Tag: news | ArchDaily

When Movement Becomes Sacred Space: The Architecture of India’s Pilgrimage Landscapes

Ananya Nayak — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 07:30:00 +0000

At the helm of architectural discourse on sacred architecture, attention almost always settles on the monument. Temples, mosques, monasteries, and churches dominate architectural histories, design criticism, and photography alike, becoming the physical symbols through which faith is understood. For millions of pilgrims across India, the most consequential architectural experience begins long before the shrine comes into view. It unfolds across mountain roads, river ghats, shaded streets, temporary camps, queue systems, bridges, water kiosks, medical stations, and countless ordinary pieces of infrastructure through which pilgrimage actually takes place. The architectural work of pilgrimage may lie less in the shrine itself than in the environments that allow millions of people to reach it.

Agricultural Afterlives: When Waste Becomes Architecture

Ananya Nayak — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 07:30:00 +0000

A building material rarely begins where architecture encounters it. By the time concrete reaches a construction site, its limestone has already been quarried, processed, and transformed. Timber arrives long after the forest. Glass appears detached from the sand from which it was made. By the time materials enter construction, much of the landscape and industry that produced them has already disappeared from view.

The Ecological Intelligence of Sacred Landscapes

Ananya Nayak — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Architecture often speaks about ecological design as though it were a recent discovery. Biodiversity corridors, regenerative landscapes, sponge cities, and more-than-human urbanism are presented as emerging responses to contemporary environmental crises. Across India and the SWANA region, landscapes shaped through religious practice have long organized relationships between people, water, vegetation, and animals. Long before ecological performance became a design metric, temple tanks stored monsoon water, sacred groves protected biodiversity, and oasis settlements sustained life in some of the world's most arid environments. Few of these places emerged from explicit environmental agendas. They emerged through cultural and spiritual practices. Their environmental logic remains highly relevant today. Many of the conditions now discussed through more-than-human design have existed for centuries within landscapes architects rarely study as ecological infrastructure.

Designing for Stray Cities: Architecture Beyond the Human

Ananya Nayak — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Architecture continues to draw cities as though humans occupy them alone. Plans trace circulation routes, zoning maps assign functions, and buildings are evaluated according to human comfort, safety, and efficiency. Walking through cities across India and Southwest Asia reveals something much more complex. Dogs sleep beneath market stalls, monkeys move across rooftops, birds nest in temple towers and mosque façades, and insects pollinate urban landscapes hidden in plain sight. These species are woven into daily urban life as consistently as human occupants. Streets, courtyards, roofs, drainage systems, markets, and vacant lots are already occupied by multiple species simultaneously. Architectural thinking has been slower to account for this reality.

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.

Building on the Moon: NASA's Architectural Strategy for Permanent Lunar Habitation

Moises Carrasco — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0000

After Artemis II's return to Earth, NASA unveiled a new phased plan to establish a Moon Base. Although most of the media's attention went to rockets, budgets, and geopolitical competition, a quieter question was lingering for architects in the background: How can a human being actually live on the surface of the Moon, and for how long? The establishment of a permanent human presence on the Moon marks a fundamental shift in space exploration that requires a new architectural paradigm. In their presentation, NASA officials suggested the strategy would drift away from highly constrained, vehicle-dependent environments toward autonomous, site-adaptive, and eventually permanently habitable structures.

Buildner Announces Museum of Emotions Edition 7 Winners as Edition 8 Registration Deadline Approaches

Rene Submissions — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 06:45:00 +0000

Buildner has announced the results of its Museum of Emotions Competition Edition 7. The Museum of Emotions is an annual international design competition that tasks participants to explore the extent to which architecture can be used as a tool to evoke emotion.

Designed to Repeat, Forced to Adapt: The Parallel Architecture of Socialist Housing

Ananya Nayak — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

A housing block in New Belgrade appears orderly from a distance. Concrete slabs repeat with disciplined consistency, windows align into measured grids, and balconies stack with the confidence of a system certain of itself. However, proximity changes the reading. One balcony is enclosed in aluminum glazing, another softened with improvised shading. Insulation thickens part of a façade while laundry frames another edge like an accidental elevation study. The district still reads as planned, though occupation has made its order less uniform. Within that order, repetition has gradually been rewritten through occupation.

MASS: A Non-Profit Model for Architecture in Service of Society

Mohieldin Gamal — Fri, 22 May 2026 07:30:00 +0000

At the time of writing, an article by Martyn Evans asked 'Is Architecture in Crisis?' In the same year, Reinier de Graaf published the book 'Architecture Against Architecture,' where he set out fourteen problems with the profession and discipline. The question of a crisis in architecture is a perennial one. Referring to architecture as a profession, it rears its head especially when economic downturns are expected or in full swing. Simultaneously, there are ongoing questions regarding the effectiveness of architecture at dealing with the pressing matters of the globe and society—housing, climate change, and human development. One venture that attempts to address these questions is MASS, established in Rwanda not long after the 2008 financial crisis. The clue is in the name, which stands for Model of Architecture Serving Society. MASS was created as a different way of practicing architecture.

Oil, Glass, and Identity: Gulf Modernism Between Global Image and Local Climate

Ananya Nayak — Mon, 18 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Step from the heat of Dubai into the lobby of a glass tower, and the desert seems to disappear. Outside, temperatures climb past 45 degrees Celsius; inside, the air is cold, sealed, and perfectly controlled. For decades, this contrast became the defining image of Gulf modernity. Architecture became less a negotiation with climate, and more a demonstration that climate could be overcome. Towers of reflective glass rose from the desert as symbols of arrival, projecting financial power, technological confidence, and global ambition. Beneath this urban image sat an infrastructure built on oil, cheap energy, and the continuous mechanical suppression of heat.

From Spanish Presidio to the American Grid: The Hispanic Roots of San Diego’s Urban Core

Moises Carrasco — Sun, 17 May 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Very close to the Mexican border, in the southwest corner of the United States, lies the city of San Diego. Its urban history began in 1769 with the arrival of a Spanish military expedition commanded by Gaspar de Portola, which marked the first permanent settlement in the territory that was known as Alta California. However, unlike the more formally urbanized administrative capitals and towns of Mexico and Central America, San Diego was conceived as a frontier outpost. Today, it has become the second-largest city in California, just after Los Angeles, and its urban grid tells a story about the Hispanic heritage that is intertwined with the contemporary cultural environment of the United States.

Tropical Modernism Beyond Aesthetics: The Politics of Shade and Air

Ananya Nayak — Mon, 04 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

The image is familiar, a façade layered with brise-soleil, light softened into a patterned shadow, interiors kept cool without machines. It appears as intelligence made visible, architecture that understands the sun. This image is rarely examined closely. The same devices that temper heat also organize access, distribute comfort, and depend on particular forms of labor. What looks like a climatic response is also a decision about who gets relief from heat, and how. Tropical modernism, often reduced to a visual language of shade and porosity, emerges instead as a set of situated practices where climate, labor, and power are negotiated differently across contexts.

Elevated Infrastructure and Public Space: Reclaiming the Ground Below

Ananya Nayak — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Elevation is often framed as progress, lifting movement above the friction of the city and smoothing circulation into uninterrupted flow. Every act of lifting produces a secondary condition in its wake. Beneath flyovers, metro lines, and railway viaducts, a second ground emerges as shaded, ambiguous, and rarely planned with the same intent as what moves above. These spaces are not incidental leftovers. They are the spatial consequence of a design decision that privileges speed, clearance, and efficiency, redistributing value and visibility across the city in the process.

Elevating Earth: Reviving and Advancing an Indigenous Building Material

Mohieldin Gamal — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Twenty meters tall and four thousand years old, the Western Deffufa towers over the adjacent date orchards and ancient city remains in the desert. It is a former religious and administrative building near the modern-day Sudanese town of Kerma. Its significance is not only in its age and size, but also in that it is one of the oldest mud brick buildings in the world. And as the nearby mud brick houses also attest, earth is a material of continuous use from ancient times to the present. Yet, conversations around contemporary building systems have largely ignored this essential material. Some architects on the continent of Africa, however, are changing that.

Logistics Landscapes: The Architecture of the 24-Hour Supply Chain

Ananya Nayak — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

At the edge of most cities, beyond the ring roads and interchanges, a different kind of architecture is taking shape. It is not designed to be seen, visited, or remembered. It does not gather people; it moves things. Inside, thousands of parcels travel continuously, being sorted, lifted, scanned, and dispatched with minimal interruption. These buildings rarely enter architectural discourse, yet they are among the most consequential spaces of our time. The defining typology of the 21st century is increasingly the warehouse.

Deir ez-Zor: Raising Hope Through Heritage Documentation

Mohieldin Gamal — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000

The historic city of Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria has had more than its fair share of calamity after the outbreak of the war in 2011. After seeing destruction caused by fierce battles between armed groups and the central government, as well as occupation by ISIL, the earthquake in February 2023 brought further damage. Behind the headlines, however, is an ancient city tracing its founding to the dawn of civilization on the banks of the Euphrates River, with living architecture from the Ottoman and French Mandate periods. A winner of the ArchDaily 2025 Next Practices Awards, the Deir ez-Zor Heritage Library aims to revitalize the city and support sensitive reconstruction by documenting and promoting its built heritage.

Jahad Metro Plaza in Tehran: Reclaiming Infrastructure as Civic Space

Ananya Nayak — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

In Iran's capital, Tehran, movement defines the city. Each day, millions navigate a landscape shaped by highways, traffic corridors, and dense urban blocks. Over decades of rapid expansion, infrastructure has become the dominant language of development. Streets prioritize vehicles, sidewalks function as narrow conduits, and many public spaces operate primarily as passages rather than places of gathering. Across parts of West Asia, ongoing conflict has also reshaped the region's urban landscapes, where significant architectural environments have been damaged or transformed. Within this broader context, the preservation and creation of everyday civic space becomes increasingly meaningful. Recognized with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Jahad Metro Plaza project, designed by KA Architecture Studio, demonstrates how modest infrastructural interventions can reshape the civic life of a city.

Adaptive Cabins in Costa Rica: Designing for Humidity and Ventilation in the Jungle

Moises Carrasco — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Costa Rica is a small country in Central America, internationally renowned for its tourism, biodiversity, and tropical climate. Given this context, tropical design strategies for hotel design are often more studied, but residential cabin projects can represent a more surgical approach to understanding the landscape. Often situated in remote forest or jungle locations, these cabins, apart from the common tropical design strategies, have to prioritize long-term durability and low-maintenance costs, particularly in regions where access for repairs is logistically difficult. This necessitates a design philosophy that favors both structural and climatic resilience.