects Integrate Architecture, Landscape, and Public Life
New cultural projects in China explore alternative relationships between buildings, landscape, and the public realm, extending cultural programs beyond enclosed spaces and into broader urban environments. Completed by MAD, Shenzhen Bay Culture Square transforms a waterfront site in the city's Nanshan District into a continuous cultural landscape, combining exhibition halls, educational spaces, public plazas, and planted roofs that connect with the surrounding park and coastline. Designed as an open public field rather than an isolated building, the project introduces a network of accessible paths, terraces, and outdoor spaces that accommodate everyday activities alongside cultural events. Also in Shenzhen, MVRDV's Bihailou Art Village applies the firm's Vertical Village concept to a mixed-use cultural and commercial development currently under construction near the Hong Kong border. Composed of distinct volumes connected by publicly accessible circulation routes, the project distributes theaters, retail spaces, restaurants, and a museum across a vertically organized environment that seeks to maintain the diversity and permeability of a traditional urban neighborhood within a dense contemporary context.
On the Radar
Dorte Mandrup's PLACE Exhibition Explores Architecture Rooted in Context
Presented at the Danish Architecture Center (DAC), PLACE is an exhibition by Dorte Mandrup's studio exploring how architecture can emerge from the specific conditions of a site. The international touring exhibition brings together five projects across Denmark, Greenland, Norway, and Germany, including the Ilulissat Icefjord Centre, the Wadden Sea Centre, and the Exile Museum Berlin, through models, photographs, and films. Focusing on the relationship between landscape, climate, history, and materiality, the exhibition examines how architecture can strengthen connections between people and the places they inhabit. PLACE will remain on view at DAC until August 16, 2026, before continuing its international tour across European architecture and cultural institutions.
CRA Unveils Origami-Inspired Roof Model for AGO Cultural Complex in Modena
CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Chuck Hoberman have unveiled a scale model of the kinetic roof designed for AGO – Fabbriche Culturali in Modena, Italy, offering the public a first look at the architectural centerpiece of the upcoming cultural complex. Transforming the former 18th-century Sant'Agostino Hospital into a 22,000-square-meter cultural hub, AGO will bring together museums, research facilities, educational spaces, and public areas, with the first stage scheduled to open in December 2026. Inspired by origami principles, the adaptable roof will open and close to transform the central courtyard into a flexible space for exhibitions, performances, and gatherings, while integrating photovoltaic panels as part of the project's sustainability strategy. The seven-meter-wide model is currently installed in Piazza Sant'Agostino, demonstrating the movement and geometry of the future structure ahead of the complex's completion.
ZHA's Z8 Tower Begins Construction in Beijing CBD
Construction has begun on Z8 Tower, a 140-meter mixed-use development designed by ZHA in Beijing's Central Business District. Located at the intersection of Jianguo Road and Jinhe East Road, the project combines offices with retail, dining, cultural, and leisure facilities to create a vertically integrated urban environment connected to the city's subway and rail networks. Facing the CBD's central park, the tower incorporates a series of planted terraces, verandas, and atriums along its western façade, extending the surrounding landscape into the building's interior spaces. Designed as an adaptable "vertical city," Z8 Tower features flexible office floors, shared communal areas, and climate-responsive façade elements, including external fins that provide solar shading and improve thermal performance throughout Beijing's seasonal conditions.
This article is part of our new This Week in Architecture series, bringing together featured articles this week and emerging stories shaping the conversation right now. Explore more architecture news, projects, and insights on ArchDaily.
