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At the 2023 Biennale Architettura, Finland's Pavilion will present its exhibition Huussi, Imagining the Future History of Sanitation, which deals with the architecture of water and nutrient circulation, questioning the water toilet and Its implications for the future. "Huussi" is the Finnish word for an outhouse, a small compost toilet commonly used by Finns in rural settings and holiday homes. The exhibition, curated by Arja Renell and The Dry Collective, a group of Finnish architects, presents this typology as a starting point to finding alternative solutions to managing wastewater, inspiring professionals to start envisioning new sanitation solutions. At the core of the presentation, the exhibition questions the consequences of waste in the context of the current climate crisis the world is going through.

Despite not being found in nature, right angles are the most used by architects. In the search for more functionality and practicality in construction, squares and rectangles emerge as the main option when designing. On the other hand, several vernacular and ancestral architectures adopted arches and circular plans as a solution. The game of geometric shapes in the architectural composition is vast, but we cannot forget a polygon that also stands out: the hexagon.

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I’ve written before about my preference for showers over baths in the sanitation stakes. An instant hit of hygiene therapy, they’re quicker, cleaner, more energy efficient, and use less water than their horizontal siblings.

Thankfully, I’m not in the minority. Shower popularity means there’s a huge range of shapes, sizes, and types on the market. However, bathroom planning can be exhausting with so many to choose from. Here are six simple questions to ask when looking for the perfect shower enclosure to fit any type of space, lifestyle, or preference.

When people describe the modernist movement as a whole, they broadly reference the steel and glass skyscrapers which dot many of our cities’ skylines, or more specifically, the International Style that once emerged from Europe after World War I. The International Style represented technological and industrial progress and a renaissance of social constructs that would forever influence the way that we think about the use of space across all scales. Often designed as politically charged buildings seeking to make a statement towards totalitarian governments, many architects who influenced the style moved to the United States after World War II, paving the way for some of the most iconic buildings and skyscrapers to be built in the 20th century.

As farmers water crops by moonlight, undocumented children head to school and villagers scan the sky for surveillance airplanes—these are glimpses of a complex culture that emerges in south Lebanon after dark. In collecting some of these nightly practices, Mohamad Nahleh—lecturer in architecture and urbanism at MIT—journeyed across the landscapes of Jabal ‘Amil hoping to build a new alliance between architecture and the night. His "Path of Nightrise" research has turned into a construction to revive a forgotten river path and was published by Places Journal. The interview with Nahleh argues for a new nocturnal imagination in design and reveals, not only how the night has changed in Lebanon over time, but also how he has changed alongside it.

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As part of our yearly tradition, we have asked our readers who should win the 2023 Pritzker Prize, the most important award in the field of architecture.

For those who don't know, the Pritzker Prize is funded by Jay Pritzker through the Hyatt Foundation in the United States and has been awarded to living architects, regardless of their nationality, whose built work "has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity through the art of architecture."