How heavy is a house? In his 1965 essay A Home Is Not a House, Reyner Banham observed that modern American dwellings were becoming structurally lighter while growing heavier in mechanical services, such as plumbing, wiring, heating, and cooling. The true weight of architecture, he argued, was no longer in walls and roofs, but in the energy-intensive systems that sustained comfort.
Decades later, the question was updated at the 7th Lisbon Architecture Triennale. Curators Ann-Sofi Rönnskog and John Palmesino asked: How heavy is a city? The scale shifted from the domestic interior to the territory. The technosphere, materialized in the estimated 30 trillion tons of human-made matter on Earth, reframes the discussion entirely. Cities, data centers, oil fields, logistics hubs, satellites, cables, and waste streams form a planetary system in which architecture is neither object nor backdrop, but participant.
Before the digital turn, architecture's memory was largely tangible. It lived in the weight of drawings, the patina of models, and the thickness of books. To preserve architecture meant to preserve its traces, the documents, sketches, and photographs through which buildings could be remembered long after their material form had changed or disappeared. The modern architectural archive, as it developed in the 20th century, was both a refuge and a device of legitimacy. Institutions such as the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Casa da Arquitectura, or the Deutsches Architekturmuseum were built upon the conviction that to preserve architecture was to preserve its documents.
However, these archives didn't merely store knowledge. They determined what counted as architecture, who belonged to its canon, and how history would be told. To archive is to edit the past — to decide what enters, what is omitted, and how it will be interpreted. The archive, as theorised by Michel Foucault and later by Jacques Derrida, is never neutral; it is an instrument of power, a space that selects and excludes. In architecture, these dynamics are especially evident as they record the visible while silencing what falls outside their categories. The act of collecting has always been, implicitly, an act of judgment.
Ontario Science Centre Exterior South View. Image Courtesy of Snøhetta and Hariri Pontarini Architects
Hariri Pontarini Architects and Snøhetta have been selected to design the new Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. Announced in February 2026, the 400,000-square-foot facility will anchor the site's ongoing transformation through a 220,000-square-foot building defined by a series of scalloped, modular volumes. A central component of the proposal is the physical integration of the existing Pods and the historic Cinesphere via elevated connections and a continuous public promenade. Construction is expected to begin in Spring 2026, with completion anticipated in 2029 as part of a broader waterfrontredevelopment strategy.
MVRDV's shortlisted design for the Shift Landmark competition, 2026. Image Courtesy of MVRDV
Shift, a company offering digital programs to reduce carbon emissions through individual behavior change, has announced the five finalist teams advancing to Stage Two of its international architecture competition. Launched in January 2025, the Shift International Architecture Competition called for proposals to design "the Shift Landmark": a 25,000 to 30,000 m² building in Waterkant, a new waterfront district in southern Rotterdam. The project includes a hotel, a conference and meeting center, and a sustainable food court. Its objective is to set a new standard for a purpose-driven destination that turns circular living into "something individuals, companies, and organisations can feel, experience, and act on." The five shortlisted design concepts reflect different visions of sustainability and climate action, developed by teams led by the European offices of MVRDV (Netherlands), Heatherwick Studio (United Kingdom), Office for Political Innovation (Spain), Mecanoo (Netherlands), and Ecosistema Urbano (Spain).
Diagram of the services in Barba Jupiter. Image Courtesy of Géométral
Founded in 2022 by Clément Masurier and based in Paris, France, Géométral is an architectural practice defined by design strategies that are linked to the landscape, which it treats as a primary determinant of form. The studio, one of the winners of the ArchDaily 2025 Next Practices Awards, approaches each project as a small universe that combines program, atmosphere, and spatial narratives. Rather than a single signature style, they focus on crafting moods and situations tailored to each context and user.
In its early stages, the studio lacked a built portfolio and responded by developing "fictional architectures" situated on real topographies. This exercise was not merely an aesthetic pursuit but a methodological anchor, as it allowed the firm to establish a rigorous process of site analysis and typological testing before receiving physical commissions. By treating imaginary projects with the same technical scrutiny as real ones, the studio developed a library of formal responses to environmental constraints that now dictate their built work.
Not long ago, recent enough to feel current, architecture entered a moment in which buildings became legible as products. The framing offered discipline and a refreshed perspective to an industry that often deems novelty more precious than operational clarity. Nudging exercises of "form" towards repeatability, user experience, performance, and scalability prepared buildings to be a "product" that could now be evaluated. Architecture is more answerable to how well it works, how clearly it communicates its use, and how consistently it delivers its intended experience.
The discipline of product design refreshes the perspectives of architects designing for a changing future. Along with offering a new vocabulary and a rubric for design, the field brings in accountability: a product must perform reliably across time and context. It must hold together as a system of decisions rather than a collection of parts. Quality, therefore, is no longer measured solely by uniqueness, but by consistency and by the ability to produce a predictable experience for its occupants.
Much more than merely as a protective skin, the building envelope functions as a thermal regulator that influences operational energy demand, indoor comfort, and long-term efficiency. And before renewable systems or mechanical strategies are introduced, performance begins in section. The way walls, roofs, windows and floors are layered determines how much heat is lost in winter, gained in summer, and ultimately how much energy a building consumes. At the center of this evaluation lies a fundamental metric: the thermal transmittance, or U-value. Understanding how to calculate it is essential for assessing whether an envelope conserves energy or allows it to escape.
Conceptually, thermal transmittance relates heat flow to both surface area and temperature difference. It expresses how much energy crosses one square meter of envelope for each degree of thermal gradient between its two faces.
If we divide 1 m2 of our envelope by the temperature difference between its faces, we will obtain a value that corresponds to the thermal transmittance, also called U-Value. This value tells us a building's level of thermal insulation in relation to the percentage of energy that passes through it; if the resulting number is low we will have a well-isolated surface and, on the contrary, a high number alerts us of a thermally deficient surface.
Every year on March 3, World Hearing Day highlights the importance of preventing hearing loss and ensuring equitable access to ear and hearing care worldwide. Led by the World Health Organization, the 2026 theme, "From communities to classrooms: hearing care for all children," emphasizes early identification, inclusive education, and supportive environments as fundamental components of children's development. As global estimates continue to indicate a rising number of children experiencing preventable or untreated hearing conditions, the conversation increasingly expands beyond healthcare systems and into the spaces where daily life unfolds.
In January 2026, the World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize was awarded to Australian firm Architectus for their conservation of the Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The award recognizes that Modernist buildings, once seen as a vanguard of architecture, are falling into disrepair and are underappreciated by the public. The situation in Africa is typical of this global sentiment, and this was the first time a building on the continent was graced with this award. The prize also spotlights Ethiopia's rich Modernist inventory, which marks its continental role in the mid and late twentieth century.
3D Visualizations of the project for the Saint-Ouen Grand Paris Nord University Hospital, 2026. Image Courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop
On February 20, Renzo Piano Building Workshop announced that the building permit for the Hôpital Universitaire Saint-Ouen Grand Paris Nord (HUSOGPN) has been officially granted. The project is a state initiative responding to rapid population growth, increasing demand for care, and evolving technical standards with a "next-generation" hospital in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, a commune in the northern suburbs of the French capital. The hospital will be located on the site of the former PSA factory, once an industrial engine of the region and now large and well-connected enough to host a program of rare scale: 986 beds and 288 day places, a workforce of over 5,500 professionals, and facilities equipped with contemporary technology for areas such as surgery and maternity. Envisioned as a "hospital-landscape," the building designed by RPBW in association with Brunet Saunier & Associés stands out for featuring a 1.3-hectare roof garden and an urban forest with over 1,000 trees.
Across South America, architecture endures through the materials it uses, those that persist over time. Bamboo, brick, wood, and concrete appear across regions, connecting climate, labor, and culture in ways that ensure their persistence through generations. Their continuity does not depend solely on preservation or heritage. It depends on use.
In this context, cultural memory does not reside primarily in monuments or images, but in practice. It survives in repeated gestures: laying bricks, tying guadua joints, assembling wood frames, casting slabs that anticipate another floor. These actions are transmitted less through manuals than through participation. Over time, they form systems of knowledge embedded in habit and necessity. Materials endure not because they symbolize the past, but because they continue to work.
In an age so obsessed with skincare and appearances, few architects are truly interested in the intestines of our buildings. With a practice rooted in contextual awareness and technical pragmatism, sensitive to the needs of the people it serves and to resource limitations, Moroccan architect Aziza Chaouni focuses on the hidden systems that allow architecture to be. Over the past two decades, she has been working on projects across different geographies, particularly in the Saharan region, actively engaging with its communities and heritage.
Currently leading the South–North (SoNo) Lab for Sustainable Construction and Conservation at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, Chaouni brings to the academic realm her architectural expertise in operating under pressing constraints, advocating for reciprocal collaboration between the Global South and the Global North. ArchDaily had the opportunity to speak with Aziza about her experience in Africa and how it can foster more sustainable ways of designing buildings for the future of our cities.
In most cases, the power of decision lies with specialized professionals—historians, museologists, architects, geographers. But on what basis are these decisions made? Can the complexity of history be reduced to a checklist? Or, more fundamentally, which version of history underlies these choices?
Eighteen years ago, two architecture students decided that they had a project worth pursuing. It wasn't a built structure, but a digital project that ended up revolutionizing the way people around the world consume architectural content. This was how ArchDaily was founded, and it still guides our work to this day. The future of architecture is continuously being shaped in classrooms, studios, and workshops around the world, and we want to continue supporting the students who are actively participating in this evolution. Recognizing the creativity and vision of students who are redefining architectural discourse around the world is what led us to create the Student Project Awards.
We are now pleased to present the longlisted projects for this first edition of the ArchDaily Student Project Awards. With hundreds of projects submitted from around the world, our in-house team of architects and editors carefully combed through every single entry, narrowing them down to 104 longlisted projects. The students who participated represent the diversity of the architectural landscape itself, with submissions from every continent, all levels of study, and in various scales and typologies.
https://www.archdaily.com/1039110/explore-the-longlist-of-the-archdaily-student-project-awardsDaniela Porto
In the architectural history of the Mexican territory, the built environment has functioned not merely as a human stage, but as a biological infrastructure designed to organize proximity between species. The resulting spatial logic is not a solo performance, but a negotiated coexistence between human and animal bodies. To examine this heritage today is to shift the analytical focus away from stylistic authorship and toward a more fundamental phenomenon: the persistence of spatial practices that emerged to sustain shared forms of life.
Many of the architectural features now interpreted as cultural or aesthetic markers — oversized thresholds, expansive patios, and durable surfaces — can be understood instead as material traces of an interspecies contract. For centuries, horses, mules, and livestock were not external to architecture but essential inhabitants whose physical presence shaped scale, circulation, and material choices. Their bodies left measurable imprints in space, from the height of entrances that accommodated mounted riders to paving systems designed to withstand hooves, friction, and biological wear. Nowhere was this contract more visible than at the ground level of the colonial house.
Manresa Wilds Zoomed Aerial. Image Courtesy of BIG
ManresaIsland Corp. has unveiled the final vision for Manresa Wilds, a 125-acre waterfront park planned on a former power plant peninsula along Long Island Sound in Norwalk, United States. Developed in collaboration with landscape architecture firm SCAPE and architecture studioBIG, the proposal outlines the transformation of a polluted and long-inaccessible industrial shoreline into a publicly accessible coastal landscape. Following the receipt of a stewardship permit from Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection in December 2025, the project will move forward in phases, beginning with the opening of the 28-acre Northern Forest in spring 2027. Subsequent phases, extending into the early 2030s, will deliver the majority of the restored landscape and the adaptive reuse of the 1960s-era power plant as a year-round civic and educational hub, opening nearly two miles of coastline that have been closed to the public for decades.
Lacaton & Vassal have announced the transformation of a former administrative center into a mixed-use residential and office building in Vannes, a medieval town in Brittany, northwest France. The project is part of a State policy to mobilize state-owned land for housing. In 2023, the French State launched a call for expressions of interest for a project on the former administrative complex, which housed several State services, in consultation with the City of Vannes. The winning proposal is a partnership between GReeStone Immobilier and Grand Ouest Immobilier, with an architectural team formed by the office of Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, winners of the 2021 Pritzker Prize, in partnership with Emmanuelle Delage Architecte. According to the city government, the proposal was chosen with the aim of promoting resilience and limiting the carbon footprint by renovating rather than demolishing.
BDP, Cox Architecture, and Collage Design have unveiled the master plan for the 350-acre Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Sports Enclave in Ahmedabad, India. Positioned on the Sabarmati Riverfront and structured around the 132,000-seat Narendra Modi Stadium, the world's largest stadium by capacity, the project proposes a large-scale sports district integrating international competition venues with public landscapes and community facilities. Conceived as both an events precinct and an urban park, the development is intended to accommodate the 2030 Commonwealth Games centenary event, following Ahmedabad's selection as host city.
On a hot afternoon in May, when the air over western India turns metallic with heat, no one remembers façade composition. They remember where the shade falls. They remember which corridor breathed. They remember the house that was cooler than the street. What stays in memory is comfort beyond the form. Repeated thermal preference stabilizes into spatial configuration, and over time, those configurations become building types.
Azm / Samu by Hassan Qureshi. Image Courtesy of Riyadh Art
For centuries, sculpture has been associated with the materialization of religious values, the celebration of heroic achievements, or the consolidation of political power. Today, it also operates as a critical instrument and an urban mediator. Many contemporary works interrogate the present, challenge scale, engage with movement and circulation, and reshape perceptions of public space. Sculpture is no longer conceived as an isolated object, but as part of broader processes of urban transformation.
Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, exemplifies a city undergoing intense expansion and restructuring. Particularly under the Vision 2030 agenda, it has invested in upgrading public spaces, diversifying its cultural landscape, and consolidating an urban identity that brings together tradition, infrastructure, and global projection. Within this context, cultural production plays a structuring role, contributing to the redefinition of everyday urban experience and expanding the city's symbolic references.
