Global city rankings offer one way of looking at how urban environments support everyday life. The Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Global Liveability Index evaluates 173 cities across stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure, highlighting both long-term patterns and changes from one year to the next. In the 2026 edition, Copenhagen has been named the world's most liveable city for the second consecutive year, followed by Vienna and Melbourne. The Danish capital scored 98 out of 100 overall, receiving perfect scores in stability, education, and infrastructure. The global average remains unchanged at 76.1, with improvements in healthcare, education, and infrastructure offsetting continued declines in stability.
During the last week of August, the New York City government announced a new project for the MADE Bush Terminal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. It involves the transformation of the old industrial building into a center for the recovery, storage, sorting, and redistribution of construction materials during a one-year pilot program. The initiative echoes a wave of similar circular construction hubs recently launched or announced across Europe: a converted warehouse in Brussels, an industrial site adaptation in East London's Royal Docks, and a cross-border network supported by CirCoFin spanning Munich, Copenhagen, Lisbon, and Scotland, each repurposing industrial buildings and infrastructure to support the reuse of construction materials.
Since the 2008 crash, a scatter of small practices (none more than fifteen years old and none large enough to need a manifesto in the traditional sense) have arrived, independently of one another, at some version of the same refusal: to sound too certain, too soon, in a discipline that had spent the previous decade selling confidence as a finish. They would probably resist being filed under one heading, but the coincidence itself is that something about practising architecture after 2008 made innocence look like the only posture worth trying.
At least from 2019 onwards, Fala has circulated a two-word description of itself, repeated verbatim across dozens of architecture outlets: a "naïve architecture practice." No footnote, no irony, just an office, founded in 2013, that built a decade of houses, birdhouses and institutional commissions on a term architecture had spent a century trying to outgrow. The question the phrase raises is not whether the buildings are any good (as they generally are) but what it means for a practice to choose innocence as a public position. Where does post-irony end and marketing begin?
The United Nations General Assembly has voted to promote the use of worldmap projections that more accurately represent the relative size of continents. The resolution was presented during a session at the UN headquarters in New York on September 4 and received 164 votes in favor, with one country voting against and six abstaining. Sponsored by Togo, the resolution encourages governments, educational institutions, international organizations, and technology companies to use equal-area projections when geographic scale is relevant. The resolution does not formally replace or prohibit the use of the Mercator projection, which has been widely used since the 16th century. Instead, it calls for greater use of projections that preserve the relative area of landmasses and encourages education about the limitations of representing the Earth's curved surface on a two-dimensional map. The 2018 Equal Earth projection is identified as one example of a map that more accurately represents continental scale.
The German Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building has appointed Kawahara Krause Architects, Andres Lepik, and Olga Cobuscean as curators for the German Pavilion at the 20th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia 2027. The exhibition is titled "CONVIVERE — A Repertoire of Living Together" and turns visitors' attention to the in-between spaces of housing: the threshold, the stairwell, the courtyard, the space in front of the door. The curatorial argument starts from a diagnosis of today's growing social isolation, political polarization, and increasing pressure to build more and faster, and uses these spaces, where everyday coexistence begins, to ask how architecture can contribute to the foundations of democracy.
From left to right: Oanh Nguyen Henriksen (Photo: Tuala Hjarnø), Susana Rojas Saviñón (Photo: Estudio Ome), Javier Ors Ausín, Sumayya Vally (Photo: Lou Jasmine), Charles Kettaneh and Nicolas Fayad (EAST Architecture Studio, Photo: Julien Lanoo)
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.
Danish architecture practice AART has won the international competition for Rigets Skatkammer (The Royal Treasury), a new 1,300-square-meter underground extension to the museum at Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen. Developed in collaboration with VEGA Landskab, Fogh & Følner, and Artelia, the proposal places approximately 600 square meters of new exhibition space beneath the historic moat, while partially re-establishing the water surrounding Christian IV's Renaissance castle. The project is intended to provide new visitor facilities and exhibition spaces for the Royal Danish Collection, which includes the Danish Crown Jewels and historic costume collections and currently attracts more than 500,000 visitors annually.
Every housing crisis eventually becomes a land question, and every land question eventually becomes a values question. The United States' West Coast has arrived at that point. As cities from Los Angeles to Seattle search for parcels to build the affordable housing they have promised for years, they keep landing on the same answer: the park or the greenbelt. What looks like a zoning decision is a referendum on which form of wellbeing a city is willing to sacrifice for another.
A week of architecture news has highlighted the growing connections between environmental change, public systems, and the evolving role of architectural practice. Extreme weather events in different regions have drawn attention to the vulnerability of settlements, infrastructure, and territorial networks, while new approaches to housing demonstrate how changes in procurement, construction, and governance can influence architectural outcomes. At the same time, the recognition of established practitioners points to the lasting impact of architectural ideas across generations, as the profession continues to engage with questions of resilience, systemic change, and the broader conditions shaping the built environment.
The Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art is now officially open to the public on the shores of Jinji Lake in Suzhou, China. The 60,000 m² building was designed by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, ARTS Group, VIA.inc, and SHUISHI for the Suzhou Industrial Park Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau. The project is designed as a village of 12 pavilions beneath a continuous, ribbon-like roof, with a covered corridor that traces a path through the landscape as a network of exhibition spaces. The layout is inspired by the tradition of Suzhou's UNESCO-listed gardens. The project opens after a series of preview exhibitions, including the firm's Materialism exhibition, which remains on view. The building complex is set to become a new venue for contemporary art, design, and public life, marking BIG's first completed art museum.
Mexico's rapid urban growth over recent decades has left many cities struggling with fragmented neighborhoods, high crime rates, and severe shortages of quality public spaces. In many low-income urban areas, informal development occurred alongside raw infrastructure like drainage canals, rail lines, and steep ravines, dividing communities and creating hazardous vacant zones. To address this spatial segregation and lack of civic amenities, public agencies and architects across Mexico are intervening in these abandoned buffer zones to construct public parks. By converting former physical barriers into accessible pedestrian corridors, these projects rejoin separated neighborhoods, re-establish safe visual sight lines, and provide spaces for community gathering and daily recreation.
As a fundamental human right, inclusion requires that all people—regardless of their backgrounds, abilities, or circumstances—are recognized and respected, with equal access to the same resources and opportunities. For many people with disabilities and their caregivers, accessible washrooms still fail to provide what is most essential: a safe, private, and dignified place for assisted changing. While many facilities comply with ADA and ICC accessibility standards, conventional washroom layouts often do not accommodate users who require additional space, time, and support from caregivers. This gap has contributed to the growing adoption of adult changing facilities, which extend accessibility beyond conventional washroom requirements and respond to needs that standard fixtures cannot address.
Across architecture and the building industry, women contribute to a wide range of fields, from design practice and construction to research and leadership. Their work reflects different approaches to some of the profession's most pressing questions, including environmental performance, adaptive reuse, and the creation of healthier and more responsive spaces. However, disparities remain visible in areas that influence professional recognition. For example, women continue to be significantly underrepresented in architecture in the United Kingdom. According to the Architects Registration Board, only about 31% of registered architects are women.
Due to popular demand, we are briefly reopening applications for the ArchDaily Student Ambassador Program 2026/2027.
ArchDaily started inside a university, with two architecture students who believed that architectural knowledge should travel further than it did. Eighteen years later, that conviction hasn't changed — but the insights, the tools, and the opportunities have grown. We are launching the Student Ambassador Program to give the next generation of architects a direct role in bridging their university and the global architectural conversation.
