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"Architecture of Possibility: Zaha Hadid Architects" at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning (MOCAUP) in Shenzhen, China, presents a comprehensive overview of the evolution of Zaha Hadid Architects' work over recent decades. On view until April 10, 2026, the exhibition is structured through chronological and thematic narratives that highlight the studio's multidisciplinary research and design methodologies. The exhibition, now open to the public, showcases the office's work in the Shenzhen area and its involvement with new Artificial Intelligence technologies. Particular emphasis is placed on the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), immersive and interactive design tools, and virtual environments, which together form an expanding digital design ecosystem.

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Scandinavia is shaped by environmental conditions that test both human endurance and architectural ingenuity, with long winters defined by limited daylight, low sun angles, deep snowfall, and cold winds that transform everyday movement, gathering, and habitation into deliberate acts. In this context, architecture is never neutral, and hospitality is never incidental. Buildings that welcome visitors across cities, forests, and coastlines must respond directly to darkness and cold, not by denying them, but by creating interior worlds that offer orientation, warmth, and psychological relief. The act of welcoming in Scandinavia is therefore inseparable from the climate, grounded in the understanding that shelter, light, and human presence are fundamental resources in Arctic environments.

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In much of China, concrete remains the dominant construction material. Despite growing concerns over its environmental impact, concrete continues to align with the priorities of many developers and clients—it is fast, cost-effective, and highly durable. As a result, most building types in China still rely heavily on concrete. This reliance is further reinforced by China's position as the world's largest producer of Portland cement. A deeply entrenched supply chain, rooted in raw material manufacturing and economic infrastructure, ensures that concrete remains the default choice in the construction industry.

Yet historically, Chinese architecture was built upon a rich tradition of timber construction. The Forbidden City is a prime example: not only is it emblematic of China's architectural heritage, but it also remains one of the largest and best-preserved collections of ancient wooden structures in the world. This legacy prompts an important question: does timber construction have a meaningful future in China's contemporary building industry?

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Taschen's new book, published in October 2025, Tadao Ando. Sketches, Drawings, and Architecture presents an in-depth exploration of the Japanese architect Tadao Ando's creative process, bringing together over 750 sketches, drawings, models, and technical plans developed over nearly five decades. Created in close collaboration with Ando himself, the book provides a rare view into how his ideas take shape, from the immediacy of the first pencil lines to the precision of architectural drawings that define his built works. Through these materials, the publication highlights Ando's enduring focus on the relationship between hand, thought, and space.

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This week's review focuses on concrete responses to shared urban challenges, including housing affordability, long-term resilience, and the role of cultural and material innovation in shaping cities. The selection spans regulatory measures affecting housing markets in European cities, high-density residential and mixed-income proposals in New York, and major renewal and planning efforts in London, Barcelona, Ulaanbaatar, and Drammen. It also highlights research-driven and built projects in Chicago, Buenos Aires, Las Vegas, and Riyadh that explore circular construction, adaptive reuse, and new models for cultural and public infrastructure. Together, these worldwide projects offer a snapshot of how architecture and urban planning are addressing immediate pressures while laying the groundwork for more resilient and inclusive urban futures across diverse geographic and cultural contexts.

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As Syria is emerging from over a decade of conflict at the time of writing, it is an opportunity to rediscover its architectural gems. Just to the north of the country's principal port city of Latakia is a Modernist creation that is the Center for Marine Research. Its pyramidal structure is situated on a prominent headland surrounded by sea on three sides. To the east is a bay with hotels and beaches while to the north and west is the open Mediterranean Sea reaching Turkey and Cyprus beyond. Despite its importance both as a research institution and as a piece of architecture, it lies abandoned and isolated today.

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Few plants have accompanied humanity as closely as cannabis. Used for millennia to make textiles, paper, and medicines, it has quietly shaped everyday life and built environments alike. Hemp, its non-psychoactive variety, is one of the earliest cultivated crops and a material of remarkable versatility: strong, breathable, and renewable. From ropes and sails to insulation and biocomposites, hemp’s fibers have been helping humans build for thousands of years.

The City of London Corporation has formally approved the delivery plan for the renewal of the Barbican Centre, confirming a £191 million investment to support the first five-year phase of a long-term transformation programme. Approved in December 2025, the decision secures funding for major repairs, infrastructure upgrades, and public space improvements across the Grade II-listed complex. Subject to planning permission, major construction is scheduled to begin in 2027, with completion of this phase targeted for 2030, ahead of the Barbican's 50th anniversary. To facilitate the works, most programmes within the Centre will pause for approximately one year between June 2028 and June 2029, while preparatory upgrades, including essential works to the Barbican Theatre, are set to begin in early 2026.

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Moscow-based architecture, urban design, and research practice Meganom is nearing completion of its residential skyscraper at 262 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. Designed for client Five Points Development, the project dates back to 2015 and brings together an international team that includes Norm Architects as interior architect, SLCE Architects as architect of record, and untitled architecture overseeing architectural supervision and project management. Rising 860 feet over 52 stories, the tower contains 26 residential units within approximately 140,000 square feet and draws conceptual inspiration from aeronautics, envisioning apartments as elevated "shelves" that frame expansive views of the city.

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Across recent years, architectural discourse has been shaped by the emergence of new voices, rediscovered territories, and a growing commitment to shared forms of knowledge. These concerns remain fully present in 2025 as ongoing debates that continue to gain density and nuance. Questions of who produces architecture, from which contexts, and under what conditions remain central, increasingly informed by practices that operate collectively, across disciplines, and beyond singular authorship.

This continuity is reflected in how architecture is understood less as a finished object and more as an ongoing process embedded in social, cultural, and environmental systems. Discussions around agency, participation, and knowledge production persist, alongside sustained attention to rural, peripheral, and historically marginalized contexts. Rather than privileging a single scale or geography, architecture is approached as a practice that moves between territories, acknowledging the unequal conditions that shape how spaces are designed, built, maintained, and inhabited.

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In contemporary architecture, commercial spaces have become more than points of sale; they are stages where identity, image, and experience converge. Stores, showrooms, and branded interiors often operate as laboratories where architects experiment with form, material, and light, translating corporate narratives into spatial experiences. In this context, the architect emerges as a mediator of desire, shaping atmospheres that guide perception, evoke emotion, and subtly influence behavior. This role reveals a complex intersection between design and capitalism: the creation of spaces that sell not only products, but also aspirations, lifestyles, and cultural meaning. By transforming commerce into an architectural performance, these projects invite reflection on how the discipline negotiates its agency in a world where visibility and image have become as essential as function.

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OODA announces the House of Nassr, a new integrated sports complex designed for Al Nassr FC in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Planned as a comprehensive facility supporting both athletic performance and club operations, the project brings together a high-performance training centre, administrative and media spaces, athlete support facilities, and social areas, with a hotel scheduled for a second phase of development. The complex occupies an area of approximately 4,000 square meters. While the overall project remains ongoing, the first phase has been completed in 2025, marking OODA's first realized project in Saudi Arabia.

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In January 2025, New York City Mayor and the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) announced new steps in the reimagining of Gansevoort Square, a 66,000-square-foot site located on Little West 12th Street between Washington Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. The redevelopment of the site aims to integrate a mix of affordable housing for New Yorkers, new retail space for residents and visitors, and opportunities to expand the Whitney Museum of American Art and the High Line. The Request for Proposals outlined a vision for up to 600 units of mixed-income housing, with a goal of 50 percent of the total units being permanently affordable, along with ground-floor commercial space. International architectural practice Powerhouse Company recently revealed its competition proposal, exceeding these demands with 1,000 rental homes in a supertall tower, half affordable and half market-rate, mixed equally throughout the building's full height.

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Videos

Buildner has announced the results of its Re-Form: New Life for Old Spaces, an international ideas competition examining the adaptive reuse of small-scale existing buildings. The competition invited architects and designers to propose transformations of used, abandoned, or overlooked structures with an approximate footprint of 250 square meters, located anywhere in the world. With no fixed site or program, participants were encouraged to explore alternatives to demolition and new construction through reuse strategies grounded in contemporary social and environmental concerns.

As an open-format competition, Re-Form foregrounded sustainability, feasibility, and community impact over formal or typological constraints. Submissions ranged from precise urban insertions to more speculative rural interventions, reflecting a broad range of approaches to working with existing fabric. Many projects focused on how limited, often marginal spaces could be reactivated to support new forms of collective use while responding to material, climatic, and ecological conditions.

Across Europe's major tourist cities, housing affordability has increasingly emerged as one of the most pressing urban challenges, prompting governments to reassess the role of short-term rentals within residential neighborhoods. In Barcelona, Mayor Jaume Collboni recently announced plans to phase out tourist short-term rentals entirely by 2028, framing the decision as part of a broader effort to protect residents' right to remain in the city. The announcement coincides with a €64 million fine imposed by the Spanish government on Airbnb for advertising unlicensed properties, placing Spain at the center of an intensifying debate over how tourism-driven accommodation models intersect with housing access, inequality, and urban stability.

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The UIA World Congress of Architects is an international event for architectural dialogue organised by the International Union of Architects (UIA, by its French acronym), a non-governmental organisation that unites national associations of architects from over 100 countries, representing more than one million professionals. The first UIA Congress of Architects, which also marked the institution's founding, was held in Lausanne in 1948 during the post-war reconstruction period. Since then, UIA congresses have been held every three years in a different city within a member country, serving as the organisation's main recurring event. In 2026, the Congress will be held in Barcelona, and UNESCO has consequently designated the city as the World Capital of Architecture 2026. Each Congress focuses on a key topic relevant to the profession, articulated through a central theme. Recent themes include Copenhagen 2023: "Sustainable Futures. Leave no one behind." and Rio 2020–2021: "All the worlds. Just one World." The topic for 2026 is "Becoming. Architectures for a Planet in Transition," welcoming renowned figures in contemporary architectural thought and practice for a broad and critical overview of the possible futures of architecture.

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Across Latin America, renovation has become less about preservation alone and more about responding to changing ways of living. Rather than freezing buildings in time, many contemporary projects work with existing structures to adapt them to new domestic routines, social dynamics, and spatial needs. Through strategic changes in materials, composition, color, and light, these interventions reinterpret everyday spaces while maintaining a strong connection to their original context.

In this process, houses and apartments become sites of transformation where flow, continuity, and shared spaces are carefully reconsidered. Renovation operates as a precise architectural tool, one that prioritizes natural light, openness, and flexibility to support daily life as it evolves. Instead of imposing new forms, these projects repurpose what is already there, aligning spatial decisions with the habits and rituals of those who inhabit them.

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Communicating an idea using only the essentials is a far greater challenge than it often appears. From Japanese haikus to the refined sculptures of Constantin Brâncuși, many artistic expressions have sought to condense the maximum meaning with the minimum of elements. This economy of form is not a sign of scarcity, but of intensity: every stroke, every word, every silence gains weight. There is something intrinsically appealing in what presents itself as simple and well-resolved, whether it is a text that wastes no words, a tennis player who moves with purposeful gestures, or a melody that is both direct yet unexpectedly profound.

That same principle, which transcends various artistic languages, resonates deeply in contemporary design. When reduced to the essential, furniture or everyday objects reveal a form of beauty that arises from precision and transcends their function. This is exemplified by HUM, the new collection of taps developed by designer Philippe Malouin for QuadroDesign, in which a simple gesture is transformed into a complete language.

Climate risk is a shared global condition, marked by intensifying heat, water scarcity, flooding, and ecological loss that no border can contain. In 2025, these pressures sharpened a collective awareness that government pledges and international agreements are not keeping pace with lived realities. Across geopolitical contexts, the tension is immediate and structural, revealing gaps between policy ambition and material change. This moment has exposed a growing reliance on disciplines outside formal structures to respond quickly, intelligently, and with accountability.

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For several years now, the countryside has ceased to function merely as a picturesque counterpoint to the city and has instead become an active laboratory for new relationships between territory, landscape, and people. Here, environmental urgency meets collective memory; ancestral techniques converse with architectural experimentation; and local communities act as curators of their own territory. Contemporary rurality emerges less as a geography and more as a culture—inscribed in ways of life that care for the environment.

It is a vast rural expanse spread across the planet, assuming different expressions depending on context—from Asian rice fields to African agricultural settlements, from small European farms to the large estates and agro-extractive communities of the Americas. Yet, beneath this plurality, is there something that unites them? And, more importantly, how might architecture illuminate this quiet thread?

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Each year, the ArchDaily Curatorial team reviews the projects that resonated most with our readers, identifying the architectural trends and design approaches that captured the greatest attention throughout the year. Across our local sites – ArchDaily Brasil and ArchDaily en Español – residential architecture remains the most popular category, with projects built in Latin America standing out year after year.

This year's selection of Best Latin American Houses brings together both renovations and ground-up projects, covering reinterpretations of local construction techniques and innovative architectural responses. The works are set in a wide range of contexts, from dense urban environments to rural and coastal landscapes.

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Bechu & Associés has been selected as the winner of the international open competition for the masterplan of Hunnu City, a new satellite city planned south of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Announced in 2025, the winning proposal establishes a long-term urban framework for a 31,503-hectare site located near Chinggis Khaan International Airport, with phased development planned between 2025 and 2045. The project forms part of Mongolia's broader territorial strategy under the Ulaanbaatar 2040 Master Plan and the national Vision 2050 framework, positioning Hunnu City as a new emerging major city intended to support population decentralization, economic diversification, and long-term urban resilience.

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The future Las Vegas Museum of Art (LVMA) will be the city's first stand-alone museum, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Francis Kéré. In fall 2024, the City of Las Vegas granted LVMA two acres of land in Symphony Park, neighboring the city's downtown arts district, as part of a public-private partnership. The project is intended to serve the city's more than 2.4 million year-round residents, including nearly 300,000 students living within a 10-mile radius of the park, as well as tens of millions of visitors from around the globe. The 60,000-square-foot building was designed by Kéré Architecture, which teamed up with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to provide Las Vegas with "a gathering place for community and a beacon for the cultural world," and is scheduled to open in 2029.

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In 2025, India's most consequential design projects unfolded largely out of sight. While public attention gravitated toward museums, cultural landmarks, and visually arresting façades, the architecture that most decisively shaped daily life existed underground, at the city's edges, or inside secured compounds few citizens would ever enter. Sewage networks were rebuilt, flood tunnels bored beneath dense neighborhoods, substations lifted above floodplains, and data centers multiplied across peri-urban landscapes. These were not peripheral works of engineering; they were the spatial systems that allowed Indian cities to remain functional through record heatwaves, erratic monsoons, and accelerating urban growth.

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