Articles

What if the most advanced elements in a bathroom were the ones you could barely see? In spaces where walls, ceilings, and floors form uninterrupted surfaces, fixtures retreat, and water itself becomes the primary material shaping experience. The careful placement of fixtures in bathrooms, such as sinks, taps, showerheads, and shower drains, each asserting their presence as both an object and a function. But what happens when these elements begin to disappear?

Instead of adding mounted elements to a bathroom's design, some approaches work through subtraction. The bathroom is no longer composed of visible objects, but understood as a continuous surface. Fixtures recede into walls and ceilings, allowing water, light, and atmosphere to take precedence. What takes shape is a form of minimalism and something more: an architecture that absorbs its technical systems entirely, allowing fixtures to disappear, leaving only their effects. The experience itself becomes the protagonist, no longer mediated by visible objects, but shaped directly through water, light, and space.

The world of architecture is evolving rapidly. Faced with technological transformation, environmental urgency, and growing cultural complexity, architects must combine creativity with technical expertise, cultural sensitivity, analytical skills, and the ability to work across multiple disciplines. The Master's Degree in Architecture at CEU Cardenal Herrera University responds to these demands through a transformative academic experience.

Architecture can no longer be thought of as an isolated object, detached from the technical networks that sustain contemporary life—a scenario that demands different readings and approaches. Against this backdrop, in March, ArchDaily's monthly topic focused on The Technosphere: Architecture at the Intersection of Technology, Ecology, and Planetary Systems, a broad and inevitably complex topic. Stemming from the concept of the technosphere, coined by geologist Peter Haff to describe the collective artifacts produced by humanity, a panorama emerges in which contemporary life is deeply intertwined with machines, data, and energy grids.

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There are only two days left to vote for the winners of ArchDaily en Español's 2026 Obra del Año Award. The three winners will be announced on April 16, following three weeks of public voting. The 15 finalists chosen by the public showcase the breadth of recent Ibero-American architectural production, spanning Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Spain, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay.

Discover the 15 finalists and help choose the three most significant projects of the past year in Spanish-speaking countries. In this final stage, users can vote for one project per day until April 15 at 6:00 PM (GMT-4).

How does an architectural installation express the identity of a region? How can a building material connect with the essence of a nation? Throughout its history, Spain has been shaped by a wide range of cultures and civilizations, including Muslim, Phoenician, Roman, Greek, Carthaginian, and Visigothic influences. From flamenco to ceramic tiles adorning façades and historic monuments, each region of Spain embraces its own customs and traditions, reflected in its architecture, history, art, and design. During Milan Design Week 2026, Tile of Spain presents Spanish Design as a Souvenir at the Fuorisalone—an installation that transforms ceramic tile into a narrative medium through a series of sculptural objects reinterpreting everyday icons of Spanish life.

The announcement of the 2026 Obra do Ano Award is drawing near, with only two days left until the close of the final selection stage. The three winners will be announced on April 16, following three weeks of public voting. The 15 finalists paint a portrait of the current state of architecture according to the public, who have been voting for their favorite projects.

View the 15 finalists and join an unbiased network of jurors responsible for choosing the most relevant projects built in Portuguese-speaking countries over the past year. In this final stage, each person can vote for one project per day until April 15 at 7:00 PM (Brasília time).

Set within the mountainous landscape of Zabbougha, Lebanon, Capsule Retreat by EAST Architecture Studio is shaped through the process of its making. The project unfolds through material decisions, on-site adjustments, and evolving conditions, allowing construction itself to guide its spatial logic.

The construction process played a central role in defining the project. Built during a period marked by economic collapse, material shortages, and ongoing disruption in Lebanon, the house developed through continuous adaptation. With no general contractor, the architects took on an expanded role, coordinating craftsmen, testing ideas directly on site, and responding to changing constraints. In this context, sociopolitical conditions became not only a challenge but a catalyst for rethinking design. "We were constantly testing ideas on site", say the architects and founders of EAST Architecture Studio, Charles Kettaneh and Nicolas Fayad, "tailoring these decisions economically while exploring what local craft could offer."

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Twenty meters tall and four thousand years old, the Western Deffufa towers over the adjacent date orchards and ancient city remains in the desert. It is a former religious and administrative building near the modern-day Sudanese town of Kerma. Its significance is not only in its age and size, but also in that it is one of the oldest mud brick buildings in the world. And as the nearby mud brick houses also attest, earth is a material of continuous use from ancient times to the present. Yet, conversations around contemporary building systems have largely ignored this essential material. Some architects on the continent of Africa, however, are changing that.

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The flood does not arrive as a surprise. It returns, following the same swollen rivers and monsoon skies, loosening the ground and entering homes that were never meant to resist it. Walls are untied before they are lost, materials are gathered before they drift, and structures are rebuilt with a familiarity that suggests this is not destruction, but sequence. In landscapes where water returns each year, survival is defined by the ability to begin again.

Across the floodplains of Bangladesh, the Brahmaputra basin, and the Mekong Delta, inundation is a seasonal certainty. Reports by institutions such as the World Bank and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change often frame floods through exposure and damage, measuring success through resistance and durability. Yet in territories that are submerged annually, such metrics only partially describe the problem. The ground itself oscillates between solid and liquid states. To build as if it were fixed is to design against the very condition that defines it.

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In recent decades, cities across the world have seen an increase in the demolition of elevated concrete freeways. Taipei, Seoul, Portland, and Boston, for example, have all seen the rise and fall of these infrastructures to give way to parks and new urban regeneration ideas. In other cases, like Montreal in Canada, some people opposed the freeways even before they were built, effectively rerouting viaducts, preserving heritage, and freeing waterfront views. For San Francisco, in the United States, the story of the Embarcadero Freeway is one of those narratives that serves as a case study of the city's mid-century infrastructural ambition, people's reaction to the project, and its eventual reversal in favor of urban connectivity.

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Buildner has launched the Unbuilt Award 2026, the third edition of its annual competition, offering a €100,000 prize fund. At the same time, the results of the Unbuilt Award 2025 have been announced, marking the second competition in a series that celebrates architectural designs that have yet to be realized. The initiative provides a global platform for architects and designers to showcase their most compelling unbuilt projects—whether conceptual, published, unpublished, or fully developed.

Studio NEiDA operates at the intersection of architectural practice, research, and curatorial work, with a consistent focus on how buildings emerge from the material and cultural conditions of a place. Rather than treating materiality as a finishing language, the studio frames it as the beginning of an architectural narrative—starting from what is locally available, they look at what craft knowledge exists on the ground, and how those resources and skills situate a project within an architectural lineage. This approach foregrounds limitations and possibilities as productive forces, and positions design as an iterative process of aligning spatial intent with the realities of construction culture and vernacular intelligence.

Across their work, NEiDA's interests extend beyond form toward the socio-political and climatic contexts that shape how architecture is made and inhabited. They emphasize learning from non-authored, vernacular, and informal building practices as a way of establishing a shared grammar for intervention, and they describe an indoor–outdoor continuity not as a stylistic preference but as a response to local life and ventilation logics—where outdoor rooms can be as spatially defined and programmatically central as interior ones. Collaboration, in this framework, is not auxiliary: the studio highlights on-site exchange with craftspeople and builders as a core methodology, where projects evolve through collective intelligence and adaptive communication.

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In highly-curated environments such as Disneyland Paris, architecture operates under a different set of expectations. Buildings are not only required to perform, they must also communicate, often instantly. Within this context, the facade becomes a visual marker that can serve as a threshold, mediating light, air, and perception. One strategy that has gained traction in this setting is the use of semi-opaque envelope systems. Neither fully transparent nor entirely enclosed, these facade systems introduce depth and variability.

Unlike conventional cladding, opaque threshold systems perform as filters. They temper solar exposure, enable natural ventilation, and provide privacy without severing visual continuity. These features are valuable in urban and commercial contexts, where buildings balance environmental responsiveness with experiential impact. Such systems also become carriers of narrative, embedding cultural references, patterns, or imagery into the architectural skin.

The construction industry today faces an unavoidable paradox: the urgent need for sustainable solutions for the future of cities collides with the exhaustion of the term "sustainability" itself, often reduced to a hollow commercial label. In this scenario, Arquivo – one of the winners of ArchDaily's 2025 Next Practices Award – emerges as a facilitator and mediator between different stakeholders in the construction field through disassembly – or rather, de-construction – and the reuse of building elements. Etymologically, if "construction" derives from the Latin construere (to heap up, assemble), the prefix "de-" imposes a conceptual inversion: it is not about destroying, but about disassembling with intelligence to understand the logic of the parts.

While conventional demolition practices generate a vast volume of waste and energy consumption, Arquivo proposes reuse as a viable alternative for the circular economy. The company operates in the gap between disposal and new construction, guided by a clear premise: "Reuse is only fully realized when the material gains a new life."

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Over the past two weeks, the ArchDaily Brasil community has nominated more than 14,000 projects, resulting in 15 finalists representing some of the most iconic architectural works published over the last year. Now in its 10th edition, the Obra do Ano Award recognizes the best of architecture in Portuguese-speaking countries, chosen by the readers themselves. The finalists offer a snapshot of the current state of architecture, spanning residential, urban, cultural, and other programs.

Representing Brazil and Portugal, the 15 projects reflect the needs of their specific contexts through creative solutions proposed by local architects. From interior renovations to large-scale urban interventions, and from single-family homes to community projects, the selection is diverse, yet united by a common thread: recognition from the public, who seek to see their own aspirations represented.

Over the last two weeks, the ArchDaily en Español community submitted more than 17,000 nominations, yielding 15 finalists that represent some of the most emblematic architectural works of the past year. Decided by its community, the 2026 Building of the Year Award—the most significant architecture prize in the Spanish-speaking world—exists to recognize the best of architecture across Spanish-speaking countries.

These 15 finalists, chosen by public vote in this 17th edition, showcase the breadth of recent Ibero-American production while highlighting shared shifts in contemporary practice: an architecture that prioritizes clear construction choices, operates within real-world constraints, and understands design as a way of adapting to specific contexts.

Architects carefully calibrate their relationship to the earth, adjusting foundations to soil, groundwater, climate, risk, and culture. Driven timber piles, rammed-earth platforms, and poured concrete slabs are each a response to a specific set of ground conditions, and each shapes the architecture that rises from it. The way a building meets the earth determines its durability and its limits because foundations are among the most consequential design choices an architect makes.

The city of Rotterdam sits approximately one meter below sea level, an organizing condition that shapes daily life in the Netherlands' second-largest city and is a growing preoccupation amid unstable coastal conditions. The city occupies the delta of the Rhine and Maas rivers, a landscape that was never naturally dry but has been kept functional through centuries of hydraulic intervention. The water boards in this region are among the oldest democratic institutions in the world, created in the thirteenth century to manage shared water drainage and still operating today as elected bodies with technical capacity. As sea levels rise and rainfall across Northern Europe grows less predictable and more extreme, Rotterdam faces a significantly increased risk of coastal storm surges and urban flooding driven by overwhelmed drainage infrastructure.

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The well-known phrase "man is what he eats" (Der Mensch ist, was er isst), by Ludwig Feuerbach, asserts that the physical, mental, and even moral constitution of human beings is directly linked to what they consume. Today, this idea is widely internalized, with growing awareness around food, nutrition, and the impact of what we ingest on our bodies. Yet, this same level of awareness doesn't extend to the environments we inhabit, where materials continue to be treated as technical decisions rather than active agents in the relationship between body and space. Considering that a large portion of the global population spends around 90% of their time indoors, it is rarely discussed what actually composes these spaces at their most fundamental level: materials. Walls, floors, and finishes are often approached as technical or aesthetic choices, when in reality they can function as continuous sources of exposure to potentially harmful substances.

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