This article is part of our new Opinion section, a format for argument-driven essays on critical questions shaping our field.

For centuries, most of the world has looked at itself through a 16th-century instrument of spatial representation. On September 4, the United Nations General Assembly voted to change that, adopting a resolution that asks governments, schools, media organizations, and technology companies to retire the Mercator projection wherever the relative size of countries actually matters, in favor of equal-area alternatives like the 2018 Equal Earth projection. The vote passed 164 to 1. The United States was the sole vote against.

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Since its launch in 2020, the ArchDaily Next Practices Awards have spotlighted forward-thinking architecture practices that are redefining the boundaries of the discipline. Over five editions, the initiative has recognized 105 practices from 44 countries, amplifying voices from around the world and fostering a global conversation about architecture's evolving role in society. Across the winning practices, recurring values emerge: contextual sensitivity, sustainable material use, co-creation with communities, experimental and interdisciplinary approaches, memory and heritage, social responsibility, and human-scale interventions.

The program reflects what is next: the ideas, practices, and projects that should be brought forward. 'Next' embodies practices that find solutions to today's urgent challenges while anticipating the needs of tomorrow. By spotlighting these practices, we hope to illuminate the paths that can lead to a more meaningful and resilient future for architecture and beyond.

Applications for this year are now closed. 

ArchDaily was born within a university, founded by two architecture students who believed that architectural knowledge should reach further than it did at the time. Eighteen years later, that conviction remains unchanged — but perspectives, tools, and opportunities have grown. We launched the Student Ambassador Program to give the next generation of architects a direct role in bridging their universities with the global architectural conversation.

At a moment when architects across the globe are revisiting earthen construction, reassessing vernacular technologies, and forging visceral connections between communities and the land beneath their feet, others are sketching habitats for the Moon and designing the built environments of a Martian colony. Architecture firms, engineers, and space agencies are investing serious intellectual effort into structures that would need to be raised from scratch on another world. Two impulses, one returning to the soil, the other reaching for the stars, are unfolding simultaneously within the same discipline. And the tension between them raises an uncomfortable question: what, exactly, are we trying to escape?

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Elia Zenghelis, Greek architect, co-founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and one of the most influential architectural educators of the late twentieth century, died on August 30, 2026, at the age of 89. His death marks the passing of a figure whose influence on architectural thought extended far beyond the buildings he designed, shaping the intellectual formation of several generations of architects through decades of teaching across Europe and the United States.

Born in Athens in 1937, Zenghelis studied architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, completing his studies in 1961. He joined the practice of Douglas Stephen and Partners, where he worked until 1971, while simultaneously beginning to teach at the AA in 1963. At the school, he became a prominent voice for a more radical, avant-garde architectural discourse, helping to transform the AA into a fertile ground for radical ideas.

When Francis Kéré set out to build a school in his home village of Gando, Burkina Faso, he chose clay, a material his own community associated with scarcity, not architecture. To prove it could hold, he built test bricks and submerged one in water for five days before showing his neighbors it hadn't failed. Then he trained the villagers themselves to raise the walls, rather than bringing in a construction crew from the city. More than 200 people from Gando have since worked as builders because of that choice. The school carries something a materials list alone cannot: the trace of the hands that will go on living in the village long after the scaffolding came down.

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Abu Dhabi's Department of Culture and Tourism has announced that Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will open to the public on December 11, 2026, on Saadiyat Island. The museum, designed by the late Frank Gehry, becomes the fourth institution in the Guggenheim's global network, joining outposts in New York, Venice, and Bilbao.

The project was first announced in 2006. Construction began in 2011, was suspended for several years amid economic strain and contract changes, and resumed in 2019. A 2025 completion date, set in 2021, ultimately slipped to this December. 

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Barcelona has just become the first city in the history of the UIA World Congress of Architects to host the event twice. Thirty years separate the two editions, and the distance between them says as much about architecture's changing self-understanding as anything spoken from a stage. In 1996, the congress placed the city at the center of the debate, consolidating a post-Olympic urban model that would go on to be studied and contested for decades.

In 2026, under the theme "Becoming. Architectures for a Planet in Transition," Barcelona hosted a very different conversation. The congress's curatorial team — Pau Bajet, Mariona Benedito, Maria Giramé, Tomeu Ramis, Pau Sarquella, and Carmen Torres — organized the program around six thematic lines: Becoming More-than-human, Becoming Circular, Becoming Embodied, Becoming Interdependent, Becoming Hyper-Conscious, and Becoming Attuned. As they told ArchDaily ahead of the opening, the premise behind this structure was that most architectural decisions are, in practice, very specific — which material is used, what is demolished or preserved, how much water or energy a building consumes — yet those specific decisions carry planetary implications.

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Itaipu Binacional, a company owned by Brazil and Paraguay that manages the Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant, has launched a national architecture competition for the design of the EcoParque Itaipu in Foz do Iguaçu. The competition brief, published in December 2022, called for the creation of an urban park that "will contribute to the conservation of one of the most significant green areas in Foz do Iguaçu, combining public and sustainable use."

The submitted architectural proposals had to be prepared to integrate a wide range of technologies, whether digital or nature-based solutions, aiming to transform the park into a living laboratory for solutions to address everyday challenges in a more joyful and effective way.

Four years after receiving the archive of Espírito Santo-born architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Portugal's Casa da Arquitectura is opening two exhibitions dedicated to the Brazilian winner of the Pritzker Prize (2006) and the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale (2016). The larger of the two, featuring 138 original drawings, dozens of photographs, and other documents, is dedicated to the architect's built work and seeks to expand the notion of geography that runs through Mendes da Rocha's production.

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The firms Effect Arquitetura, from Brazil, and Ben-Avid, from Argentina, have partnered to design a multi-sport and events arena with a capacity of approximately 3,000 spectators. The building was designed to serve as the main venue for the 2021 Central American Games in Santa Tecla, El Salvador.

Located on a plot of land approximately 260 meters long by 60 meters wide, the building is bordered by a creek, a main avenue connecting it to the rest of the city, and a small local street. The topography features three stepped levels, sloping down toward the rear of the site along the avenue.

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African countries have issued a stark joint declaration calling on major polluting nations to help poorer countries develop without further destroying the planet's climate and ecosystems, as wealthy nations did. They advocate for a global carbon tax as the primary mechanism to enable sustainable investment in vulnerable countries.

No País dos Arquitectos is a podcast created by Sara Nunes, who also runs the architectural film production company Building Pictures. The podcast aims to profile the professionals, projects, and stories behind landmark contemporary Portuguese architecture. With just over 10 million inhabitants, Portugal is a highly compelling country within this professional field, and its architectural output far exceeds what its population and territorial scale would suggest.

In this episode of the sixth season, Sara talks with architect and curator Pedro Gadanho about the exhibition Generation Proxima: Emerging Environmental Practices in Portuguese Architecture. Listen to the conversation and read part of the interview below.

On the first of this month, São Caetano do Sul (SP) implemented free fares on municipal buses through its "Zero Fare Program." Far from an isolated initiative, the measure aims to encourage public transportation use, providing direct savings to residents while improving air quality.

Last week, we announced the 15 finalists for the 2025 ArchDaily Brasil Building of the Year Award, which celebrates the best of Lusophone architecture by inviting our readers to vote for their favorite projects built in Portuguese-speaking countries. Now, the time has come to reveal the three grand winners!

This year, first place went to the Seedling Nursery - Ocupação Fazendinha, a simple and sensitive small-scale project developed by the Projects Department of the School of Architecture at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Second place was awarded to Casa da Carnaúba Várzea Queimada in the state of Piauí, designed by the firm Rosenbaum, while third place went to the Requalification of the Municipal Square of Ribeira de Pena in Portugal, designed by the studio AXR - Arquitetura e Design.

A bamboo structure rises as a space of convergence between technique, ancestry, and collective practice. OCO is the first work by Cambará Instituto, an organization that grew out of the Arquitetas Negras Project. Conceived during an artistic residency at Cerbambu, in Ravena (Minas Gerais), with support from re:arc institute, the project brought together ten black women architects who, over seven days of immersion in July this year, worked alongside master builder Lúcio Ventania to explore the constructive and symbolic potential of bamboo. The process culminated in the presentation of the work at the 14th International Architecture Biennial of São Paulo.

The experience sought to reconnect architectural practice with knowledges rooted in the body and the earth. The process encompassed every stage of production—from selecting and cutting the bamboo to curing and assembling it—resulting in a structure six meters high and five meters in diameter. Its design draws inspiration from the xossas of Benin and features straw from the African country at its top. The installation was also “clothed” with 220,000 beads, known as Our Lady’s Tears, handcrafted by forty elderly women in situations of social vulnerability who live in the same region where the residency took place—strengthening both community and economic bonds.

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"The history of architecture is incomplete. Not wrong, but incomplete," said Lesley Lokko when announcing The Laboratory of the Future, the theme of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Echoing the curator's statement, a new study published by Studio Autonoma, led by Paulo Tavares, reveals deep disparities in representation within the Brazilian pavilion at the world's largest architecture event.

Titled Historical Census of the Brazilian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (1980-2021), the study reveals a significant discrepancy in the profile of curators and participants over these three decades, with a predominance of white men from Brazil's Southeast region, particularly from São Paulo.