Lighthouses have stood along the margins of continents and islands for centuries as points of light in vast maritime territories. Rising in solitude from rocky cliffs, reefs, and headlands, these towers were tools for navigation and instruments of spatial clarity, shaping coastlines and marking the boundary between land and sea. Built to guide, warn, and locate, they constituted a global network of visibility long before the advent of digital mapping. Yet as maritime technologies evolved, many of these structures lost their original purpose. The typology, once essential, now stands at the edge of obsolescence. What remains is not merely an architectural relic, but a powerful spatial form — resilient, symbolic, and increasingly open to reinterpretation.
Kampung Admiralty / Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl + WOHA. Image Courtesy of WOHA
Ebenezer Howard's verdant visions for cities have spread eastwards, far beyond his British roots. In the 1900s, city planning welcomed the Garden City Movement as a champion of good design - a response to Western industrial urbanization. Soon, Asian cities conceived their archetypes, juggling local constraints in climate and density. Designs and development, from colonial-era experiments to contemporary mega-projects, have embraced and reinvented Howard's vision well into the 21st century.
Every June, the Spanish city of Logroño transforms into a space of architectural dialogue, opening its streets, plazas, riverbanks, and traffic islands to temporary structures that redefine how cities are inhabited. For ten editions, Concéntrico has worked not as a specialized fair or an architecture biennale, but as a portable museum — a curatorial gesture that brings a dispersed collection of contemporary architecture into public space. Set in a city suspended between arid plains and distant mountains, far from the circuits of capital cities and cultural institutions, Concéntrico presents itself as a temporary promise. It's a reminder that even cities that are often overlooked can host architecture that is current, diverse, and speculative. In this sense, the festival is less about celebration and more about activation.
But beyond its curatorial logic, Concéntrico operates as a political structure. In the ancient sense of polis, it invites citizens, architects, and institutions to reassess what public space can be. The interventions offer speculative proposals for urban life that reveal what is missing, what is possible, and what should be questioned. A temporary pool over a fountain, a bathhouse in a roundabout, or a shared meal on a major avenue are not just spatial gestures — they are political statements, asking how urban infrastructure might be redirected from control to care, from efficiency to encounter. In that way, the festival becomes not just a reflection of the city, but an instrument for its transformation.
Artificial intelligence is becoming an undeniable presence in our daily lives. It teaches, generates content, and disrupts the fragile boundaries—both visual and imaginative—that once governed our interactions on social media. On platforms like Instagram, we witness a flood of imagery where every kind of speculative exercise is freely shared, recalibrating our understanding of the relationship between architecture and image. Amid this transformation, entire professions find themselves on uncertain ground, as AI begins to challenge areas once defined by human expertise.
Yet beneath this apparent abundance lies the opaque core of closed-source AI: an algorithmic black box that systematically conceals the origins of the data it consumes. As a result, its outputs are inevitably prone to factual distortions, anachronisms, and subtle or overt biases. This same machinery can hollow out the significance behind the languages and stylistic signatures of canonical architects—manifest, for instance, in AI-generated visions speculating how famed designers, living or dead, might have reimagined the Eiffel Tower. We shared one such image to observe and better understand how people—especially architects—respond to AI's current possibilities and limitations, and the ways it mimics architectural intent. The response was quite fascinating, revealing a mix of curiosity, concern, and critical reflection.
In India, brick as a construction material holds memory, meaning, and modernity. From the aligned fired bricks of the Indus Valley Civilization to the intricate brick jaalis that decorate homes, public buildings, and landmarks, the material's legacy is deeply embedded within the subcontinent's architectural identity. Yet no one has shaped the narrative of brick in modern Indian architecture more eloquently than Laurie Baker.
Public space has long been central to architectural thought, often framed in terms of planning, infrastructure, and regulation. From Haussmann's Paris to contemporary masterplans, architects have worked to define and formalise collective life through spatial tools. Yet, outside of these frameworks, artists have continuously offered alternative ways of understanding and inhabiting public space—ways that rely not on construction or permanence, but on presence, perception, and participation. Through actions, objects, or atmospheres, artists engage the city as a site of friction and imagination. These gestures challenge architectural conventions and invite artists to reconsider public space not as a solved form, but as a contingent and open process.
The future of the architecture industry holds countless possibilities, as research in the domain progresses. One innovation is the ability for structures to be rendered acoustically invisible, absorb earthquake energy, or harvest electricity from the sounds around them. Qualities of this nature can help redefine the functionality and sustainability of buildings. Architects and scientists are at the forefront of this creation. What makes this possible are metamaterials that could offer alternative methods of designing good buildings.
Adaptive reuse has become a buzzword in the architecture industry. Framed as a sustainable and economical solution to urban decay, the practice has been adopted by cities facing pressures of climate change, real estate constraints, and cultural preservation. Architects are increasingly being hired to rehabilitate the old rather than build anew. Within this discourse is a growing sentiment towards who gets to reuse and how.
In recent years, architecture has increasingly embraced adaptability, flexibility, and responsiveness as core design principles. This evolution reflects a shift from traditional notions of static, permanent structures to dynamic environments that can adjust to changing needs and conditions. Central to this transformation is the concept of "soft architecture", which leverages pliable materials and innovative systems to create spaces that are functional, sustainable, and user-centric. Soft architecture takes shape through membranes that breathe, façades that move, structures that inflate or fold, and surfaces that bend rather than break. It involves designing for transformation — not only in how a building performs environmentally, but also in how it can accommodate shifting functions, user interactions, or temporary occupations. This approach to building challenges traditional notions of durability and control, proposing instead a more responsive and open-ended architecture. It reflects a growing awareness that buildings, like the societies they serve, must be able to evolve.
There is a particular kind of architecture that does not begin with a blank page. It begins in silence, in ruins, in walls shaped by time. It begins by listening. Rather than imposing itself, it draws near, slowly, choosing to touch rather than overwrite. This is an architecture that engages with the past through the lens of the present, not to erase it or mimic it, but to offer it continuity.
Contemporary architecture increasingly recognizes that to build with the past is not to be held back by it. Heritage is no longer seen as a constraint but as an active ground for design. Within this shift, pre-existence becomes more than a physical condition — it becomes a narrative thread, a structural and symbolic presence that invites care. Rather than asserting dominance, many architects today choose to respond with gestures that are deliberate, quiet, and precise. These interventions frame rather than replace, protect rather than obscure. In doing so, they allow history to remain visible, not as a backdrop, but as a living layer of the architectural experience.
Tucked within the leafy confines of the Giardini della Biennale in Venice stands a structure modest in scale yet immense in quiet conviction: the Finland Pavilion, designed by Alvar and Elissa Aalto for the 1956 Venice Biennale. Unlike the monumental pavilions that surround it, Aalto's structure was conceived not as a permanent structure, but as a temporary exhibition space for a single exhibition season. And yet, nearly seventy years on, it remains—weathered, resilient, and quietly luminous.
In partnership with the European Cultural Center (ECC), ArchDaily has launched its inaugural exhibition as part of the seventh iteration of Time Space Existence, an architectural showcase occurring concurrently with the 19th VeniceArchitecture Biennale. Open from May 10 to November 23, 2025, in various locations throughout Venice, this edition centers on the theme of "Repair, Regenerate, and Reuse," promoting innovative and sustainable approaches in architecture. ArchDaily's contribution is located at Palazzo Mora, complementing other venues like Palazzo Bembo, Marinaressa Gardens, and Palazzo Michiel.
In Venice, surrounded by an overwhelming abundance of architectural beauty—the grandeur of landmarks like the Basilica di San Marco, St. Mark's Square, and the Rialto Bridge, to name just a few—it is easy to become swept up in the iconic imagery and spatial majesty of the city. One could lose sight of the quieter, yet equally masterful, moments found in the execution of details across its built fabric. Beyond the grandeur, the city offers a richness in its winding alleyways, narrow canals, and vibrant street life—each contributing to the cultural tapestry that makes Venice so unique. Amidst these celebrated elements, however, lie subtle but remarkable architectural details that often go unnoticed. These deserve closer observation and reflection, as they offer their own kind of mastery—one grounded in material precision, craft, and the lived rhythms of the city.
Just steps away from the iconic Piazza San Marco, a quiet architectural dialogue unfolds between two celebrated figures. Within a one-minute walk, two projects—each meticulously crafted—sit in close proximity: the Olivetti Showroom by Carlo Scarpa, a long-revered pilgrimage site for architects and designers, and the recently reopened Procuratie Vecchie, restored by David Chipperfield Architects. A closer look at the architectural details embedded within each work reveals a compelling exchange across time—one that unfolds through material language, spatial precision, and an unwavering commitment to craft.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic idea in architecture — it is a concrete reality that is reshaping how we design. In seconds, computational systems can process and evaluate a wide range of variables — formal, programmatic, contextual, and regulatory — guiding architects toward highly optimized solutions. But as we embrace this algorithmic revolution, a critical question arises: can architectural intelligence be reduced to data-driven logic? In response, alternative approaches are gaining momentum — ones that value ways of building grounded in sensory experience, adaptation to place, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. In the exchange between artificial and ancestral forms of intelligence, a deeper understanding begins to take shape. Intelligence does not reside in the tools themselves, but in the intention and sensitivity with which we use them to navigate complex realities.
As architecture navigates a rapidly changing world shaped by ecological urgency, social transformation, and technological acceleration, the notion of intelligence is shifting. No longer confined to individual cognition or artificial computation, intelligence can emerge from cultural memory, collective practices, and adaptive systems. In this broader sense, architecture becomes a field of convergence, where natural, artificial, and social intelligences intersect to offer new ways of designing and building.
Vernacular traditions embed generations of environmental knowledge, often transmitted through materials, construction techniques, and spatial logics finely tuned to local conditions; participatory platforms expand decision-making to wider communities to take part in shaping their environments, redistributing agency in the design process; and computational processes simulate and respond to complex data in real time bringing the capacity to analyse, simulate, and respond to complex variables — whether environmental, social, or behavioural — offering new forms of adaptability.
Theaters, concert halls, and opera houses are more than just venues — they are meticulously orchestrated environments where architecture, technology, and human emotion converge. Unlike conventional buildings, these spaces must accommodate a dynamic interplay between acoustics, sightlines, stage mechanics, and audience engagement, all while maintaining an architectural identity that resonates with performers and spectators alike. Whether it is the immersive embrace of a vineyard-style concert hall or the grandeur of a proscenium theater, every design decision shapes how performances are experienced and remembered.
