London's National Gallery has announced Kengo Kuma & Associates, in collaboration with BDP and MICA, as the winners of the international competition to design a new wing for the institution. Launched in September 2025, the competition attracted 65 submissions from international practices, from which six teams were shortlisted to develop proposals. The selection marks a key milestone in the institution's long-term development strategy, Project Domani, positioning the new addition as a central component in the reconfiguration of its architectural and curatorial framework. Conceived as the most significant transformation of the museum since its establishment in 1824, the project aims to expand both spatial capacity and curatorial scope, enabling the presentation of a continuous narrative of Western painting within a single setting.
This week marked World Health Day, observed annually on April 7 by the World Health Organization. This year's edition issued the call to "Stand with science," inviting renewed engagement with scientific knowledge as a foundation for collective action across disciplines. In architecture and urban design, this imperative resonates through projects that translate research into spatial strategies: from the deployment of digital twins to inform urban planning and decision-making, to rewilding initiatives that integrate biodiversity as a tool to mitigate climate change, and materially informed practices that engage resource-conscious construction. Within this broader framework, recent works also foreground architecture's social agency at multiple scales, including a landscape-driven cancer support center in Kent that aligns wellbeing with environmental sensitivity, an urban installation in Brescia operating as a civic awareness device around life in prison and pathways to reintegration, and the transformation of a street in Mantua into a pedestrian-oriented, biodiversity-rich public space.
The construction industry today faces an unavoidable paradox: the urgent need for sustainable solutions for the future of cities collides with the exhaustion of the term "sustainability" itself, often reduced to a hollow commercial label. In this scenario, Arquivo – one of the winners of ArchDaily's 2025 Next Practices Award – emerges as a facilitator and mediator between different stakeholders in the construction field through disassembly – or rather, de-construction – and the reuse of building elements. Etymologically, if "construction" derives from the Latin construere (to heap up, assemble), the prefix "de-" imposes a conceptual inversion: it is not about destroying, but about disassembling with intelligence to understand the logic of the parts.
From April 21 to 26, the 64th edition of Salone del Mobile.Milano returns to Rho Fiera Milano, bringing together over 1,900 exhibitors across more than 169,000 square meters of sold-out exhibition space. Yet beyond its scale, the 2026 edition signals a more structural shift through collaborations with figures such as Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten (OMA) and Formafantasma, the Salone continues to reposition itself as an evolving cultural infrastructure rather than a conventional trade fair. This year introduces new curatorial and strategic layers, most notably the preview phase of Salone Contract and the debut of Salone Raritas, alongside immersive installations and exhibitions, while the Salone's footprint across Milan grows further through city-wide interventions during Milan Design Week.
"Map the New World" is the motto of Project PLATEAU, led by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), to develop and expand access to 3D models representing the diversity of cities across the country. Japan comprises a total of 744 cities, including 14 with populations exceeding one million, 190 with between 100,000 and one million inhabitants, and 540 with populations between 10,000 and 100,000. To date, 3D models of more than 250 cities have been made available as open data through the country's public G-Spatial Information Center, and can also be accessed via an online browser viewer. According to public authorities, the project aims to strengthen urban resilience by providing society with new tools to address local challenges. This involves not only urban space modeling but also collaboration with local governments, private companies, and technology communities. The project also includes a digital reconstruction of the recently closed Osaka World Expo site.
At the Table with Nature Exhibit, ambiente 2026 Photo Credit: Jürgen Baumhauer
The well-known phrase "man is what he eats" (Der Mensch ist, was er isst), by Ludwig Feuerbach, asserts that the physical, mental, and even moral constitution of human beings is directly linked to what they consume. Today, this idea is widely internalized, with growing awareness around food, nutrition, and the impact of what we ingest on our bodies. Yet, this same level of awareness doesn't extend to the environments we inhabit, where materials continue to be treated as technical decisions rather than active agents in the relationship between body and space. Considering that a large portion of the global population spends around 90% of their time indoors, it is rarely discussed what actually composes these spaces at their most fundamental level: materials. Walls, floors, and finishes are often approached as technical or aesthetic choices, when in reality they can function as continuous sources of exposure to potentially harmful substances.
Anan Alsama designed by Fatimah Alabid, Masud Alzunaifer, and Maha Alesawi. Image Courtesy of Mujassam Watan
In the city, aesthetics are not measured by the height of towers or the width of roads, but by their ability to evoke meaning within space. From this perspective, the Mujassam Watan initiative emerges as more than a mere artistic endeavor. It involves a deliberate attempt to redefine the relationship between people and place, between material memory and imagined identity. In the city of Khobar, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—where urban modernity intersects with rapid social transformation—this initiative raises the question: How can a sculpture become an open text, one that is both visually read and experientially felt?
Sagamihara, Japan. Drone photo by Rob Antill (@digitalanthill) and Ben Steensls (@randomoperator)
At a time when satellites orbit the planet, submarine cables sustain the global flow of data, and algorithms organize everyday life, a question emerges within architecture: at what scale are we actually designing today?
While design was once primarily shaped by local or regional conditions, it is now entangled in chains that begin with resource extraction, pass through industrial systems, and extend across planetary infrastructures that are often invisible, yet operate continuously and interdependently.
Offsite construction dramatically reduces construction waste and ensures precision assembly, but long-term sustainability relies on the durability of the factory-applied building envelope.. Image Courtesy of Terraco
The global offsite construction market—encompassing modular, precast concrete, and hybrid prefabricated systems—was valued at USD 172 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 225.7 billion by 2030 (CAGR 4.9–8%). In the UAE, government targets call for 25–30% offsite content in public projects by 2030; the UK currently leads globally, with 15–20% of housing using offsite solutions. Offsite manufacturing is increasingly promoted as the sustainable future of construction, with benefits including reduced waste, accelerated delivery, and improved quality control. Sustainability is not defined by how quickly a building is assembled. It is defined by how long it performs.
Observed annually on April 7, World Health Organization's World Health Day draws attention to global health priorities while situating them within broader environmental and societal contexts. Established following the first World Health Assembly in 1948 and observed since 1950, the day has evolved into a platform for addressing the shifting conditions that shape health, from local systems of care to planetary-scale challenges. The 2026 edition, held under the theme "Together for health. Stand with science," calls for renewed engagement with scientific knowledge as a basis for collective action. The year-long campaign emphasizes collaboration in protecting the health of people, animals, plants, and the planet, foregrounding the One Health approach as a framework for understanding their interdependence.
Paris's 19th arrondissement Parc de la Villette is undergoing a major transformation, combining a newly opened urban farm with restored biodiversity as part of a strategy to adapt the 55.5-hectare park to climate change. Masterplanned by Bernard Tschumi in 1982 and opened to the public in 1987, the park stands as a landmark of European modernism in public space design, breaking from the traditional concept of the metropolitan park. With a 15,000-square-meter extension, this major green lung in northeast Paris is reimagining its lawns as a living laboratory for environmental education, where animals, plants, and humans coexist. The extensive renovation follows the addition of Tschumi's HyperTent in 2022, a hyperbolic paraboloid structure functioning as a new ticket booth on the podium of Folie L4, and marks the park's most significant transformation since its inauguration.
In recent years, Albania has undergone a rapid and visible transformation, emerging as one of the most active urban environments in Southeast Europe. This growth is not only reflected in the expansion of its built fabric but also in the scale and ambition of new architectural interventions that seek to redefine the country's image. Across its territory, a series of large developments, cultural institutions, and infrastructural projects are being introduced as part of a broader effort to reposition Albania and its capital, Tirana, within regional and international networks.
A significant number of these interventions are being designed by internationally recognized architectural offices, whose presence has become a defining characteristic of the city's current phase of development. Rather than relying primarily on incremental or locally embedded processes, Tirana's transformation is increasingly shaped through externally authored visions that introduce new formal languages, typologies, and urban strategies. These projects often operate as singular objects or large-scale fragments, contributing to a landscape where the city is assembled through distinct and highly visible gestures.
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Dornbracht Madison fittings for Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa in Baden-Baden. Image Courtesy of Dornbracht
During renovation projects, replacement is often preferred over refurbishment. Used fixtures are removed, new products specified, timelines secured. Particularly in hospitality projects, where closures are costly and operations are tightly scheduled, installing new components appears to be the most reliable solution. It is faster, easier to coordinate, and aligns with established workflows. Refurbishment operates differently. It requires careful dismantling instead of disposal, evaluation instead of substitution, and trust in the quality of what is already there. It introduces complexity into a process designed for efficiency.
The recent renovation of Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa in Baden-Baden demonstrates that under the right circumstances, this additional effort can become a deliberate architectural strategy for similar projects, especially when the original materials were never intended to be temporary.
For DB Studios, architecture is not only about building, but about belonging. It is about creating a situated practice, one that responds to its context, its people, and its local identity, expressed through materials, color, and spatial decisions. In this sense, design becomes a way of articulating a language rooted in its context and shaped by the people it serves.
This position becomes especially evident in Vision Pakistan, a project by DB Studios recently recognized with the 2025 Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Beyond recognizing the project's architectural qualities, the award highlights a broader commitment: creating a supportive environment for underprivileged youth in which education, vocational training, and spatial design work together to foster independence and social mobility. Through its form, façade, and interior organization, the building responds closely to its context, reinforcing a sense of ownership among its users while fostering pride in the surrounding community and among emerging local practitioners.
Fallingwater, the iconic residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, has reopened to the public following the completion of a three-year preservation project. The reopening coincides with the building's 90th anniversary and the start of its 63rd tour season, marking a key moment in the ongoing conservation of one of the most widely recognized works of modern architecture. The intervention, led by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, focused on addressing structural and environmental challenges while maintaining the integrity of Wright's original design.
Between 2023 and 2024, photographers Francesco Russo and Luca Piffaretti documented architecture and landscapes across Ecuador's coast, the Andes Mountains, the Amazon rainforest, the Galápagos Islands, and cities such as Quito, Guayaquil, and Cuenca. The photographic documentation explores Ecuador's evolving identity through its contemporary architecture, examining how it engages with natural surroundings, urban conditions, and social contexts. The resulting archive includes more than 40 projects by renowned local practices such as Al Borde, Durán & Hermida, Emilio López, José María Sáez, La Cabina de la Curiosidad, MCM+A, Natura Futura, and RAMA Estudio, among many others. The selection demonstrates how architecture can create high-quality spaces that respond to contemporary demands for sustainability and environmental responsibility by combining creativity and technology with renewable resources, despite ongoing economic, climatic, and political challenges in Latin America and beyond.
The Cosmogony of (Racial) Capitalism. Image Courtesy of Dele Adeyemo
Having thrown a stone today, Eshu kills a bird of yesterday. The Yoruba proverb tells both a story of reparation and of ancestrality by joyfully bending spacetime conventions and accessing subjects from the past with present actions. The saying offers a poetic entry point to broader West African traditions and to the practice of Scottish-Nigerian artist and architect Dele Adeyemo. Named one of the winners of the ArchDaily 2025 Next Practices Awards, Adeyemo's work brings together ecology, spirituality, dance, and territory, examining how embodied cultural practices can generate alternative spatial possibilities within and against the architecture of racial capitalism.
Born in Nigeria and raised in the United Kingdom, Adeyemo has been visiting Lagos for many years. Through this engagement, he has developed an extensive body of research on collective movement practices that predate capitalism and offer distinct, often imaginative spatial intelligences operating alongside dominant systems. ArchDaily spoke with Dele about his artistic and pedagogical practices, and how he identifies design sophistication where architects often perceive deficiency.
Cultural centers continue to serve as a productive ground for unbuilt architectural exploration, reflecting how architects are rethinking the role of public institutions in relation to landscape, experience, and program hybridity. In this Unbuilt edition, submitted by the ArchDaily community, the selected projects bring together a range of proposals that expand the definition of the cultural center beyond a singular building. These works position architecture as a spatial framework that mediates between research, exhibition, retreat, and public life, often embedded within or distributed across natural and urban contexts.
Across varied geographies, from northern Norway and Oslo to Łódź, Vienna, Marrakech, and New Tashkent, the projects demonstrate diverse responses to cultural infrastructure. They include landscape-integrated complexes shaped by topography and climate, bridges that combine gallery and public circulation, zoological pavilions structured as immersive sequences, adaptive reuse of military buildings into performance spaces, courtyard-based environments rooted in local traditions, and climate-responsive institutions informed by environmental analysis. Together, these proposals explore how cultural programs can be organized through movement, spatial layering, and relationships between interior and exterior conditions.
Japanese architectKengo Kuma and his studio Kengo Kuma & Associates (KKAA) have unveiled Earth | Tree, a site-specific installation at Copenhagen Contemporary, developed in collaboration with Danish wood manufacturer Dinesen. Opened on March 28, 2026, as part of the institution's CCreate programme, the project occupies a former industrial hall, introducing a spatial intervention defined by timber, brick, and light. Led by partner Yuki Ikeguchi, with team members Asger T. Taarnberg, Nicolas Guichard, and Yasemin Shiner, the installation marks KKAA's first exhibition in Scandinavia and situates the studio's material-oriented practice within an exhibition format.
A team led by French architecture practice Coldefy, comprising CITYFÖRSTER, Sporaarchitects, TREIBHAUS.LAND, and Marko & Placemakers, has won the competition to design a masterplan for Rákosrendező in Budapest. The project is developed for the Budapest Capital Asset Management Centre, acting on behalf of the Municipality of Budapest. The design outlines a 15-year scheme to transform a brownfield site long regarded as the city's "rust belt," located on the eastern side of the Hungarian capital. The regeneration plan includes over 10,000 apartments, new transportation links, and commercial and civic spaces, forming a comprehensive urban redevelopment strategy aligned with 15-minute city principles.
Building above water means doing away with a part of construction that is quite literally the basis of most of our built environment: the foundation. In a world dominated by water, currents, and shifting levels are variables that simply cannot be ignored, which is why the most emblematic feature these projects share is their adaptability.
Instead of robust, deep bases – such as piles or caissons – designed to anchor architecture into the earth, floating structures frequently employ solutions like concrete pontoons or plastic drums to prevent the building from sinking. These are typically paired with anchoring systems to "fix" the structures, even if only temporarily, to a specific location.
Establishing thermal comfort once demanded a far more deliberate and calibrated architectural intelligence—an interplay of orientation, massing, material behavior, ventilation potential, shading, and the ways daylight and surfaces absorb and release heat. This was not simply a matter of taste, but of necessity. When many of Hong Kong's post-war modernist buildings were constructed in the late 1960s and 1970s, forming a substantial portion of the city's public housing and broader residential stock, air-conditioning was not yet a ubiquitous, default service. Cooling, where present at all, was limited and unevenly distributed; comfort had to be negotiated through passive means, through section, façade depth, operable openings, and climatic detailing. It was only later, particularly through the 1970s and 1980s, as air-conditioning became increasingly standardized across the region, that mechanical cooling began to displace this earlier matrix of architectural decision-making.
Did air conditioning negatively affect architectural space, particularly in Hong Kong and the nearby region? The more precise claim is that widespread reliance on AC has profoundly rearranged the incentive structure of building design.
