Tag: community | ArchDaily

City-Making Through Participation: Lessons from Utopian Hours 2026

Mohieldin Gamal — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Who has the right to the city? Henri Lefebvre's writings question the structures that control urban space and, instead, put the citizens at the center of decision-making. His ideas have influenced the way architecture and urban design are practiced, bringing about community participation and co-design. These have been some of the most prominent themes at Utopian Hours 2026, the festival of city-making, the first part of which was held in the Dutch city of Rotterdam to mark its tenth anniversary edition.

A Project in Motion: The Story Behind the Market Square in Realengo Park

Camilla Ghisleni — Thu, 14 May 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Before any drawing or formal decision, a space in constant motion was already pulsing where the Market Square at Realengo Park stands today in Rio de Janeiro. Improvised stalls, informal gatherings, music, children running, and adults gathered under makeshift shelters made up a living landscape, shaping an ephemeral architecture.

Architecture that Empowers Communities: The Stories Behind Francis Kéré’s Projects

Agustina Iñiguez — Sat, 09 May 2026 07:30:00 +0000

"My only concern is that my work must have a positive impact on the communities in which it is embedded," states Francis Kéré in his book Francis Kéré: Building Stories. His own life story, the context in which he was raised, and the experiences he has lived through all shape his approach to architecture. It is a commitment that extends to people and the places they call home—one that values materiality, collective learning, and the exchange of knowledge. Discovering the stories behind projects such as Primary School in Gando and Naaba Belem Goumma Secondary School inspires reflection on how to design spaces that truly serve humanity.

Espai Verd: The Habitable Utopia of Valencia's Green Cathedral

Camilla Ghisleni — Wed, 06 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Even the most distracted passerby is captured by the monumental presence of this structure located in the established Valencian neighborhood of Benimaclet. Before it, any attempt at rational comprehension dissolves. The constructive logic seems to slip away as space unfolds in tensions and detours where nothing is immediately revealed. Between masses of concrete and the insurgency of vegetation, an almost choreographic play of planes, angles, and rotations emerges. In the vertigo of this encounter, one realizes that the building was not designed to be understood, but to be experienced.

Energy Landscapes: How Infrastructure Reshapes Territory in South America

Daniela Andino — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Some of the most significant transformations of South American landscapes have been produced not by cities, but by large infrastructures built to extract and distribute natural resources. Mining operations, energy systems, and transport networks have connected remote landscapes to broader economic structures while transforming rural territories and urban settlements throughout the continent. These infrastructures do not simply occupy space; they reorganize it. They have not only supported economic growth but also reconfigured territories in ways that continue to generate political, environmental, and social debate across the continent. From this perspective, territories can be understood not as fixed geographic areas but as socio-ecological systems shaped by cultural, environmental, and political relations, a point emphasized by anthropologist Arturo Escobar in his work on territorial thinking in Latin America.

Form, Function, and Funding: The High-Tech Urbanism of San Francisco

Olivia Poston — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000

San Francisco is a city that has always remade itself under pressure. Its Victorian streetscapes have survived seismic retrofits and glass towers, its neighborhoods defined as much by change as by its resistance to change. But no force in the city's history has reshaped the built environment as completely, or as quickly, as the technology economy. What began in the postwar sprawl of Silicon Valley migrated north and inscribed its logic onto the skyline and the lives of residents. The result of this logic is an architectural culture of considerable technical refinement and refined material palettes, yet one that remains largely indifferent to the existing population.

La Sagrada Familia’s Milestone and New Housing Futures: This Week’s Review

Antonia Piñeiro — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 06:30:00 +0000

This week began with the World Day of Social Justice, foregrounding urgent questions of labor rights, spatial equity, and resource governance, and framing architecture as both a product of and a response to the social systems that shape access to land, housing, and opportunity. The announcement of the 15 winning projects of the 2026 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards highlighted a global cross-section of built works recognized for their architectural quality, innovation, and social impact, offering a snapshot of contemporary practice across scales and geographies. This week's news prompts a broader reflection on architecture's civic responsibility, with heritage and community-building through cultural architecture emerging as central themes. Housing, meanwhile, anchors another critical strand of the discussion with three highlighted initiatives: a manifesto reframing housing not as a market commodity but as a civic right and collective project grounded in care; a large-scale waterfront regeneration masterplan responding to regional housing demand through coastal transformation; and a timber residential project that explores the potential of wood in medium-density housing.

Architectural Heritage Fund: 50 Years of Reimagining Heritage

Rene Submissions — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:10:00 +0000

To celebrate the Architectural Heritage Fund's 50th anniversary, we have put together 50 Years of Reimagining Heritage, which tells the story of the difference heritage reuse can make in people’s lives and in communities. Across the year, our exhibition will travel to each part of the UK, with openings in Belfast, Glasgow, Cardiff and London. We hope by showcasing these extraordinary stories to inspire more people to get involved in saving local historic buildings to improve places, empower people, and secure a sustainable future for built heritage. For opening dates in each location, see Coming Up below.

Building at the Edge: New York and Hong Kong’s Competing Waterfront Logics

Jonathan Yeung — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Coastal development in major cities has long been a terrain of opportunity and contention—shaped at once by the pursuit of capital (premium views, scarce land, and the promise of reclamation), by civic demands for public access and collective waterfront life, and by contemporary aspirations for sustainability and place-defining urban identity. Precisely because these agendas rarely align, extracting the full potential of waterfront sites is never straightforward.

The Long Table as a Spatial Protocol: Designing Conditions for Gathering and Pause

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 08:30:00 +0000

A long table can sit almost anywhere and still do the same work. It can stretch beneath a market canopy, run along a school dining hall, or occupy the center of a shared living room, and it immediately changes the room's temperature.

Forum, Depot, Maze: Toward a Plural Ecology of Museums

Jonathan Yeung — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 08:30:00 +0000

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

The Chromatic Canvas: 10 Vibrant Courts Activating Community Space

Susanna Moreira — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Unlike most popular sports, the origin of basketball has a precise year and creator: it was invented in 1891 in the United States by Canadian physical education instructor James Naismith as an indoor sport for athletes at Springfield College during the winter, after the end of the football season. The sport quickly expanded beyond U.S. borders, being included in the Olympic Games in 1936 and achieving international popularity after the Second World War. As basketball became more widespread, it also left the controlled environment of gymnasiums and began occupying a wide range of locations: playgrounds, public plazas, school courtyards, driveways, and backyard patios became informal courts for play and community life, reinforcing the role of physical activity as a catalyst for social interaction and neighborhood regeneration.

Security as Script: Inside the Architecture of Gated Living

Ananya Nayak — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 05:00:00 +0000

You learn how to behave long before you arrive home. At the gate, you slow down and wait. You are watched, then waved through. A badge is checked, a barrier lifts, a camera blinks. Nothing dramatic happens, and that is precisely the point. The most consequential work of gated communities is not done by their walls, but by the choreography of entry that quietly teaches residents what to expect, whom to trust, and where they belong.

Coming Together and the Making of Place: ArchDaily’s January Editorial Focus

Romullo Baratto — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Long before architecture took the form of walls, roofs, or cities, it gathered people around fire. The simple fire pit was one of humanity's earliest spatial devices: a place for warmth, food, storytelling, and ritual. Around it, space took shape through proximity rather than enclosure, through shared presence rather than prescribed use. The fire organized bodies in a circle, fostered alliances, and turned survival into collective life. Today, this ancestral logic persists: architecture has the potential of bringing people together not by commanding how they gather, but by creating the conditions that make togetherness possible.

Who Owns Public Space? Three Active Models of Shared Management Shaping Urban Commons in Europe and New York

Antonia Piñeiro — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 06:30:00 +0000

Public space is often understood as belonging to no one in particular, collectively accessible yet institutionally maintained, yet a growing number of initiatives are challenging this assumption by testing shared management and distributed ownership models. In Paris, Adoptez un banc introduces a sponsorship-based approach, allowing individuals and groups to support temporarily and symbolically claim responsibility for historic public furniture without compromising its collective use. Elsewhere in the city, community gardens operating under the Main Verte framework demonstrate a self-managed model, in which public and private landowners retain ownership while delegating day-to-day control to citizen associations for food production and shared use. In New York, Common Corner represents a third pathway, based on institutional collaboration and participatory design, where public agencies, nonprofits, designers, and residents co-produce public space within a public housing context. Taken together, these three cases suggest that care, authorship, and responsibility can be distributed across citizens and institutions, producing more resilient, locally grounded urban environments.

“Coming Together” Exhibition in Washington Explores Post-Pandemic Transformations of Community and Public Spaces

Antonia Piñeiro — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 05:30:00 +0000

The exhibition Coming Together: Reimagining America's Downtowns, held at Washington, D.C.'s National Building Museum, explores the transformations underway in the United States' downtowns and the ways communities have organized to shape alternative urban scenarios. Curated by Uwe S. Brandes, Professor at Georgetown University, and designed by Reddymade and MGMT., it is the first of three major exhibitions within the Museum's Future Cities initiative, an interdisciplinary project examining the city as a hub, catalyst, essential building block, and reflection of society. Coming Together features examples from more than 60 U.S. cities, both large and small, highlighting lessons learned and opportunities embraced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as communities adapt to lasting changes in work, housing, mobility, entertainment, and recreation. The exhibition is currently open to the public and will remain on view through Fall 2026.

Architecture as Infrastructure: How India Builds for a Billion

Ankitha Gattupalli — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 07:30:00 +0000

India's built environment has, in recent years, gained visibility through a growing number of transformative architectural and infrastructure projects. Cities and towns scale faster each year, despite looming concerns around climate and economic volatility. The nation has shown resilience in balancing rapid urbanization with resource constraints; this is no small feat. India's architectural practices rarely rely on novelty alone; they are built on systems that have existed for centuries. Through ArchDaily's Building for Billions, recurring stories have highlighted the social intelligence and adaptive capacity embedded in these practices, revealing an architecture that operates less as isolated form and more as infrastructure.

From Tirana to Monterrey: 8 Unbuilt Housing Projects Reimagining Collective Living

Nour Fakharany — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Collective housing remains one of the most active areas for unbuilt architectural exploration, revealing how architects are rethinking domestic life, density, and shared living across different cultural and environmental contexts. In this curated Unbuilt edition, submitted by the ArchDaily community, the selected proposals investigate new forms of dwelling that span mobile units, vertical developments, adaptive reuse, and landscape-driven residential clusters. Rather than treating housing as a purely functional container, these projects position it as a social and spatial framework that shapes everyday life, community ties, and long-term urban resilience.