Masterplan: The Latest Architecture and News

A team composed of ZHA, A&O TEC, Prior + Partners, Homa, Buro Happold, Systematica, and Fichtner recently unveiled its concept proposal for the "Next Generation City Plan" for Benghazi, Libya. The project aims to bring together the historic port city's identity-defining features with the planning technologies required to guide its development toward 2050, in a context of rapid urbanization. The proposal, developed for A&O TEC, includes a Vision and Spatial Strategy, which consists of an interpretation of the city's character and collective memory translated into an adaptable framework for development, and a Digital Planning Hub, an evidence-based model mapping the city to identify its potential and the phenomena shaping its growth.

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ZHA has been selected to design a new 198-hectare urban district in Baku, Azerbaijan. The project surrounds the existing Baku Expo Center events venue in a pine forest area that is planned to be preserved. The plan responds to the city's population growth over the past decade with a masterplan to organize the provision of a wide variety of residences. This is the firm's second project in Baku, after the Heydar Aliyev Center cultural venue, completed in 2013. On a different scale, the buildings in the new district appear to follow the geometric style inherited from Zaha Hadid, in a series of white buildings with rounded edges that convey an idea of fluid architecture.

Al Maha Island is a 230,000 m² human-made island located off the coast of Lusail, Qatar. Built as an entertainment and leisure destination north of Doha, it opened in 2022, just ahead of the FIFA World Cup. In 2024, Qatar Museums released renderings of the future Lusail Museum, designed by Swiss architecture office Herzog & de Meuron and located on the southern tip of the island. Most recently, the firm revealed updated images of the island masterplan and the museum's exterior design. The new Lusail Museum will house a collection of Orientalist art, exploring the movement of people and ideas across the globe, past and present, and will offer opportunities for study and debate on contemporary global issues. It is expected to become the cultural anchor of Lusail City, in a building conceived by Jacques Herzog as "a vertically layered souk, or miniature city contained within a single building."

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In the current context of rapid urban environmental changes, such as heatwaves and droughts, new priorities are emerging in the design of public spaces. "Rewilding" refers to the practice of restoring self-sustaining ecosystems through the reintroduction of biodiversity, implementing strategies to reverse the effects of habitat loss, species decline, and ecosystem degradation. These strategies can be identified in this selection of conceptual projects submitted by ArchDaily readers, where architecture is used as a tool to restore ecological balance among species, inverting its modern role as an agent of ecological disruption.

Faced with the reality that climate change is making cities increasingly unlivable, citizens are confronted with the choice of either leaving or transforming their environments. The unbuilt projects compiled in this article offer transformative alternatives for more livable cities, combining construction, architectural, and landscape design strategies across urban parks and suburban interstitial spaces. As ecological laboratories, they incorporate a multispecies perspective into the design process, adopting a concept of time better suited to the development of ecosystems.

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The context of the ongoing war marks Ukraine's place in the international consciousness. Architecture, however, most often transcends the span of a human life and can therefore be a tool for imagining the future. The practice of architectural design, whether speculative, conceptual, or practical, serves as a means of bringing to life ways of living and interacting beyond our current realities. In this selection of conceptual projects submitted by ArchDaily readers, we see material, spatial, and symbolic strategies that seek to address contemporary contexts in the residential, educational, and commercial sectors.

As the line of conflict has been relatively static since late 2023, Ukrainian cities continue to be subject to new architectural and urban development projects. In this article, we have compiled a selection of unbuilt projects in the cities of Vinnytsia, Lviv, and Kyiv. The selection includes residential, commercial, and mixed-use architectural designs, as well as an educational complex. Two residential projects have also been designed as prototypes without a specific location, as a potential response to the loss of infrastructure and unstable conditions in the region.

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A former industrial site along the Someș River in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, is being transformed into a large-scale mixed-use district that reconnects the city with its waterfront. Designed by UNStudio in collaboration with Felixx Landscape Architects and Planners for developers IULIUS and Atterbury Europe, the RIVUS project combines urban regeneration, adaptive reuse, landscape design, and new public infrastructure within a single framework. Developed through a public participation process involving local residents, the proposal will transform the former Carbochim industrial platform into a river-oriented district organized around public space, mobility, and everyday urban activity.

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This week, we revisited the ideas currently shaping the design of 21st-century cities, with a view toward a longer timeframe than that which characterised modern design. These examples of today's urban design point toward the cities of tomorrow, seeking to reflect collective memory and social identity while addressing the climate challenges we face today. From a new museum in Panama drawing on Latin American architectural tradition to an inflatable installation on Paris's oldest bridge over the Seine, built and not-yet-built projects rescue architecture as a repository of collective memory, while others explore its transformative potential through the lens of contemporary well-being. In this weekly news compilation, we present ongoing projects from Panama, numerous African countries, France, Canada, Italy, Australia, and the United States.

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MVRDV and OODA have revealed a new masterplan for the regeneration of a vacant 28-hectare site between Marvila and Beato on Lisbon's riverfront. Recently approved by the Lisbon City Council, the project was developed in collaboration with LOLA Landscape Architects and Thornton Tomasetti to transform the area into a landscape-led urban district. Titled The Marvila Masterplan, the proposal establishes a framework for introducing 1,400 homes alongside public facilities, commercial spaces, and services within a fragmented and largely abandoned territory. The project is a private initiative led by the principal landowner and developed in coordination with the Lisbon City Council and Infraestruturas de Portugal.

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A team led by French architecture practice Coldefy, comprising CITYFÖRSTER, Sporaarchitects, TREIBHAUS.LAND, Marko & Placemakers has won the competition to design a masterplan for Rákosrendező in Budapest, with visualizations by ZOA Studio. The project is developed for the Budapest Capital Asset Management Centre, acting on behalf of the Municipality of Budapest. The design outlines a 15-year scheme to transform a brownfield site long regarded as the city's "rust belt," located on the eastern side of the Hungarian capital. The regeneration plan includes over 10,000 apartments, new transportation links, and commercial and civic spaces, forming a comprehensive urban redevelopment strategy aligned with 15-minute city principles.

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Abuja was named the capital city of Nigeria on December 12, 1991. Located in the central Federal Capital Territory (FCT), it replaced the most populous coastal city of Lagos in a process of structural reform aimed at national integration and more balanced regional development. Like other capital relocations, Nigeria's capital was moved for strategic reasons to transform Abuja into the country's new administrative center, often referred to as "the center of unity." It was envisioned as a planned city based on a master plan developed by the United States-based consortium International Planning Associates (IPA). More than three decades later, a new master plan titled "City Walk" has been developed by MAG International Links Limited and designed by Benoy as a mixed-use district integrating hotels, offices, residential, retail, cultural, educational, and healthcare facilities, alongside a 450-meter tower and a 13,000-seat indoor arena across 250 hectares.

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On March 5, 2026, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) revealed images of a new landmark project in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia. The project consists of two towers, the "Iconic Complex," and a master plan for the area, the "Gateway District." The complex is located in Alatau, a new city along the Almaty–Qonaev highway planned to become an international investment hub. A strategic project for the country, the city's master plan extends through 2050, with the first phase of major infrastructure projects scheduled for completion by 2030. Within this context, SOM's design is expected to serve as the city's economic and administrative nucleus, establishing the central business district of Alatau City and setting a benchmark for future investment projects in the area.

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Battersea Power Station is a former coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames in London, originally designed by architects J. Theo Halliday and Giles Gilbert Scott. Notable for its appearance on the cover of Pink Floyd's 1977 studio album Animals and in Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 film Sabotage, the station is one of the world's largest brick buildings and is known for its Art Deco interior fittings and décor. Recognized today as part of modern industrial heritage, the site's transformation into a commercial development began in 2012, with the adaptive reuse guided by a masterplan designed by Rafael Viñoly. On February 16, Battersea Power Station announced the appointment of the strategic urban design practice Studio Egret West to evolve the original masterplan for the remaining 16 acres of the 42-acre riverside neighbourhood in the southwest London.

Urban masterplans remain an exploratory ground for unbuilt speculation, offering insight into how cities might recalibrate mobility, ecology, and collective life in response to accelerating environmental and social pressures. In this Unbuilt edition, submitted by the ArchDaily community, the selected projects bring together a range of large-scale proposals that examine urban centers, waterfront districts, infrastructural corridors, and cultural landscapes as spatial frameworks for reconnection and resilience. Rather than treating the masterplan as a rigid blueprint, these projects approach urbanism as an adaptive system shaped by climate, topography, infrastructure, and public space.

Across varied geographies, from Northern European town centers and Mediterranean coastal districts to Central Asian polycentric hubs and Gulf megacities, the proposals explore diverse architectural and urban strategies. They range from park-led civic transformations built over highway tunnels to elevated pedestrian networks above active transport systems, mixed-use blocks structured by historic planning logics, marina developments integrating environmental stewardship, and research-driven models for equitable landscape urbanization.

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Foster + Partners, in collaboration with Angola's Ministry of Transport, has unveiled the master plan for the Icolo e Bengo Aerotropolis, a large-scale development planned around the recently completed Dr. Antonio Agostinho Neto International Airport. The proposal organizes business, research, residential, and hospitality programs within a landscape-led framework structured around the airport. Development is planned to proceed in phases, beginning with the business and cultural district located to the north of the site.

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Malabo served as the capital city of Equatorial Guinea from the country's independence from Spain on October 12, 1968, until January 2, 2026, when a decree issued by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo officially transferred the capital to Ciudad de la Paz ("City of Peace"), located in Djibloho Province. Obiang formalized the move as part of a long-planned territorial reorganization. While the former capital remains an important economic center on Bioko Island, Ciudad de la Paz was conceived as a planned capital on Africa's mainland. The initiative to relocate the capital dates back to 2008, with construction beginning in 2011. The new capital, also referred to as Djibloho, after the province, or Oyala, has been framed by the government as a decentralization effort aimed at improving national accessibility.

During 2025, several sports infrastructure projects were announced that remain on our radar, most of which are scheduled for completion between 2028 and 2030. Located across Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and North America, these projects reflect contemporary masterplan strategies for the transformation of large sports venues within their urban contexts. Many of the stadiums are planned as part of broader redevelopment frameworks that include new public spaces, mixed-use programs, event facilities, and mobility upgrades, rather than as isolated structures. Designs led by international offices such as Populous, Foster + Partners, Heatherwick Studio, OMA, Gensler, AFL Architects, and VUILD illustrate a range of architectural, urban, and infrastructural responses to the evolving role of large sports facilities.

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Construction has officially broken ground on Tokyo's new global headquarters for NTT, a major Japanese technology company. The project is a key component of PLP Architecture's Tokyo Cross Park masterplan, a large-scale regeneration development in the Tokyo metropolitan area, first announced in 2022. On December 5, 2025, construction began on the first stage of the scheme, one of four towers planned within the masterplan. The NTT Hibiya Tower, designed by PLP Architecture and developed by NTT Urban Development in collaboration with Tokyo Electric Power Company, is a 230-metre-tall, 361,000-square-metre mixed-use building and forms the central element of the 1.1-million-square-metre Tokyo Cross Park Vision. PLP Architecture serves as Design Architect for the tower, as well as Masterplanner and Placemaking Strategist for the wider development.

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Bechu & Associés has been selected as the winner of the international open competition for the masterplan of Hunnu City, a new satellite city planned south of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Announced in 2025, the winning proposal establishes a long-term urban framework for a 31,503-hectare site located near Chinggis Khaan International Airport, with phased development planned between 2025 and 2045. The project forms part of Mongolia's broader territorial strategy under the Ulaanbaatar 2040 Master Plan and the national Vision 2050 framework, positioning Hunnu City as a new emerging major city intended to support population decentralization, economic diversification, and long-term urban resilience.

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