KOSMOS Architects: The Latest Architecture and News

Ephemeral architectures, characterized by their temporary and flexible nature, have emerged as powerful tools for revitalizing urban spaces and fostering architectural creativity. These transient installations transform public areas, engaging communities, and prompting reflections on the potential futures of our cities. By temporarily transforming environments, ephemeral architectures encourage both architects and the public to reimagine the possibilities of urban living. This dynamic interplay, between the temporary and the permanent, challenges traditional architectural practices and opens up new avenues for sustainable and inclusive urban development.

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Over the past year, architecture exhibitions have significantly addressed pressing global issues such as climate change, resource scarcity, and social advocacy. According to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, architecture exhibitions can foster dynamic engagement with contemporary issues, serving as platforms for experimentation and critique. These events, such as the Venice Architecture Biennale, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Milan Design Week, and Concéntrico, serve as essential platforms for creatives to showcase and explore new ideas. Moreover, they have been instrumental in addressing the urgent challenges posed by the climate crisis by promoting sustainable practices.

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Architecture and Design Festival Concéntrico celebrates its 10th anniversary from 25 April to 1 May 2024 with an edition that aims to reflect on the impact of the annual festival upon the city of Logroño, Spain, as well as to consider how the city continues to evolve. Through installations, exhibitions, lectures, performances, workshops, and activities, Concéntrico proposes a reflection of the urban environment, welcoming architects and designers to intervene and challenge it while opening conversations about pressing matters.

While the official theme of the festival focused on the future of cities, the invited architects and designers took this suggestion further. Several overarching themes and subjects emerged during this year’s event, from the incorporation of concepts of time, an unusual element to be tacked through temporary installations, to the desire to engage more honestly with a wider public, to listen to their needs and create platforms where diverse perspectives can take center stage.

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From April 25 to May 1, 2024, Logroño hosts the tenth edition of Concéntrico, a celebration of urban innovation and transformation. This year, the festival explores the future of cities, incorporating new formats, engaging diverse audiences, and tackling urban challenges through the lens of time as a catalyst for change in design. Featuring 20 interventions and activities involving over 100 professionals from 17 countries, the program encompasses processes such as renaturalizing public spaces, reimagining urban structures, and integrating recycled materials from previous editions.

Additionally, collaborations with educational centers ensure a lasting impact beyond the festival, fostering new collective practices in public spaces. Special projects such as  "The street in 10 years" or initiatives involving students and pupils from local schools and educational centers further enrich the festival's engagement with communities across Spain.

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25 practices, sole practitioners, and startups from 5 continents and 18 countries have been chosen as part of the 2023 New Practices, the latest edition of the global annual survey by ArchDaily. Ongoing since 2020, the review detects and showcases those who are taking architecture in its new direction under unstable times and demanding challenges.

ArchDaily's New Practices has invited not only designers to apply but those practicing within the broadest definition of architecture and its exercise to share their innovative, fresh, and forward-thinking mission with us. As a result, the 2023 edition features designers, landscape architects, researchers, curators, activists, writers, and three ground-breaking startups—the modular construction U-Build, Urban Beta with their Beta Port building system, and the "Google Doc of Space Design" Rayon—thus joining previously highlighted firms: AEC-industry-oriented management software Monograph, energy transition startup Baupal, online design platform and marketplace CANOA, and 3D-printed housing company ICON.

Russia is an enigmatic country known for its sublime constructivism developed during Soviet times, its greatness and enormous scale. It comes as no shocker — architects, such as Ivan Leonidov and his student Leonid Pavlov, and artists like El Lissitzky, have definitely contributed to the history and image of a strong Russian personality.

Considering the prevalent poverty in Russia, the reason for the fixation on cheap construction is rather clear. However, even local leading architects find something attractive and beautiful in the suburban barns and flimsy dwellings. Creating authentic installations in the shape of houses or changing and enhancing the experience of existing structures with materials at hand, Russian artists and architects express the country's skill of turning the ruined and inhabitable into the lively and cozy.

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Emerging international architecture office KOSMOS has unveiled 6 projects exploring potential collective spaces in the city of Basel, Switzerland. Unveiled during Art Basel, the speculative projects were featured in the Forum Basel exhibition curated alongside Museum Director Andreas Ruby and Stéphanie Savio, and emerging Chilean practice Plan Común. Held at the Swiss Architecture Museum (S AM), the architecture exhibition was held “in reaction to the increasing commodification of urban space today” and dedicated itself to investigating new possibilities for public space in Basel. Check out the projects, with descriptions from KOSMOS, below.

Global sportswear brand Nike, in collaboration with urban planning consultants Strelka KB, has announced the winners of the competition to design a new Nike sports facility in Gorky Park, located at the heart of Moscow. The competition asked five of Russia’s leading young architecture studios – KOSMOS Architects, Rhizome, Novoe, Crosby Studios and Xора – to envision a “unique architectural object” that seamless integrates into the surrounding park environment, creating a landmark hub for sport and physical activity for Russia.

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Much like snowflakes, the most beautiful architectural plans consist of complex relationships between geometries – and no two are exactly alike. In this spirit, KOSMOS Architects has created a series of planimetric graphics of some of the most notable architectural projects to have disappeared from our world in celebration of the New Year.