Even before any drawing or formal decision, the place now occupied by Praça do Mercado in Parque Realengo, Rio de Janeiro, already pulsed with movement. Improvised stalls, informal gatherings, music, children running, and adults gathered beneath temporary shelters composed a vibrant landscape, sketching an ephemeral architecture.
It is within this context that the work developed by Juliana Ayako—one of the winners of the ArchDaily 2025 Next Practices Awards—together with Carlos Zebulun, Helena Meirelles, Larissa Monteiro, Rodrigo Messina, Francisco Rivas, emerged. The project management, urban planning, and landscape design were carried out by Ecomimesis Soluções Ecológicas, winner of the public competition organized by the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro in 2023.
Interpreting the contemporary habitat is a priority for architects and designers worldwide. Amid shifting trends, stylistic blends, and the revival of different techniques, contemporary interior design brings together materials, textures, and colors to transform the user experience. Within the domestic realm, a series of realities, tensions, and activities unfold, with design serving as a strong foundation and support system to meet the needs of its inhabitants. During Milan Design Week 2026, ICEX and Elle Decor Italia presented the fourth edition of Appartamento Spagnolo—a spatial framework created to showcase contemporary Spanish interior design within a historic context.
Ambrosian Monastery, Milan. Image Courtesy of Stefano Boeri Architetti
As global urban challenges intensify alongside growing environmental, social, and cultural pressures, this week's news reflects how institutions, exhibitions, and restoration projects are highlighting the relationship between the built environment and collective experience. From international forums addressing housing insecurity and urban resilience to cultural events examining memory, identity, and spatial perception, positioning architecture as both a framework for policy and a medium for critical reflection. At the same time, major restoration and redevelopment initiatives highlight a renewed focus on preserving historical continuity while adapting heritage sites and cultural institutions to contemporary forms of use, accessibility, and public engagement.
MVRDV and OODA have revealed a new masterplan for the regeneration of a vacant 28-hectare site between Marvila and Beato on Lisbon's riverfront. Recently approved by the Lisbon City Council, the project was developed in collaboration with LOLA Landscape Architects and Thornton Tomasetti to transform the area into a landscape-led urban district. Titled The Marvila Masterplan, the proposal establishes a framework for introducing 1,400 homes alongside public facilities, commercial spaces, and services within a fragmented and largely abandoned territory. The project is a private initiative led by the principal landowner and developed in coordination with the Lisbon City Council and Infraestruturas de Portugal.
Heritage, in interiors, is increasingly rarer to be only a matter of preservation alone. More often it arrives as friction: the encounter between what a building already is—its plan logic, its scars, its structural inconsistencies—and what contemporary life demands of it.
Some of the most convincing projects today are not those that "restore" an interior back to a single moment, nor those that erase the past under a seamless new skin. They are the ones that stage a relationship between old and new—allowing contrast to do more than tell a story, and letting the clash become a pragmatic tool for construction, budget, and speed.
Vana Vasa Resort by MJ Kanny Architect, Steel Architectural Awards ASEAN 2024 Winner. Image Courtesy of NS BlueScope
The Steel Architectural Awards ASEAN 2026 is a regional architectural awards program presented by NS BlueScope to recognize built projects that demonstrate architectural excellence through the use of coated steel solutions. Under the theme Shaping Resilient Futures: Timeless Design with Coated Steel, the program highlights projects across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, progressing from the Country Awards to ASEAN-level recognition. This article explains how the two-stage pathway works, what categories are included, and how projects are assessed through Design Excellence, Innovation, and Sustainability.