Kindergarten architecture has long stood apart as a realm where design and imagination converge. Unlike most building typologies, these spaces are conceived not only to shelter and function but to shape the earliest experiences of curiosity, play, and social interaction. Throughout history, the design of kindergartens has evolved alongside pedagogical shifts, moving from modest, utilitarian beginnings to highly intentional environments that stimulate both learning and wonder. In this context, architecture becomes more than a backdrop — it becomes a silent educator, capable of nurturing emotional, cognitive, and physical development.
Italy is preparing to host its third Olympic Winter Games as Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo welcome Milano Cortina 2026, seventy years after Cortina staged the 1956 edition and two decades after Torino 2006. The Games will take place from February 6 to 22, 2026, marking the first time the Winter Olympics are organized across two cities, two regions, Lombardy and Veneto, and two autonomous provinces, Trento and Bolzano. Covering a territory of 22,000 square kilometers, Milano Cortina 2026 will become the most geographically extensive Winter Games to date, with over 90% of venues already existing or designed as temporary facilities.
Renzo Piano Building Workshop, in collaboration with Betaplan Architects (Athens) and landscape architect Camille Muller (Paris), has revealed the first images of a new cultural center under development in Piraeus, the port of Athens. Commissioned by The Dinos and Lia Martinos Foundation (DLMF), the project seeks to establish an international hub connected to similar art centers abroad, open to the local community, students, and visitors, and contributing to the urban and cultural fabric of the Athens metropolitan area. The complex, called KYKLOS, is planned to host contemporary art collections and cultural programming with an international outlook. Initiated in 2023, the project is currently in development, with construction planned to extend through the last quarter of 2028.
National Museum of Uzbekistan, Render by Tadao Ando Architect & Associates. Image Courtesy of The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation
The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) has announced the groundbreaking of the National Museum of Uzbekistan, designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Marking Ando's first major project in Central Asia, the museum is envisioned as both an architectural and culturallandmark in Tashkent. Planned to open in March 2028, the building reflects Ando's minimalist architectural language, integrating references to Uzbekistan's heritage with his characteristic use of geometry, natural light, and spatial clarity.
Susanna Moreira's path into architecture was shaped early by her involvement in architectural theory and research during her undergraduate studies. Born in Salvador, Brazil, she has also lived and studied in Milan and São Paulo—experiences that have enriched her understanding of the dynamic intersections between art, architecture, and urban environments. These interdisciplinary interests continue to inform her curatorial approach and editorial work.
Once the largest coal mine in Europe, the Zollverein complex in Essen, Germany, has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past twenty-five years. What was once a landscape of abandoned industrial facilities is now a laboratory of contemporary architecture, featuring works by Rem Koolhaas, Norman Foster, and SANAA. Their interventions bridge the site’s industrial past with its imagined future. Spanning 100 hectares, the UNESCO World Heritage site has become a global model of adaptive reuse, redefining what it means to preserve industrial heritage. Within this context stands the Ruhr Museum and its enigmatic art repository, the Schaudepot. Located in the complex’s former salt factory, the museum impresses not only with its collection but also with its architecture, which transforms a 1960s industrial building into a vibrant cultural venue.
Because of its historical and architectural relevance, the project is featured in the 2025 edition of Open House Essen, under the theme “Future Heritage.” The initiative explores which spaces might shape our future architectural legacy and asks pressing questions: What should we preserve? What should we adapt? And how can we design a future that is both livable and fair?
The Design-Build model is an increasingly attractive project delivery method, offering benefits such as enhanced control, reduced risks, cost efficiencies, and quicker completion times. Central to this approach is teamwork and collaboration, contrasting sharply with the traditional method of separate design and fixed-price bidding by contractors. Design-Build naturally motivates all participants to seek ways to boost productivity and quality, ensuring fairness and transparency in costs.
Curated by Cotter & Naessens Architects, the Ireland pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia in 2025 presents Assembly, exploring architecture's role in shaping spaces for gathering, discussion, and democratic exchange. Commissioned by Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council of Ireland the pavilion is officially inaugurated by Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects with Sharon Barry, Director of Culture Ireland, and Fionnuala Sweeney, Head of Architecture at the Arts Council.
All materials come from somewhere, embedded in a chain of extraction, supply, production, and disposal that, depending on its scale, leaves more or less significant marks on the environment. In architecture, we usually approach this trajectory through the lens of materials' circularity, considering how they can re-enter production cycles rather than become waste. Yet, broadening our view to unexpected places reveals parallel systems where by-products from one industry become resources for another. This approach has found fertile ground in organic waste transformed into biomaterials, with one of the most recent examples being the work of Fahrenheit 180º. Through their installation, "From the Tagus to the Tile", they repurpose oyster shells initially discarded by food systems to create a reinterpretation of Lisbon's iconic tiles.
Organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), the 18th Istanbul Biennial will be realized in three stages between 2025 and 2027, continuing to be Türkiye's largest international exhibition dedicated to contemporary art. Curated by Christine Tohmé under the title The Three-Legged Cat, the first leg will be held from September 20 to November 23, 2025. Continuing the Biennial's approach of engaging directly with Istanbul through a dispersed model rather than a fixed venue, this edition will use eight sites located within walking distance along the Beyoğlu–Karaköy axis. Over this period, works by 47 artists from more than 30 countries will be presented to the public, accompanied by a program of performances, screenings, and live events during the opening week.
Between August 19 and 20, 2025, thousands of spectators watched as one of Sweden's largest wooden buildings was lifted onto beams and wheeled across town. The Kiruna Church, constructed between 1909 and 1912, was designed to echo the form of a Sámi hut in Sweden's far northern region, within the Arctic Circle. The building was designed by architect Gustaf Wickman, who served as the church's architect at the time, and combines elements of Gothic Revival with an Art Nouveau altar. The building, one of the city's main tourist attractions, was moved to a new location between the cemetery and the new city center to prevent damage caused by the expansion of the local mine.
How do nature and landscape dialogue within spaces designed for children? How are architecture and urban design capable of shaping natural atmospheres that integrate practices of play, participation, and exploration? From participatory projects that involve children in the design process to built environments that incorporate furniture adapted to their needs, the conception of spaces for childhood entails the creation of places for encounter, learning, and coexistence. At times, these spaces are able to strengthen the relationships between interiors and exteriors, connecting their users with nature and the surrounding environment. Depending on their cultures, customs, and histories of attachment to place, several contemporary projects deploy tools and strategies that integrate architecture, nature, and pedagogy to form broad experiences of learning, play, and discovery.
As the AI fervor continues to reshape how people see the world, 2025 looms as yet another year in the march toward technological advancement. While some worry about the dominance of technology in society, architects are shifting their attention to the foundations of a digital future: data centers. The design of data centers challenges designers to reconcile the demands of technological functionality with the principles of architectural excellence. As the dependence on cloud computing, IoT ecosystems, and big data analytics deepens, data center architecture demands more attention. As data consumption skyrockets, data center consumption rates match the demand. These structures were once relegated to nondescript industrial zones, but are now becoming integral components of urban and suburban environments. While some community members are upset about the encroachment of data centers in their localities, others see them as indicators of economic development.
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“Glen and Anna Harder House, Mountain Lake, Minnesota,” 1970. Color transparency, 4 x 5 in. Copyright J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Photo: Julius Shulman. For the 2025 grant to the Art Institute of Chicago for the exhibition “Bruce Goff: Material Worlds”. Image Courtesy of Graham Foundation
The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts has announced $573,300 in grants to 39 organizations worldwide. Chosen from more than 200 submissions, the 2025 awards support a broad range of initiatives, including exhibitions, installations, publications, podcasts, student-led journals, internationalarchitectureevents, and public programs that contribute to advancing architectural discourse and design experimentation. Over nearly seven decades, the Graham Foundation has provided more than $45 million in direct support to over 5,200 projects. With the addition of the 2025 grantees, the Foundation aims to continue to strengthen its international network of individuals and organizations advancing architectural ideas and public engagement around the world.
Strada Brutalissima. Pavilion of the Republic of North Macedonia at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, 2025. Image Courtesy of Blagoja Bajkovski
The Republic of North MacedoniaPavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale is dedicated to the Brutalist architecture of its capital city, Skopje. This architectural movement has given the city a distinctive identity following the earthquake that struck in 1963. According to pavilion curator, architect Blagoja Bajkovski, in the aftermath of the disaster, Skopje embraced Brutalism from a variety of sources. One of the most prominent of these was Kenzo Tange's reconstruction plan, developed after an international competition organized by the United Nations in 1965. The exhibition, titled Strada Brutalissima, recounts this identity, the events that shaped it, and the buildings that continue to represent it through a series of architectural models. Inspired by the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale's Strada Novissima, the project reinterprets the concept of a curated "street," this time centered on Skopje's Brutalist heritage.
In contemporary Japanese and Chinese kindergarten design, architects are transforming the interior spaces from a simple container into an active, multi-sensory environment. This shift seems to follow Studies in developmental psychology that suggest that a child's experience of space begins with a sensorimotor engagement through touch and manipulation. Thus, they place a strong emphasis on the use of materials and the approach of learning through play. Architects seem to be moving beyond traditional classrooms, into environments that are tactile, stimulating, and rooted in their specific contexts. The buildings themselves become tools for education, encouraging children to learn and explore through direct physical engagement.
Architecture has historically produced many iconic buildings shaped by singular visions—often designed unilaterally for users, communities, and cities. While this top-down approach has enabled strong formal coherence and conceptual clarity, it has also prioritized authorship over engagement. The result: projects that may be celebrated as visionary, yet often feel disconnected from the everyday realities of those who inhabit them.
Designing for others is inherently complex. As architects, we are frequently tasked with creating environments for communities with whom we may have no personal or cultural familiarity. This distance, however, can offer valuable objectivity. It allows us to engage diverse perspectives with fresh eyes, critically analyzing the needs and constraints of multiple stakeholders. Through this process, the discipline of architecture has advanced—pushing boundaries in spatial thinking, material innovation, and structural experimentation.
Whether for design competitions or architectural awards, buildings are often judged for what they offer–the programmed functions, the form, or the visual delight. In a minority of cases, it is the absence or the reduction of intervention that made a project successful. In 1971, a high-profile architectural competition in Paris was won by a proposal that only utilized half the available site, giving the rest as an urban space to the city. In London, a proposal to convert a disused power station with minimal additions, leaving large spaces untouched, won a design competition in 1994. The Stirling Prize, the UK's most prestigious architectural award, in 2017 was won by a proposal that was little more than an empty platform. These examples of cultural buildings from Northwestern Europe illustrate how the absence of intervention can provide more.
The Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urbanism and State Property of Montenegro has announced the results of the international competition for the new Museum District and Park of Arts & Culture in Podgorica. The winning proposal, led by Milan- and London-based practice a-fact architecture factory in collaboration with LAND, Maffeis Engineering, and Charcoalblue, was selected from 48 entries by an international jury. The project envisions a new cultural district consolidating three institutions, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Natural History Museum, and the House of Architecture, within a landscape that reconnects the city to the Morača River.
Oxford United Football Club's planning application for a new all-electric football stadium has been approved by Cherwell District Council. The scheme was developed by a team that includes AFL Architects, Mott Macdonald engineering services, Fabrik landscape design, and Ridge and Partners built environment consultants. Designed for a capacity of 16,000 spectators, the master plan also proposes a 1,000-person events space, a 180-bed hotel, a restaurant, a health and wellbeing centre, and a new public plaza with gardens.
This edition of Architecture Now brings together projects that explore how architecture is reshaping global gateways, cultural destinations, and urban living. SOM's design for a new Arrivals and Departures Hall in Austin and Scott Brownrigg's Heathrow West proposal highlight the airport as a civic threshold, while Kerry Hill Architects' three-tower precinct in Brisbane emphasizes public space and subtropical landscapes in high-density housing. Zaha Hadid Architects' beachfront tower in Florida extends Miami's sculptural coastal tradition, and Pharrell Williams and NIGO's Japa Valley Tokyo introduces a temporary cultural district blending art, hospitality, and retail. Together, these initiatives reflect how infrastructure, lifestyle, and design intersect to define contemporary urban experience.
