How to visualize architectural concepts in SketchUp using D5 Lite for faster design exploration.

The most innovative and impactful design projects arise from the intersection of different fields. The architecture community has always borrowed from, or been inspired by, other forms of cultural production such as film, photography, literature, and theatre. In the theatricality of Baroque churches and the cinematic sequences of contemporary museums, architects have looked beyond the building itself to understand how space can shape a story and construct an experience.

Worldbuilding takes this one step further. Instead of designing only the architecture of a place, it asks architects to establish the social rules, narratives, technologies, economies, atmospheres, behaviors, and relationships that make that place believable. Rather than beginning with, "What should this building look like?", worldbuilding suggests beginning with, "In what kind of world would this building make sense?"

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What makes a building worth preserving? Age is the most common answer, but not always the best one. A building from the 1950s or 70s may carry as much historical significance as a medieval cathedral; it simply demands a different framework, one that weighs political context, cultural meaning, and architectural innovation over the mere passage of time. This is especially true for modernist architecture across the so-called Global South, where the movement took on unique forms of expression.

It is precisely this conversation that ArchDaily and World Monuments Fund are now opening together. WMF brings on-the-ground conservation expertise across the world, and ArchDaily brings the editorial capacity to contextualize that work and connect it to a global audience. The goal is to do both at once: preserve places and tell their stories, shaping how modernist heritage is understood far beyond the field of preservation itself.

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Architectural ornamentation has been a recurrent subject of debate across the industry for decades. A practice that was largely abandoned during the Modernist movement could now be standing on a platform that might, again, allow its resurgence, due to the current convergence of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital fabrication. Technology has seemingly removed the primary obstacle to decorative detail: the high cost of skilled manual labor. However, this new technical capacity demands a critical examination: What does ornamentation truly represent, and what do we gain or lose by resurrecting it through algorithmic design?

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The landscape and scattered settlements of Ireland carry a reputation for wildness. Rugged cliffs meet the Atlantic, green fields roll across the interior, and rain and wind change the scene by the hour. A closer look reveals a worked terrain as historic stone walls divide agricultural fields, roads and paths connect towns to the coast, and castle ruins alongside cottages record centuries of occupation. Change is the expected condition of the island, shaped as much by human hands as by geology and weather, and the practice of treating the existing context as material to adapt and modify runs deep.

Ireland has a large inherited building stock, from vernacular cottages and farm compounds to Georgian and Victorian urban terraces, while a growing share of it sits vacant or derelict as housing remains scarce and expensive. Planning and heritage protections shape what can be altered, while growing attention to embodied carbon makes demolition increasingly difficult to justify. Under these pressures, design strategies for renovation are one of the most inventive areas of contemporary Irish design. Architects cut into old structures to admit light, set new materials against aged ones, and redesign buildings for contemporary lives and routines.

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Videos

The office chair has evolved alongside changing workplaces over time. In each office era, the chair has reflected the way people work. Early office seating was built for clerical work: fixed wooden chairs arranged in rows across large administrative offices, where paperwork followed standardized routines. By the 1980s, computers began changing how people occupied a desk, and office furniture followed. Designers approached seating through ergonomics and biomechanics, refining adjustable height, lumbar support, synchronized recline, and the relationship between the body and the workstation. Later designers combined ergonomic research with new materials such as breathable suspension mesh instead of conventional foam upholstery.

Buildner has announced the results of the Iceland Slow Sauna architecture competition, developed in partnership with Slow Travel Mývatn. Set beside Þúfa – Private Homestay in the volcanic landscape of Lake Mývatn in northern Iceland, the competition invited architects and designers to create a compact retreat combining a sauna and greenhouse within a single architectural experience. Rooted in the Icelandic tradition of bathing as a ritual of stillness and renewal, the brief asked participants to explore how heat, light, vegetation, and landscape could shape an intimate place of recovery and connection to nature.

Volcanic landscapes make geological change unusually visible. Lava hardens into new ground, and plants slowly take hold across it. Ash can remain in the landscape for years. Around active volcanoes, these processes are still underway, affecting where and how people build.

Yet these landscapes continue to attract houses and places of retreat. Their isolation and unusual terrain are often part of the appeal. Building there means bringing everyday life into a landscape that can still change.

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Liberation does not always begin with a monument. It may begin in a garden, a yard, a clearing, a field; in the occupation of land and the possibility of gathering there. Across histories shaped by colonialism and dispossession, space has been more than the setting in which liberation takes place. It has been one of its practices: cultivated, occupied, hidden within, moved through and collectively remade.

Wolff Architects' research Liberation Gardens offers the garden as one way of reading these spatial practices, not simply as planted ground, but as a space through which survival, nourishment and emancipatory imagination can be sustained. The garden in this sense is not defined by landscape design so much as by relationships between people and land, cultivation and knowledge, occupation and autonomy. It can hold cultural production alongside subsistence, and forms of collective life that emerge under conditions of violence and dispossession. Liberation, understood spatially, becomes as much about the possibility of inhabiting differently as it is about arriving at a final condition of freedom.

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This article is part of "Thresholds", a special edition printed newspaper by Cobe Notes x ArchDaily.

There are two unique things about being human that made us survive the early years and spread over the whole planet: sweating and storytelling. Sweating helps cool down the body when running long distances. Stories help us collaborate in big numbers and share knowledge across groups and generations. As architects, we still rely on the same tools to make visions become reality.

As professor of stories Angus Fletcher points out in his book Primal Intelligence, there is a common misconception about the role of stories: when our "rational" brain has developed an idea that we fail to explain to a wider group, we pack it into a story, and suddenly everybody understands. Fletcher argues that it actually works the other way around: ideas come from stories, our brain works in stories, and stories form reality. Architects have a derogatory term for turning that process the wrong side up: "post-rationalisation", for example when diagrams are made to explain a design that is already decided.

For many communities across the Gulf, leaving home once formed part of inhabiting it. Families moved between desert pastures, coastal settlements, wells, fishing grounds, and pearling ports according to season and livelihood, returning repeatedly to places already known through use. In Qatar, historical accounts describe autumn and winter movement through al-barr, the desert, followed by a return toward coastal settlements as the summer pearling season began. The National Museum of Qatar represents this history through a yearly calendar of movement between desert and sea.

Home could extend between several places occupied at different points in the year. It extended across a larger geography of places that were left and returned to through the year. Many contemporary Gulf developments now attempt to bring contrasting climatic and spatial conditions into the same permanent urban system. 

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There is no shortage of ways to imagine what the world will look like after a climate catastrophe. Genres of movies and novels have been built around the question of what happens when contemporary safeguards fail, from dystopian fiction and post-apocalyptic literature to disaster films, graphic novels, and video games. Burning forests, submerged cities, abandoned infrastructure, resource scarcity, and mass displacement are a familiar visual and narrative vocabulary. We have become remarkably fluent in imagining the consequences of a world that fails to respond to climate change.

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A brick façade does more than define the façade of a house. When designed as a porous screen, it becomes an intermediary between inside and outside, shaping the atmosphere and environmental conditions of the spaces behind it. Across contemporary Indian residential architecture, brick jali — a perforated or lattice brick screen — has been reinterpreted with a contemporary sensibility, drawing on vernacular architectural elements.

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Wood and coastal architecture have always gone together. It's one of the defining materials of coastal structures. But creating that aesthetic in an environment where weather is a constant part of life demands more from the wood you choose.  

Rain isn't unique to coastal areas. What makes the coast different is the combination and frequency of exposure. Humidity, ocean winds, salt-laden air, direct sun, and frequent storms repeatedly take wood from wet to dry and back again. In many coastal regions, these aren't occasional weather events. They are simply part of the climate. That makes two characteristics especially important when selecting wood for coastal construction: durability and dimensional stability.

Some urban experiences are etched into our memory through a shift in pace. The postmodern city has often been described as an experience lived at the rhythm of motorized mobility, in contrast to the stroll, the promenade, or even the processions that preceded it. In a fast-paced urban culture, walkability is championed in urban planning not only as a factor of safety and social cohesion, but also as a path to a more sensory way of life. This selection of unbuilt projects submitted by ArchDaily readers showcases design examples that prioritize the experience of the environment through a pedestrian pace. Beyond respecting walking as a mobility choice, these conceptual proposals link the act of walking with contemplation of one's surroundings, respect for what already exists, and connection with other people.

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"After all, time is a key ingredient of my profession," states Francis Kéré in his book Francis Kéré: Building Stories. Architecture is constantly evolving and transforming over time. Bricks, doors, windows, walls, stairs, and other elements become the protagonists of a process that begins with a sketch and eventually takes shape as a built work.

Considering that architecture begins when its inhabitants start to make a space their own, Francis Kéré develops his projects progressively, continuing to work on the design even during the construction phase. As his architecture grows over time, integrates with its surroundings, adapts to the needs of its users, and responds to change in flexible and experimental ways, it seeks to become part of the lives of those who inhabit it.

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In most architectural projects, vertical circulation is expressed as a purely functional element, tucked away behind fire-rated doors or an elevator core. However, sometimes architects also use spirals when trying to resolve site elevation changes. Given the right scale, these elements allow for a more artistic formal expression that serves both utilitarian and aesthetic purposes without relying on mechanical lifts or stairwells. Structural systems like cantilevered steel trusses and reinforced concrete decks allow these spiral elements to extend outward as sheltered entry canopies or wind around open central atriums. Functionally, these circulation paths may be expressed in several ways: as stairs like the Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia, or as ramps, which can offer the possibility to reduce mobility barriers for visitors. In both cases, the spiral can provide smooth transitions across varied floor levels while maintaining an unobstructed line-of-sight throughout the program.

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Seamless surfaces and minimal joints have become a defining signature of contemporary architecture, prized for the clean lines, and uniformity they bring to a building's envelope. Yet in façade engineering, this pursuit is rarely just about appearance. Regardless of the material used, increasing panel dimensions can influence durability, material recyclability, performance against external factors, and other considerations such as impact resistance and long-term maintenance. By combining ease of installation and transportation efficiency with design flexibility, monomaterial façade systems use large-format panels while addressing practical challenges related to flatness, thermal movement, and structural support. Yet, what other material-related considerations behind large-format panels can make a difference in building envelope construction today? 

Unlike buildings, which are anchored to foundations and respond to climate from a fixed position, yachts are designed for constant movement and change. Interiors sway with the vessel, light changes by the minute, humidity is a permanent design condition, and every kilogram influences performance. Designing for the sea therefore requires architects, naval architects, engineers, and interior designers to solve questions that rarely exist on land: how can space remain calm while everything around it is in motion?

Despite being among architecture's oldest structural forms, domes continue to offer possibilities for creating large, column-free spaces and working with circular or free-form geometries beyond conventional rectangular building types. Their evolution has been closely tied to changes in materials, construction methods, and design tools. Today, digital platforms are adding another layer to this process, allowing some of the decisions traditionally developed later in a project to be explored much earlier.

There is no harder place to build than a high mountain, and none where a building feels more provisional. From the Andes to the Himalaya to the Alps, high-altitude construction strips architecture back to its most elementary transactions. The rock reads as permanence itself, yet a structure set near the limit of habitation exists in negotiation with almost everything around it: with wind that arrives without obstruction, with a ground too steep and too frozen to excavate, and with everything it needs arriving from far below. What can be carried up, what can be assembled by few hands, and what can sustain itself are some of the terms of the problem.

Those constraints have produced a remarkably consistent building culture across otherwise unrelated ranges. The refuge, the hut, the bivouac, and the observatory belong to a shared typology in which shelter is inseparable from logistics, and where lightness, prefabrication, and self-sufficiency were structural necessities long before they became virtues.

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As architectural projects grow more complex and requirements evolve, the ability to iterate quickly is increasingly important to the design process. For Bellway, one of the UK's largest homebuilders, faster design iteration and visualization have become key to meeting these demands. It is not just a way to present finished designs, but also a tool for testing ideas, communicating options, and making decisions earlier in the development process.

The Steel Architectural Awards ASEAN 2026, presented by BlueScope, has announced the 12 finalist projects selected to advance to the ASEAN-level appraisal. Representing outstanding achievements in architecture across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, the finalists were selected through the Country Awards programs and now move forward to regional evaluation by an international judging panel.

Now in its second ASEAN edition, the program celebrates architectural projects that demonstrate excellence in design, innovation, sustainability, and the creative application of coated steel solutions. Under the 2026 theme, "Shaping Resilient Futures: Timeless Design with Coated Steel," the Awards highlight projects that respond meaningfully to their context while delivering enduring value for future generations.

Colonial violence in African cities bled through the political dimensions into the spatial realm. It is infused into street grids, land tenure systems, drainage infrastructure and residential zones that continue to organize inequality and displacement today. Kinshasa, Khartoum, and Kampala each carry this afterlife in their urban morphology, at once historical artifacts and an active structure; shaping who has access to services, who occupies flood-prone land, and catalyzing a deepening climate instability that forces this apparatus into entirely new dimensions - including geological ones.

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In 1961, when conceiving the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, in São Paulo, Vilanova Artigas and Carlos Cascaldi established a paradigm that continues to resonate throughout Brazilian university architecture: the building as a continuous territory, articulated by ramps, courtyards, and open spans, where the experience of learning extends beyond the classroom. The idea emerged at a moment of transformation in Brazilian higher education, which, over the following decades, would expand from serving a relatively restricted audience to reaching a much broader and more diverse population. If Brazil had approximately 226,218 undergraduate enrollments in 1960, by 2023 that number had approached 10 million.

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