Example of the Nested Floor System capacities. Courtesy of Offsite Wood and Quebec Wood Export Bureau
The latest release of Offsitewood.org marks a significant step forward in making offsite wood construction more approachable for architects. Version 2.0 introduces a set of digital resources aimed at helping designers model, plan, and collaborate more efficiently.
Free downloadable libraries are a central and expanding feature of the site. Additionally, new applications and services are now available that include wood material e-sample viewers, an advanced panelization and framing toolbar for Revit, and a collaborative workspace for project optimization.
"Dance, dance… otherwise we are lost." This oft-cited phrase by Pina Bausch encapsulates not only the urgency of movement, but its capacity to reveal space itself. In her choreographies, space is never a neutral backdrop, it becomes a partner, an obstacle, a memory. Floors tilt, chairs accumulate, walls oppress or liberate. These are architectural conditions, staged and contested through the body. What Bausch exposes — and what architecture often forgets — is that space is not simply built, it is performed. Her work invites architects to think not only in terms of materials and forms, but of gestures, relations, and rhythms. It suggests that architecture, like dance, is ultimately about how we inhabit, structure, and emotionally charge the spaces we move through.
Historically, architecture and dance have operated in parallel, shaping human experience through the body's orientation in space and time. From the choreographed rituals of classical temples to the axial logics of Baroque palaces, built space has always implied movement. The Bauhaus took this further, as Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet visualized space as a geometric extension of the body. This was not scenery, but spatial thinking made kinetic. In the 20th century, choreographers like William Forsythe and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker integrated architectural constraints into their scores, while architects such as Steven Holl, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Toyo Ito designed buildings that unfold as spatial sequences, inviting movement, drift, and delay.
Revitalisation of Historic Esna, Egypt. Image Courtesy of Takween ICD
Among the seven winners of this year's 16th Aga Khan Award for Architecture was theRevitalisation of Historic Esna in southern Egypt. Led by the Cairo-based firm Takween, the project was far more than a simple restoration. It was a comprehensive renewal effort that combined deep community engagement with the preservation of both tangible and intangible heritage. By creating thousands of jobs and restoring the historic center, the initiative offered a powerful alternative to demolition. The Aga Khan Trust lauded it as a 'replicable model for sustainable development'.
This year marks 20 years since the first VELUX Daylight Symposium—two decades of shared insights, ideas, and exploration into the role of daylight in our built environment. Since its humble beginnings in 2005, the symposium has grown into a leading international forum for cross-disciplinary dialogue on daylight.
The 10th edition, taking place in the heart of Copenhagen, will once again bring together researchers, architects, engineers, and policymakers to examine the evolving role of daylight in architecture and design. It's a space where science and practice meet to reflect on past learnings and look ahead to the future of daylight in our cities and spaces. Join the livestream on September 18th, 2025, from 09:00 to 17:30 (CEST).
Construction group for the Circo-lô at the IDE Association, in Botucatu | SP. Photo: Tomaz Lotufo
Historically, the first universities in the contemporary model were established in Europe to educate elites for the State and the Church, rather than to promote social emancipation. With the rise of capitalism, they became privileged centers for producing and reproducing modern Western culture. However, from the 1960s onward—particularly after the student uprisings of May 1968—the academic focus shifted toward market-oriented values, displacing humanist and critical ideals. The humanities lost prominence, while technical fields gained central importance, often at the expense of reflecting on the social impact of their work.
Since its opening in 1987, Four Winds Field — home of the AA Minor League team South Bend Cubs — has undergone several transformations. In each of them, brick has remained a central architectural element, evoking tradition, permanence, and a distinct urban character. Now, with a major expansion underway, the stadium reaffirms this legacy while embracing innovative construction techniques, most notably, the integration of thin brick as a contemporary solution that honors the past without compromising technical performance.
With deep roots, sturdy trunks, and the ability to withstand extreme temperatures, date palms (Phoenix dactylifera) are among the species best adapted to the arid desert environment. It is no coincidence that in many local indigenous cultures they are known as the "tree of life," as their fruits, leaves, and trunks have provided food, shelter, and building materials for thousands of years. Without them, much of human settlement in desert regions would not have been possible. Today, widely cultivated across desert regions around the world, the species continues to sustain traditional agricultural practices, yet its potential can be further enhanced and expanded through the efforts of contemporary researchers.
Utopian Hours returns to Turin as Europe's leading festival dedicated to city making and urban innovation. Three days packed with inspiration: masterclasses, talks, workshops, roundtables, and exhibitions. Recipes and case studies from around the world show how urban (and social) innovation happens — and how the very idea of city-making is being stretched in bold new directions. More than 40 international guests, the most influential media, leading urban gurus, and Europe's sharpest city officials are all gathering in Turin to exchange ideas, tools, experiences, solutions, desires, and passions.
In Plato's allegory of the cave, light symbolizes knowledge: it is what guides the human being out of the shadows of ignorance and toward truth. In many religions, light is also associated with divinity, as a manifestation of the sacred. Over time, light ceased to be merely a symbol of reason and became an instrument of sensitivity, a living material capable of shaping atmospheres, influencing perception, and revealing meaning.
Light is masterfully used in the quiet spaces of Tadao Ando, for example, where it seeps in like a sacred substance between concrete walls. In Alvar Aalto's buildings, it is delicately modulated to converse with the Nordic sky. In James Turrell's immersive installations, it becomes body, color, and experience. But light also manifests in the most ordinary gestures: in every precisely oriented window, or every shadow carefully drawn to reveal what is not immediately visible. Like a conductor before the score and the orchestra, the architect can compose with light accentuating volumes, softening boundaries, and giving rhythm and intensity to the spaces we inhabit.
For most architecture enthusiasts, mentions of the city of Copenhagen will prompt images of pedestrian-friendly streets, suspended bike lanes, quaint water canals, and overall happy residents. The capital of Denmark has many accomplishments to boast: over 60 percent of its residents commute to work by bike, it was among the first cities to set up a strategic plan to achieve carbon neutrality, resulting in an 80% decrease since 2009, and it has become one of the most cited study cases for its urban planning and infrastructure. This reputation was officially cemented when UNESCO named Copenhagen the 2023 World Capital of Architecture, recognizing the city's enduring role as a laboratory for innovative contemporary design and people-centered urbanism. This September,the inaugural Copenhagen Architecture Biennial transforms the city into a global platform for dialogue under the theme "Slow Down," exploring how architecture can respond to global pressures by rethinking the pace of change. The occasion is also marked by the launch of ArchDaily's 5th edition of Next Practices Awards, solidifying the city's status as a nexus for contemporary architectural thought.
The earliest stages of ideation can be both the most exciting and the most challenging part of the design process. Ideas flow quickly, but they can be abstract and difficult to communicate. This can lead to frustration and waste precious time.
Now, architects, designers, and artists can shorten the distance between the first sketch and a meaningful design decision by pairing traditional ideation techniques with AI-powered visualization tools designed to enhance — not replace — human creativity. Chaos tools keep creators firmly in the center of the process, empowering them with speed and clarity without sacrificing ownership or control.
The architect's role has traditionally been relatively well-defined: design a building, direct the project, coordinate logistics, and guide construction through to completion. As specialised fields have proliferated, together with a rapidly changing social economy, the practice of architecture has diversified, opening multiple paths for how architects can contribute to society.
Since the 1980s, one of the most consistent shifts may have been the separation between the "design architect" and the "architect of record." Where a single office once carried a project from concept to completion, internationalisation—alongside cross-border work, licensure regimes, procurement models, and liability structures—has encouraged a split. Design teams increasingly set the conceptual and schematic direction, then hand over the design development to local record architects for technical detailing, approvals, and site execution. The model has clear advantages—sharper expertise, efficiency, and often profitability (or services offered at reduced fees)—but it also segments the profession and can distance authorship from delivery.
What, then, might the next shift be, and what new synergies could redefine the architect's role? How should architects adapt to the changing professional climate? One promising trajectory is a turn from singular, permanent objects toward ongoing placemaking—iterative, context-specific programmes that prototype, test, and refine spatial ideas in public. Rather than producing one large, iconic work that fixes a site for decades, this model privileges cycles of making, use, evaluation, and adjustment at the community scale.
Areal am Kronenrain / MONO Architekten. Image Courtesy of Gregor Schmidt
Marginalized in architectural discourse and often dismissed as purely functional, parking garages remain among the most ubiquitous structures in the urban landscape. Designed to accommodate the needs of private vehicles, they occupy central locations, shape skylines, and consume considerable resources, yet rarely receive the same attention — or architectural care — as cultural institutions, schools, or housing. Despite their prevalence, these buildings tend to fade into the background of daily life, treated as infrastructural necessities rather than as design opportunities.
This is beginning to change. As urban mobility undergoes profound transformations — from the decline of car ownership to the rise of electric vehicles and shared transport systems — the role of parking infrastructure is being redefined. Architects and planners are reimagining garages as adaptable frameworks that integrate public space, ecological functions, and mixed-use programs. These new approaches challenge the perception of parking as a residual typology and instead position it as a civic structure with the potential to support more inclusive, flexible, and sustainable urban models.
Comayagua is a city in central Honduras nestled in a valley with the same name. It holds a pivotal place in the nation's history, having served as its colonial and early republican capital for over 300 years. However, when the capital was relocated to Tegucigalpa in 1880, Comayagua's urban expansion halted, inadvertently preserving an ample and rich heritage. By the early 1990s, much of the city's architectural legacy was in a state of disrepair. Recognizing the urgent need to protect it, the governments of Honduras and Spain initiated a collaborative effort, with the objective of initiating a long-term restoration program to create a policy framework that would ensure the preservation of the city's historic center for years to come.
Jonathan Yeung's architectural journey began through his deep appreciation for the physical and bodily experience of moving through carefully crafted spaces. Having grown up and studied across diverse places—Hong Kong, Kyoto, Cambridge, and Berkeley—he developed a sensitivity to how architecture resonates culturally, often in ways that transcend straightforward explanation. For Jonathan, architecture evolved from an embodied experience to a powerful form of expression, encompassing design, construction, and writing. Editorial work has naturally become an extension of this exploration, offering him a platform to reflect on architectural ideas from multiple perspectives.
In today's world, learning is no longer confined to classrooms or defined by formal education alone, it happens everywhere, in many forms. From music halls and sensory libraries to neurodiversity training centers and public schools reimagined, the spaces that support learning are becoming just as varied as the ways we learn. This selection of unbuilt educational projects submitted by the ArchDaily community reflects that shift, exploring how architecture can embrace difference, nurture curiosity, and create environments that support a broad spectrum of cognitive, emotional, and social needs.
Spain combines cultural diversity and a long constructive tradition that is directly reflected in its architecture. The country is home to influential schools, a consistent body of theoretical production, an active generation of architects, and a well-established construction industry with strong capabilities in innovation, standardization, and export. Contemporary Spanish architecture is marked by a plurality of approaches and by the articulation between material tradition, technology, and performance.
In this context, materials play a central role in the conception, expression, and functionality of buildings. Steel, glass, brick, stone, and wood remain essential inputs in architectural practice, but their role goes far beyond raw matter. Once industrially processed, these materials unfold into a wide range of products and systems such as technical panels, ventilated façades, structural components, extruded cladding, and brise-soleil systems.
Stones hold time. Some are formed by the sudden solidification of magma, like basalt, whose dense structure and dark color result from rapid cooling at the surface. Others, such as granite, are born slowly in deep magmatic chambers, where gradual cooling allows the growth of visible crystals, creating unique patterns and colors. There are also sedimentary rocks, formed by the compaction of mineral and organic debris over millions of years, with tones that reflect their chemical composition and the environment in which they were deposited. Transforming this geological diversity into a single continuous surface, terrazzo is a cementitious or mineral composite in which fragments of marble, granite, quartz, basalt, and other lithologies are embedded in a binding matrix, then polished to reveal the structure and luster of each particle. Unlike a homogeneous surface, terrazzo acts as a mineralogical showcase, where each aggregate retains its identity while contributing to a coherent whole, which can become a floor, wall cladding, or even furnitures.
In Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle (1958), architecture itself becomes a character: sliding doors, an automatic fountain, gates that emit mechanical sounds, devices that both enchant and frustrate the inhabitants. The comedy arises precisely from the fact that these seemingly trivial systems silently shape everyday life. More than six decades later, the observation seems prophetic. In contemporary buildings, countless systems work autonomously and discreetly, going unnoticed when they function well. Among them, automatic doors, traditionally seen as secondary elements, are emerging as part of a new "invisible infrastructure": connected, efficient, and intelligent systems that support comfort, sustainability, and operational resilience.
Monasticism emerged from a deep impulse to withdraw—a radical pursuit of spirituality and transcendence. The word itself comes from the Greek μόνος (mónos), meaning “alone,” reflecting the ideal of the holy hermit who retreats from the world to dedicate life entirely to the divine. By the late 3rd century, in Egypt and Palestine, the first Christian monks began to follow this path, creating ways of life that would later give rise to a distinct architecture centered on seclusion.
The capsule wardrobe concept, popularized in the 1970s by Susie Faux, proposes an exercise in synthesis: a compact set of versatile pieces, capable of combining in countless ways to suit different occasions. In visual culture, there are a few metaphors for this: in cartoons like Doug Funnie or Dexter's Laboratory, opening the closet revealed rows of identical clothes, ready to simplify life (and, in the case of animators, the work). In the real world, figures like Steve Jobs turned this logic into a method, adopting a daily uniform to eliminate the small but recurring decision of "what to wear?", freeing up time and energy for more important matters.
For others, however, this would be far from a burden. Choosing what to wear is a pleasurable moment, capable of setting the tone for the day and influencing one's mood. In this sense, the wardrobe is also an extension of identity, a space where practical and symbolic choices meet. Unsurprisingly, expressions like "coming out of the closet" or "skeleton in the closet" are deeply rooted in language, revealing the cultural dimension of this element of the home. In contemporary interior design, this notion has gained new layers: the wardrobe can define the character of a space, guide circulation, influence perception, and even shape the atmosphere of an environment.
The noise of overlapping conversations, the flashing lights of a billboard, hurried footsteps on the sidewalk, and the constant hammering of a nearby construction site: public spaces are sometimes experienced as environments where stimuli accumulate and often overwhelm us. Each person perceives and responds to these sensory inputs differently, and recognizing neurodiversity means understanding that some individuals require more time to adapt, slower-paced journeys, or more gradual interactions with their surroundings. These encounters raise fundamental questions about contemporary public space: how can it accommodate the diversity of ways people perceive and inhabit it? How can we envision it as a space that embraces all ways of experiencing it?
