The 2026 Oslo Architecture Triennale will take place from September 17 to October 1 at Sofienberg Church in Oslo, bringing together more than 30 international architecture projects around the question "What if Nature Comes First?" For its ninth edition, the Triennale will adopt a two-week festival format, combining an exhibition with conferences, seminars, workshops, film screenings and guided walks. Curated by Line Ramstad, the programme will examine how placing nature at the starting point of architectural decision-making could influence what is built, preserved, transformed or left untouched.
sauerbruch hutton and Studio Gang have been selected to renovate the German House in New York following an international competition organized by the Federal Republic of Germany. Located on United Nations Plaza in Manhattan, the building houses the Consulate General of Germany, the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations, and several affiliated cultural institutions. The project marks the first collaboration between the two practices. Berlin-based sauerbruch hutton will serve as Lead Designer, while Studio Gang will act as General Planner and Architect of Record, overseeing project delivery and implementation. The proposal focuses on adapting the existing building, with the stated goal of extending its lifespan while improving its operational and environmental performance.
Aulets Arquitectura en Corto invites you to the Espacio Arquia in Madrid (c/ Tutor, 16) on Thursday, September 17, at 7:00 PM for the screening of the short film Amarar. The title refers to a traditional Mallorcan technique of treating wood by immersing it in water to increase its durability. This term has become the name of a sustainable design project that transforms native pine trees into contemporary furniture of high artisanal value. In collaboration with the University of the Balearic Islands, the project also researches the use of this wood in construction. The initiative is led by Francisco Cifuentes and Sebastián Martorell, founding partners of the Palma de Mallorca-based firm Aulets Arquitectes. "We have a vast forest mass on the islands," explains Cifuentes, "but 95% of the forests are abandoned. At the same time, we are importing 70,000 tons of wood for construction. Architects must build with materials that can regenerate local ecosystems. A change in the model is necessary." Directed by Marc Hierro, the short film presents several solutions proposed by Aulets Arquitectes and other project collaborators to promote responsible forest management and utilize wood as a durable, recyclable material with full traceability. Following the screening, a discussion will feature Francisco Cifuentes, Sebastián Martorell, and Albert Cuchí, author of the article "Construir el territorio," recently published in the El Croquis monograph dedicated to the architectural work of Aulets Arquitectes. "What Aulets pursues," asserts Cuchí, "is the recovery of the territory as the authentic field of action for architecture, maintaining an appropriate relationship with resources, ensuring the renewability of extraction processes, and weaving construction together with other social activities to build an ecological society."
For millions of displaced children and young people, education unfolds amid conditions of forced mobility, administrative uncertainty, and prolonged precarity. Schools situated in borderlands, refugee settlements, and sites of climate-induced displacement therefore operate as more than educational facilities. They become spatial infrastructures that negotiate the contradictory demands of emergency and continuity, offering environments where learning persists despite the instability of legal status, living conditions, and the very feeling of being at home.
According to UNHCR, approximately 45 million of the world's 117.8 million forcibly displaced people were children under the age of eighteen at the end of 2025. As displacement increasingly results from armed conflict, political persecution, environmental crises, and economic instability, humanitarian architecture faces a growing challenge: not simply how to construct more schools rapidly, but how to create educational environments capable of supporting continuity, safety, and belonging amid uncertain futures.
What will the future of steel be?How can this material build the foundation for sustainable economic development and the transition to a low-carbon society?
Steel plays an essential role in modern societies, shaping countless aspects of daily life and supporting sustainable development through its contribution to the built environment, transportation, and energy infrastructure. From automobiles and buildings to cargo ships and refrigerators, steel is a durable and versatile engineering and construction material with a distinctive strength-to-weight ratio compared with other building materials. By offering fast, durable, and flexible solutions with temperature control and resistance to extreme weather conditions, steel has become an integral part of modern construction systems. Its long-term performance also places it at the center of the debate on how to transition toward a lower-carbon world.
Barcelona has just become the first city in the history of the UIA World Congress of Architects to host the event twice. Thirty years separate the two editions, and the distance between them says as much about architecture's changing self-understanding as anything spoken from a stage. In 1996, the congress placed the city at the center of the debate, consolidating a post-Olympic urban model that would go on to be studied and contested for decades.
Wood is among architecture's oldest and most familiar materials, yet its contemporary use raises complex questions about environmental impact, resource availability, material provenance, and circularity in relation to local economies. At the same time, advances in computational design, CNC machining, and robotic fabrication are also reshaping how timber is designed and assembled, opening new possibilities for structural innovation and formal expression while redefining the balance between automation, labor, and efficiency.
Sede da Symantec. Certificado por WELL. Imagem Cortesia de Little
Na teoria, a sensação de bem-estar pode ser definida como um estado de satisfação plena das exigências do corpo e do espírito, evocando sentimentos de segurança, conforto e tranquilidade. Na prática, a sensação de bem-estar pode ser fomentada por diferentes estratégias, desde hábitos individuais até a forma como o ambiente é construído.
There is growing awareness around sustainability—and the environmental cost of prematurely demolishing safe, structurally sound buildings only to replace them with new construction. In the broader race to reduce carbon emissions, corporations and institutions are placing greater emphasis on ESG performance (environmental impact, social responsibility, and governance). Many now require carbon accounting, set "carbon-neutral" targets, or purchase carbon credits to offset footprints.
This shift, together with a wave of exemplary adaptive-reuse projects worldwide—Herzog & de Meuron's Tai Kwun in Hong Kong, Powerhouse Arts in Brooklyn, David Chipperfield's The Ned Doha, and Xu Tiantian's transformations of factories, quarries, and rammed-earth fortresses in China—has accelerated serious reconsideration of reuse as a primary development strategy. Yet despite its many benefits, adaptive reuse is still not as prevalent as it could be. Why and what might be the main obstacles and tensions?
Shamballa: Laboratory for Sustainable Living. Itaca, 2026. Image Courtesy of WASP
Shamballa, an 8-hectare open-air laboratory and research site dedicated to sustainable living and advanced architectural 3D printing, was inaugurated on June 8, 2026, in the hills of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. The project is a collaboration between WASP, a 3D printing technology company, and Olfattiva, an aromatherapy and botanical perfumery company, hosting a makers laboratory, a medicinal botanical garden, and "Itaca," a self-sufficient farm built using 3D printing. The building was designed as a model for 3D-printed construction, representing a certified and replicable structure. The outdoor areas host research and development centers, forming an experimental "ecosystem" to develop new ideas in bio-construction and sustainable living, along with automated gardens, rainwater harvesting systems, and initiatives focused on micro circular economies.
Amid growing recognition of architecture's responsibility toward environmental and planetary ecologies, contemporary practice is increasingly oriented toward working with what already exists—its material, spatial, and historical conditions. Within this shift, architecture and design aesthetics are increasingly about reshaping inherited environments. This approach underpins the work of SSdH, a Melbourne-based architecture practice founded in 2020 by Todd de Hoog, Harrison Smart, and Jean-Marie Spencer. Working across scales of renovation, extension, and adaptive insertion, the studio consistently engages existing buildings as active agents. Winner of the ArchDaily 2025 Next Practices Awards, the Australian firm foregrounds environmental responsibility, material economy, and collaborative processes grounded in site-specific conditions.
Aerial View of Lush Green Hills and Traditional Homes in Cauca, Colombia, Showcasing Nature and Rural Tourism. Image by Jhampier Giron M, via Shutterstock
Before a building can be inhabited, many other things need to happen. Water has to arrive, energy has to be generated, food has to be grown or transported, and waste has to go somewhere. These processes are usually treated as something outside architecture, even though they shape the most basic conditions of everyday life.
This is why the idea of self-sufficient communities is more complex than it first appears. It can suggest a place that provides more of what it needs: energy, water, food, shelter, and waste management. Yet, in many Latin American contexts, autonomy is not a complete separation from the world. It is a way of bringing the systems of daily life closer to the people who use, maintain, and care for them.
Sylphy by Boss Design x Okamura. Image Courtesy of Boss Design
For all the spatial experimentation of the contemporary workplace, one condition has remained largely unchanged: people are still sitting. Studies suggest that office workers spend up to 89% of their working day seated—close to 36 hours a week—despite decades of ergonomic awareness. As workplaces become more flexible, social, and design-led, this contradiction becomes harder to ignore.
The office is no longer organized around a single mode of operation, nor by a fixed spatial logic. Work has become multifunctional, shifting between collaboration and concentration, collective exchange and individual focus. In response, architecture and interior design are moving away from uniform, repetitive layouts towards environments that reflect the variability of human behavior.
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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.
Costa Rica is a small country in Central America, internationally renowned for its tourism, biodiversity, and tropical climate. Given this context, tropical design strategies for hotel design are often more studied, but residential cabin projects can represent a more surgical approach to understanding the landscape. Often situated in remote forest or jungle locations, these cabins, apart from the common tropical design strategies, have to prioritize long-term durability and low-maintenance costs, particularly in regions where access for repairs is logistically difficult. This necessitates a design philosophy that favors both structural and climatic resilience.
Building in this context requires precise design responses to two primary environmental stressors: extreme precipitation and high humidity. Costa Rica's tropical climate, while varying by altitude, generally delivers an average monthly rainfall exceeding 150 mm in many regions. This constant water load can create a "wet-bulb" effect, where stagnant, saturated air accelerates interior material degradation and creates physiological discomfort for the inhabitants. To design effectively under these conditions, contemporary cabin architecture employs a three-fold strategy of minimal site invasion, the creation of thermal gradients, and passive climate mitigation.
Architecture this week reflects the intersections of legacy, authorship, and social responsibility, as practices navigate questions of identity, recognition, and public engagement. Legal rulings, major competition shortlists, and large-scale urban proposals illustrate how architecture continues to operate across cultural, institutional, and environmental arenas. From sustainability-driven landmarks and transformative waterfront developments to iconic commercial towers, projects demonstrate approaches to ecological strategies and public programming. At the same time, global observances such as World Hearing Day highlight how spatial design shapes inclusion and accessibility, reminding the profession that the built environment can influence participation, learning, and well-being for diverse communities.
