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This article is part of our new Opinion section, a format for argument-driven essays on critical questions shaping our field.

For centuries, most of the world has looked at itself through a 16th-century instrument of spatial representation. On September 4, the United Nations General Assembly voted to change that, adopting a resolution that asks governments, schools, media organizations, and technology companies to retire the Mercator projection wherever the relative size of countries actually matters, in favor of equal-area alternatives like the 2018 Equal Earth projection. The vote passed 164 to 1. The United States was the sole vote against.

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MAD, the architecture studio founded by Ma Yansong, has revealed the designs for Danshuis, a new dance center planned for Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Located on a landmark site in the city's historic docklands, adjacent to the Fenix Museum of Migration, also designed by MAD, the project is expected to open in 2030. The 9,500-square-meter center will transform an Art Deco warehouse dating from 1923 on the south bank of the River Maas. Planned as a center for the production, development, and practice of dance across different styles, Danshuis aims to bring together professional and amateur programs for different ages and levels of experience.

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The Buenos Aires International Architecture Biennial marks 40 years of history this year, across 20 editions. As one of the most important architecture gatherings in Latin America, it will celebrate this anniversary with an edition featuring around 100 architecture firms, 15 exhibitions, 50 conferences, 40 international guests, and representatives from more than 55 cities worldwide, in a free, open program running for five weeks. From September 22 and throughout October, as part of Buenos Aires' Design and Architecture Month, conferences will be held, exhibitions will open, installations will be inaugurated, and activities will take place at specific points around the city. Under the theme HABITAR (INHABIT), the Biennial will also host a six-day forum with 2026 Pritzker Prize winner Smiljan Radić, culminating in the presentation of this edition's awards.

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In broad terms, a structure is a testament to its time. An architectural project's proposal and material scale often exceed the lifespan of a single human being, becoming, in this way, part of a historical narrative. This cross-cutting characteristic is particularly evident in specific project typologies: memorial sites, cemeteries, museums, and even educational and community centers. Lately, this value has extended not only to buildings but also to construction techniques, ancestral forms and geometries, and to nature itself. This historical value and its symbolic connotation are represented in this selection of five buildings designed by ArchDaily readers, still unbuilt, in Kosovo, Canada, China, Egypt, and Bangladesh.

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Historically, the way we design has been closely linked to the way we build. Architecture moved through physical testing, trial and error, projection drawings, mock-ups, and physical models: each introducing a new layer of abstraction, but still remaining tied to material, scale, and construction. The introduction of CAD significantly changed this dynamic. At first, it was largely understood as the computerization of precise geometry for construction. Over time, however, digital tools moved earlier into the design process, replacing sketching, physical trial and error, model-making, and other forms of thinking that had once kept scale and material close at hand.

The lineage of architectural design can therefore be understood, in part, as an evolution of abstractions. Some have been extraordinarily productive. Plans and sections, for example, isolate particular dimensions of architecture while still allowing the mind to reconstruct the whole. They flatten, cut, and reduce, but they do not abandon the building. Through the combination of drawings, one can understand rooms, circulation, structure, openings, and spatial relationships without becoming lost in the complexity of the project. Their abstraction is disciplined because it remains tied to an architectural reality that must eventually be measured, built, and inhabited.

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