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Architecture has treated water either as a backdrop or a problem: a view to be framed, a hazard to be drained, or a utility to be connected. In contemporary India, a more consequential relationship takes shape. Water remains a shared ecological resource, yet the land and infrastructure around it are increasingly financed and defended as economic assets. Coastlines are extended to carry traffic and lake edges become lucrative development zones. The decision to do so passes through multiple institutions with different vocabularies, thereby challenging who determines how water and its surroundings are used, and who faces the consequences.

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Videos

AI has become a consumer product faster than it has become a discipline. Each week brings new models and more information than anyone can absorb, and the easy response is uncritical consumption. Architecture needs a different strategy, built on criticism and method. AI is now acquiring spatial intelligence, the capacity to understand how physical space behaves, and architects can test a project against its environment while they design it. Used with judgment, AI can bring architects closer to nature and its complexity, and make them better builders. We simulate the world to learn how to inhabit it.

Videos

On October 31, World Cities Day 2026 will be observed under the theme "Regenerating the City: Adequate Housing for All." Hosted in Fuzhou, China, this year's global observance focuses on how urban regeneration can advance access to adequate housing by improving existing neighborhoods, infrastructure, and public spaces. According to the United Nations, up to 3.4 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate housing, secure tenure, basic services, or affordable living conditions. This challenge points to the need for approaches that consider housing alongside the wider conditions of urban life, including environmental resilience, connectivity, and access to essential services.

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In 2016, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan first expressed the intention to pedestrianize Oxford Street, located in the City of Westminster in central London. The original plan was to complete the project in 2020, but after two public consultations, the project was blocked in 2018. Resumed in 2024, it was followed by two public consultations that showed majority support among respondents. Final approval was granted in February 2026, and on Monday, October 26, almost a kilometer, from Orchard Street to Great Portland Street, became traffic-free. This milestone marks the first phase of the program: the section is now closed to private motorized vehicles, buses, taxis and private hire vehicles, cycles, scooters and pedicabs.

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Last October 24th marked the centenary of the birth of Brazilian architect Francisco de Assis Couto Reis (1926–2011), who lived and built most of his work in the city of Salvador, Bahia. Assis Reis, as he was better known, had a career shaped not only by the buildings he designed but also by his urban renewal proposals, his design for the Brazilian Pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan (unbuilt), and the Scale Model of the City of Salvador, landmarked in 2020. His vast and diverse body of work belongs to a specific moment of modern expression in Brazil, when architects of this "second generation" were particularly concerned with adapting to local climatic, geographical, and cultural conditions.

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For much of the twentieth century, affordable housing in the United States was conceived as a distinct residential category, shaped by financing structures and development practices that separated housing for lower-income residents from the broader civic and commercial functions of the city. Federal housing legislation and subsequent urban renewal policies contributed to the construction of large residential developments that were frequently financed and managed independently of surrounding urban infrastructure. The consequences of this approach, including concentrated poverty, deteriorating buildings, unequal access to services, and the eventual demolition of prominent public housing projects, are extensively documented.

Today, the provision of affordable housing is closely tied to economic and regulatory mechanisms that determine feasibility, from land values and construction costs to zoning regulations and public subsidies. Programs for housing credits play a significant role in financing affordable rental housing, while competitive allocation of resources and pressure to maximize housing delivery place considerable emphasis on regulatory compliance.

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