Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

Construction has begun on the Frank Liu Jr. Academy for Music and Arts (FLAMA) in Houston, Texas, designed by OMA, led by partner Jason Long, with RDLR Architects as architect of record and SWA Group for landscape design. The project is an adaptive reuse of Houston's historic 1930s J. A. Folger & Co. coffee plant, converted into an educational space for the arts. The 6,050 m² facility will be an open-enrollment, tuition-free public charter school for pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade students. The building is located along Houston's Buffalo Bayou East corridor, directly across from Turkey Bend, a landscape project by Reed Hilderbrand with NADAAA and Rogers Partners that reimagines the former industrial waterfront as a network of public spaces and flood-adapted landscapes. The conversion of the former coffee plant is part of a larger transformation of the area and is expected to open in August 2027.

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Mexico City is a sprawling metropolis of layered temporalities, where architecture operates as a continuous negotiation between deep-seated history and intense urban mutation. Built over the aquatic traces of Tenochtitlan, the city's fabric is an ongoing dialogue between eras: the monumental scale of the Pre-Hispanic Templo Mayor and the Viceroyalty architecture of the Catedral Metropolitana coexist with the modern and contemporary impulses that define its skyline. This dense juxtaposition creates a unique urban canvas where sacred geography, colonial imposition, and 20th-century ambition intersect.

The mid-century marked a definitive era of experimentation, forging a Mexican Modernism that masterfully synthesized international structural rationalism with local identity and materiality. This synthesis is epitomized by the sweeping, plastic integration of art and architecture at the Ciudad Universitaria, the structural poetry of Félix Candela's hyper-parabolic shells, and the raw, monumental brutalism of Teodoro González de León and Abraham Zabludovsky. Parallel to this, the intimate, introspective mastery of Luis Barragán and Juan O'Gorman redefined domestic space, experimenting with light, vernacular color, and tectonic honesty to create spaces of profound spatial stillness.

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Tsuyoshi Tane is a Japanese architect born in 1979 in Tokyo and based in Paris, where he founded ATTA – Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects in 2006. Working across cultural, institutional, and landscape-related projects, Tane has developed an architectural approach that positions memory as a fundamental design driver. In his interview with Louisiana Channel, filmed in his Paris studio, Tane reflects on architecture as a discipline of observation and thought, arguing that meaningful design emerges from carefully reading the traces embedded within a site. For him, architecture is not produced on a blank slate but begins with an inquiry into what already exists, physically, culturally, and emotionally, beneath the surface of a place.

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The second part of the Utopian Hours 2026 international city-making festival will be held in Turin on October 16 and 17. After a first chapter in Rotterdam, the festival is marking its tenth anniversary edition by returning to its hometown in Italy. The event's lineup and cultural program are designed to explore how cities can respond creatively to the social, environmental, and political challenges of the 21st century. The Utopian Hours festival has been organized since 2017 by Stratosferica, a nonprofit cultural association dedicated to producing and sharing urban knowledge through content on the evolution of cities, urban communication strategies, events, community building and placemaking.

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Outdoor kitchens have evolved from exclusive luxury additions into natural extensions of the home. Gardens, terraces, and porches are being transformed into spaces for cooking and, above all, entertaining without having to step inside. This solution not only adds convenience but also increases property value, responding to a lifestyle that is increasingly connected to the outdoors.

Heat waves are becoming more and more frequent worldwide, prompting architects to reconsider how building envelopes are conceived and designed. The focus is no longer solely on limiting heat loss during the colder months, but also on controlling how much heat enters buildings during periods of intense solar radiation. By understanding solar shading as a design decision rather than a decorative or interior-conditioning element, it becomes part of passive energy-efficiency strategies that can contribute to thermal and visual comfort while reducing cooling demand.

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In Europe, cities are confronting the challenge of adapting existing urban conditions to a changing climate and warming summers while improving access to nature, quality public spaces, and the resources of everyday routines. ReGreeneration, a Horizon Europe initiative working across nine European cities, approaches this challenge through urban renaturing at the neighborhood scale. Combining strategies for complete neighborhoods, communal spaces, and nature-based solutions for cities, the Barcelona project examines how climate adaptation is embedded within residual, peripheral spaces of daily life. As part of a series following ReGreeneration across the participating cities, this article turns to Barcelona, where the project is working in the Trinitat Nova neighborhood to explore how small, often overlooked, urban spaces contribute to broader models of regeneration.

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As cities change, so do our expectations of them. People are asking for more caring spaces: public places open to all ages and genders, nature within reach of every social class, and settings that foster connection. Few design intentions hold these together as well as spaces for children. This selection of unbuilt projects submitted by ArchDaily readers showcases different approaches to care-based architecture. Schools, daycare centers, a library, a youth center, and a new model for orphanages take on the mission of providing a safe and stimulating environment for children at every stage of their development. Not yet built but carefully designed, these proposals offer a glimpse into spaces for play, learning, and calm that fuel creativity in design for people of all ages.

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UN-Habitat has announced the five recipients of the 2026 Scroll of Honour Award, recognizing contributions to adequate housing and sustainable urban development in Brazil, Myanmar, Pakistan, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom. This year's winners include a housing organization working with communities affected by conflict and displacement, a researcher developing building materials from local and mining residues, an Indigenous village in Brazil, a public housing agency in Pakistan, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Selected from 101 nominations submitted across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, the recipients represent a range of approaches to addressing housing and urban development challenges.

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Colburn's 100,000-square-foot campus expansion, designed by Frank Gehry, will open on September 25, 2027, with an event in the new 1,000-seat Terri and Jerry Kohl Hall, a round concert hall. Colburn is a school of music and dance in Los Angeles, on a downtown campus that welcomes an estimated 10,000 people weekly. The institution provides performing arts education, and more than 500 music and dance performances open to the public each year. The first images of the design were released in 2022. The expansion triples the facilities currently dedicated to dance and will house Colburn's Trudl Zipper Dance Institute. The building, finished in a metallic pink coating, is located adjacent to Colburn's Grand Avenue campus in downtown Los Angeles and is expected to reach substantial completion in summer 2027.

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Reclaimed land is often presented as new ground: flat, available, and ready for architecture. It promises cities more space where space is scarce, allowing them to extend waterfronts and build cultural districts. Sometimes, these newly claimed lands may also develop into financial centers, create parks, and imagine futures beyond the limits of existing land. Yet reclaimed land is never simply land. It is an engineered surface, produced through fill, seawalls, drainage, and soil stabilization — a long-term negotiation with the water it claims to have displaced.

This makes reclamation one of architecture's most powerful and ambiguous spatial fantasies. On one hand, it offers freedom: a tabula rasa where streets and buildings can be planned almost from scratch. On the other, this apparent freedom conceals dependency. Made land must constantly prove itself as ground. It has to resist flooding, support foundations, grow trees, and hold public life above a terrain that did not previously exist.

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In the story of the Three Little Pigs, the choice of material determines the fate of each house. The wolf's breath brings down the structures made of straw and wood, while the brick house remains standing. The moral is that the more solid the construction, the greater its ability to resist. A building, however, has to respond to much less straightforward questions. Remaining standing is still essential, but heat, light, air, and sound are not forces that necessarily need to be blocked. Sometimes sunlight needs to be kept out; at other times, daylight needs to be let in. Retaining heat may be desirable in winter and counterproductive in summer. Air needs to circulate, sound may need to be absorbed, and the conditions that determine these responses change throughout the day, across seasons, and over the life of the building itself. More material does not necessarily mean better performance. In some cases, it can simply add complexity without improving how the building responds.

Photographer Marc Goodwin has extended his Atlas of Architectural Atmospheres to Belgium, capturing the workspaces of architecture studios in Antwerp, Brussels, and Ghent. The series includes large offices such as B-architecten, POLO, and Binst Architects, alongside smaller-scale practices like Studio Okami, Stand Van Zaken, and Bruno Spaas Architectuur. Many of them occupy buildings with layered pasts from former workshops, to cinemas, and from storage facilities, to waterfront structures.

In addition to photographing the studios, Goodwin asked each practice the same question: "What makes for a good office space and office culture for you?" Their responses accompany the images, offering insight into how architects define the atmosphere of their workplaces. Studio Okami describes its workplace as a "home office away from home," while Brut highlights the role of shared meals and greenery in softening their penthouse space.

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Through October 11, 2026, Mexico City once again becomes a global epicenter of innovation and creative excellence with the opening of Design Week Mexico 2026 (#DWM26). This edition adopts a broader and more diverse curatorial vision, inviting both the public and design professionals to reflect on the discipline from global, fluid, and inclusive perspectives that transcend traditional approaches.

The week began with World Architecture Day, drawing attention to the global housing crisis as a fundamental element of human dignity, inclusion, and well-being. In a joint message between the UIA and the United Nations, this year's call is to focus disciplinary efforts on building not only residential structures but also systems to better distribute and use what already exists, proposals that enable new ways of living and alternatives for a more sustainable industry. Aligned with this concept, we featured three projects where reuse and representation converge, and three others that help establish a dialogue between what we consider old and what we can expect from the new. On this week's radar, we find another instance to reexamine the canons of modern architecture in Switzerland, the start of construction on a translucent yet hurricane-resistant building in the United States, and a winning entry for a mixed-use urban complex in Austria.

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Far from simply transporting goods from A to B, shipping containers have become a go-to building material across the US, forming the basis of everything from tiny homes to container pools, site offices to workshops. But given the size of the country, and the range of climates found within its borders, the approach to container architecture can vary significantly from state to state, even county to county.

A container conversion in the desert Southwest faces very different conditions from one in New England, while projects along the Gulf Coast must account for humidity, storms, and salt air. These regional differences can influence everything from insulation and ventilation to roofing, foundations, and exterior protection. Let's take a closer look at these regional approaches, the local climate challenges to consider before a build, and the adaptations that can address them.

The North Gate of Taipei, also known as Beimen, stands not only as a reminder of the city's complex history but also as a witness to the changing urban landscape around it and its shifting attitudes towards the urban spaces bordering heritage buildings. Initially a Chinese imperial frontier, spared from demolition during the Japanese colonial dominion, crowded by overpasses and highways in the postwar modernization efforts, it has recently regained its prominent status through the development of the plaza that now frames it. The gate's resilience through shifting urban priorities and architectural policies tells a story of heritage preservation not only through the built form, but also through the open spaces framing it.

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The timber-framed structure designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale will be reconstructed at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, in late 2027. Originally installed in the Giardini as part of PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity, the structure will return in a new setting as a freestanding pavilion on the museum's 134-acre campus. Following the close of the Biennale in November 2025, it was dismantled and transported from Venice to Arkansas, where it has remained in storage ahead of its planned reconstruction.

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