For a long time, architecture was understood as an essentially individual activity, dependent on the figure of a creative genius and centered on the ability to solve problems through drawing. Over time, this image began to fade. The protagonism once concentrated in a few names reached its peak during the era of the starchitects and gradually became distributed among offices, collectives, and multidisciplinary teams. Today, architects are expanding their boundaries into other fields such as gastronomy, music, design, and the corporate world, applying spatial thinking to address challenges of various kinds. As social, environmental, and political crises deepen, the role of the architect continues to evolve from a solitary author to a mediator, activist, and collective agent of transformation. This shift reflects an ethical awakening and a recognition that design, regulation, and care are inseparable dimensions of contemporary practice.

Created by California surfers who wanted to bring the lines of surfing onto asphalt, skateboarding soon outgrew its role as a simple alternative for flat days. It established itself as a practice that reads the city through a different logic, reinterpreting steps, handrails, walls, and interstitial spaces as possible lines, challenges, and opportunities. Over time, it evolved into a global urban culture, a way of inhabiting and transforming public space through movement. What was once marginal has become a catalyst for urban activation, community building, and new uses for overlooked spaces. At its core, skateboarding reveals how many cities coexist within the same city, depending on who moves through them and how each person is able to reinterpret their surroundings.

In 1952, American composer John Cage presented his groundbreaking piece "4'33''" for the first time. In it, the orchestra produces no intentional sound for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. What can be heard instead are breaths, movements, and subtle noises that would normally go unnoticed, but here become part of the composition itself. With this work, Cage revealed that absolute silence does not exist. There is always sound, even when unplanned.

In the same way, every architectural space has its own soundscape. Sound moves, reflects, reverberates, and dissipates according to the materials, volumes, and surfaces it encounters. Hard walls and high ceilings can amplify echoes, while fabrics and porous panels soften them. Acoustics, therefore, is not merely a technical concern but a form of materialized listening, a science that operates at the boundary between perception and emotion. For this reason, it is also complex. Each typology, whether a museum, temple, studio, or theater, has its own sonic logic, and understanding these nuances is essential to creating spaces that embrace sound, voice, and silence with equal precision.

Water is the foundation of life. It shapes landscapes, regulates climates, and sustains every living organism. Yet on the only known inhabited planet, this essential resource faces a growing crisis: although 70% of Earth's surface is covered by water, less than 1% is actually available for human use. Most of it is consumed by agriculture and industry, while in households, activities like bathing and flushing use vast amounts of drinking water for non-essential purposes. The bathroom, therefore, has become a key space for innovation, where technology and design can help redefine how we use and reuse this vital element.

The practice of combining materials to achieve better performance has accompanied humanity since the earliest constructions. One of the first known examples emerged over five thousand years ago, when civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt mixed mud and straw to mold sun-dried adobe bricks. Light and fibrous, straw prevented cracking and increased strength, while mud acted as a binder and protection. This simple yet ingenious invention can be considered the first composite in history, illustrating the ancestral intuition that distinct materials, when combined, can become something stronger and better.

Concrete, steel, wood, glass. Every year, millions of tons of construction materials are discarded, piled up in landfills, and silenced beneath the weight of the next building. Entire structures disappear to make way for others, restarting a voracious cycle of resource extraction, material production, and replacement. Along with the debris that accumulates, something deeper is also lost: time, human labor, stories, and the collective memory embedded in matter. At a time when climate goals demand reducing emissions and extending the lifespan of what already exists, demolition is increasingly recognized as a form of urban amnesia, one that erases not only cultural continuity but also the embodied energy of buildings. And even though it is often said that the most sustainable building is the one that already exists, that principle rarely survives when other interests come into play.

For architects and specifiers, selecting the right cladding system is both a technical and creative act, connecting material science with architectural intent. More than simple visual envelopes, façades today are high-performance systems that balance protection, insulation, and expression. As the first barrier between exterior and interior, the right cladding system can define how a building behaves and ages over time, affecting its thermal comfort, acoustic performance, fire safety, and overall durability.

Among the most commonly used façade materials are wood, metal sheets, composites, and aluminum systems. Within this range, single-skin metal panels and extruded aluminum panels are particularly notable for their blend of strength, precision, and architectural appeal. While both benefit from aluminum's inherent lightness and corrosion resistance, they differ significantly in structural logic, performance characteristics, and ideal applications. Companies such as Parallel Architectural Products—specialized in extruded aluminum cladding systems and architectural finishes—have played an important role in advancing these technologies, combining precision engineering, aesthetic flexibility, and local manufacturing.

In the Water Lilies rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, Claude Monet conceived a 360-degree gallery where visitors are enveloped by continuous landscapes, dissolving the boundaries between painting and environment. There, he sought not merely to represent nature through his distinctive style, but to construct an atmosphere, a perceptual state that the visitor literally inhabits. Architecture, traditionally associated with materiality and permanence, thus gains a new dimension of time, movement, and sensory experience.

Similarly, when contemporary architecture transforms its planes into active surfaces, it extends this pursuit of immersion and presence, now amplified by technology. At the entrance of SOPREMA's new Mammut Tower in Oberroßbach, Germany, architecture and digital narrative converge. Designed and executed by ASB GlassFloor, the newly completed lobby is an immersive environment combining glass, light, and sound into a complete spatial and sensorial experience, demonstrating how interactive technologies can become architectural materials in their own right.

Terrazzo has long stood at the intersection of durability, artistry, and timeless appeal. Originating in Italy as a pragmatic way to reuse marble fragments in flooring, terrazzo has since become synonymous with elegance and strength in architecture. Traditionally crafted by hand using stone chips and lime and later, cement, it created continuous, seamless surfaces that celebrated both craftsmanship and endurance. Over time, as construction methods evolved and projects began to demand greater efficiency, adaptability, and modularity, terrazzo expanded beyond its traditional limits. From poured-in-place systems to modern epoxy-based formulations, it has evolved into a versatile material that enables thinner sections, faster installation, and a wider range of colors and aggregates. Today, precast terrazzo complements the traditional method, unlocking new applications without compromising performance or beauty, from stairs and wall cladding to furniture and custom design elements.

Open architectural competitions have long been regarded as gateways for new ideas. They level the playing field by proposing a single call, a clear set of rules, and an evaluation based on the quality of the work, conducted anonymously. For organizers, like cities, institutions, or companies, they represent a way to gather relevant proposals in a transparent public forum, backed by a competent jury. Unsurprisingly, competitions have marked decisive moments in the history of the discipline, such as the Centre Pompidou competition in Paris, which brought Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers to prominence with their "inside-out building," or the one for Brazil's new capital, won by Lúcio Costa with the Pilot Plan that synthesized the city into two intersecting axes, interpreted as either an airplane or a cross.

So, why do competitions still matter in architecture today? Beyond their historic role in shaping iconic projects, they continue to serve as testing grounds for fresh ideas, talent, and innovation. In the following sections, we explore competitions from three angles: the motivations that keep architects returning to them, the reasons organizers continue to launch them, and a practical playbook of strategies to help you approach your next competition with clarity and purpose.

While a book or piece of music can be easily set aside if it doesn't capture our interest, architecture is different. A building endures for decades, and it shapes the landscape and influences the lives of its occupants for years to come. This permanence brings with it a unique set of challenges: architects must design spaces that impact collective life, often under tight deadlines, limited budgets, and significant pressure. In addition to navigating complex regulations and coordinating construction, architects face the misconception that design is simple, or that anyone could do it. The constant balancing act between quality, cost, and speed often leads to sacrifices — whether in time, health, or the integrity of the project itself. This cycle not only wears down the profession but diminishes society's understanding of the true value of design.

The well-known "good, fast, and cheap" triangle is rarely resolved without the architect sacrificing their own time, health, or even the quality of the project. Repeated for decades, this equation fuels a cycle of wear that not only undermines the profession but also depreciates the value of design in society, even diminishing the role of such a beautiful and important discipline.

Communicating an idea using only the essentials is a far greater challenge than it often appears. From Japanese haikus to the refined sculptures of Constantin Brâncuși, many artistic expressions have sought to condense the maximum meaning with the minimum of elements. This economy of form is not a sign of scarcity, but of intensity: every stroke, every word, every silence gains weight. There is something intrinsically appealing in what presents itself as simple and well-resolved, whether it is a text that wastes no words, a tennis player who moves with purposeful gestures, or a melody that is both direct yet unexpectedly profound.

That same principle, which transcends various artistic languages, resonates deeply in contemporary design. When reduced to the essential, furniture or everyday objects reveal a form of beauty that arises from precision and transcends their function. This is exemplified by HUM, the new collection of taps developed by designer Philippe Malouin for QuadroDesign, in which a simple gesture is transformed into a complete language.