Tag: public-spaces | ArchDaily

Building Public Life: How Bogotá and Mexico City Addressed Urban Inequality

Daniela Andino — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

In many Latin American cities, peripheral neighborhoods have historically had less access to the resources that make urban life more than just livable. Housing, transportation, and public services are the usual markers of that gap. But there is another gap that is harder to quantify: the absence of places where people can gather, learn, rest, and participate in collective life. When those spaces do not exist, the city not only fails to provide a service. It fails to acknowledge a presence.

Rewilding the City: 6 Unbuilt Projects from the ArchDaily Community

Antonia Piñeiro — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

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.

Paris as a Living Laboratory: Proximity, Inclusion, and the School as Climate and Social Infrastructure

Olivia Poston — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 07:30:00 +0000

ReGreeneration is a Horizon Europe-awarded project working across nine cities to advance urban regeneration through nature-based solutions, participatory governance, and integrated approaches to climate resilience and social equity. The nine cities in the project portfolio span a range of urban typologies, scales, and planning traditions, forming a living laboratory for rethinking sustainable urban transformation in practice. Each city brings distinct challenges and ambitions to the collaboration, and this series of articles explores what each city is doing and what the broader design community can learn from it.

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.

Fondation Beyeler to Open Expanded Campus by Peter Zumthor in 2027

Reyyan Dogan — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 06:30:00 +0000

The Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, near Basel, will begin opening its expanded campus to the public this autumn, with the full ensemble set to be accessible in January 2027. The project brings together the museum building designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and opened in 1997 with a series of new additions by Peter Zumthor, as well as several repurposed historic structures. Through the expansion, the institution increases its exhibition capacity while extending its grounds to include a larger public landscape. The development represents a new phase for the Fondation Beyeler, building on its focus on the relationship between art, architecture, and nature.

Icelandic Pavilion Explores Bathing Culture as Civic Infrastructure at the 2027 Venice Architecture Biennale

Reyyan Dogan — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 06:30:00 +0000

The Icelandic Pavilion at the 20th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will present SOAK: Rituals of Collective Belonging, an exhibition examining Iceland's bathing culture through the lens of architecture, public space, and social interaction. Commissioned by Halla Helgadóttir, Iceland Design and Architecture, the project is curated by Marcos Zotes, partner at Basalt Architects, and developed through a multidisciplinary collaboration between Basalt Architects, design studio Gagarin, and artist Rán Flygenring. SOAK marks the second Icelandic participation in the Architecture Biennale selected through an open call process, following Lavaforming by s.ap architects, which represented Iceland at the 2025 edition.

World Environment Day 2026 Coincides with Record Heatwaves, Renewing Focus on Climate Adaptation in Cities

Reyyan Dogan — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 06:30:00 +0000

As Europe experiences one of its earliest and most intense heatwaves in recent years, World Environment Day 2026 arrives amid renewed discussions about climate adaptation, urban resilience, and the capacity of cities to respond to increasingly extreme temperatures. Across Portugal, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, temperatures have surged well above seasonal averages, prompting heat alerts, school closures, emergency planning measures, and growing concerns about the performance of buildings and public infrastructure under prolonged heat stress. The convergence of these highlights a reality that is becoming increasingly worldwide: climate change is no longer solely an environmental concern but an issue that is fundamentally reshaping the spaces where people live, work, and gather.

First Look at the Serpentine Pavilion and Getty Center Modernization Plans Revealed: This Week’s Review

Reyyan Dogan — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 06:30:00 +0000

This week, architecture's cultural dimension took center stage through a series of new platforms, institutional developments, and public-facing projects that expand how the discipline is discussed, preserved, and experienced. From the announcement of participants for the inaugural Pan-African Biennale in Nairobi and the unveiling of Concéntrico Festival's urban interventions across Logroño, to the opening of La Biennale di Venezia's new archival headquarters at the Arsenale, architecture emerged as a vehicle for research, exchange, and collective reflection. Alongside these initiatives, projects such as the expansion of Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas and the opening of the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion demonstrate how cultural institutions continue to invest in new spaces for gathering and engagement. This week's selection spans Kenya, Spain, Albania, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Lebanon, the United Kingdom, and the United States, reflecting the diverse contexts in which cultural institutions, public events, and architectural initiatives continue to evolve.

SLA Designs Public Spaces and Streetscapes for Toronto's New Island Community in the Port Lands

Antonia Piñeiro — Wed, 27 May 2026 05:30:00 +0000

Landscape and urban design studio SLA has unveiled the design for the public realm and streetscapes of Toronto's new 39.8-hectare waterfront community. The urban landscape project "Ookwemin Minising" is located in the Port Lands, an industrial and recreational district southeast of downtown Toronto, currently undergoing urban revitalization to transform the area from a former industrial zone into a naturalized river valley, mixed-use neighbourhoods, and public parkland. The overall transformation is being led by Waterfront Toronto, a publicly funded, not-for-profit corporation established in 2001 to oversee the regeneration of the area, as part of a broader government initiative to renaturalize urban areas and increase housing density. The redevelopment of Ookwemin Minising is expected to be completed in phases between 2031 and 2040.

Stefano Boeri Architetti Converts Former Rome Transit Depot Into Multifunctional Civic Space

Reyyan Dogan — Tue, 26 May 2026 06:30:00 +0000

The Rome City Council has approved a Memorandum for the urban regeneration of the Depositi delle Vittorie in Piazza Bainsizza, a former ATAC depot in Rome dating back to the early 1900s. Abandoned for nearly two decades and now privately owned, the site is set to be transformed into a multifunctional complex designed by Stefano Boeri Architetti. The project envisions the adaptive reuse of the former transportation infrastructure through the introduction of cultural, educational, commercial, co-working, and leisure functions, alongside new public spaces and extensive landscaped areas.

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.

Baku Architecture City Guide: 15 Projects Reframing Azerbaijan’s Capital

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Tue, 05 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Some cities grow through continuity, others construct themselves through moments of acceleration. Baku, in Azerbaijan, seems to operate somewhere in between. Its historic core, the Icherisheher, still holds a spatial logic that resists expansion: dense, enclosed, defined by proximity and repetition. But just beyond its walls, the city begins to shift. Scale increases, distances expand, and the relationship between buildings becomes less about continuity and more about visibility.

When Sculpture Becomes Discourse: Reflections on Mujassam Watan

Rene Submissions — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:30:00 +0000

In the city, aesthetics are not measured by the height of towers or the width of roads, but by their ability to evoke meaning within space. From this perspective, the Mujassam Watan initiative emerges as more than a mere artistic endeavor. It involves a deliberate attempt to redefine the relationship between people and place, between material memory and imagined identity. In the city of Khobar, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—where urban modernity intersects with rapid social transformation—this initiative raises the question: How can a sculpture become an open text, one that is both visually read and experientially felt?

The Illusion of Lightness: Designing Civic Voids for Public Life

Moises Carrasco — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:30:00 +0000

In our current cities, urban density and rising land values often force a choice between large-scale civic buildings and open public space. Traditionally, plazas have been treated as areas surrounding a building's footprint, but this strategy was modified when pilotis were introduced by the early 20th-century modernist movement. While the original intent was to create a sense of lightness that would allow circulation and light to flow beneath a structure, contemporary requirements for seismic loads, fire egress, and heavy occupancies render thin columns insufficient for the needs of current large-scale civic projects.

RSHP Wins Competition to Redevelop Rives-Défense Site in Paris

Reyyan Dogan — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 06:30:00 +0000

RSHP has won a competition to redevelop the Rives-Défense site in La Défense, the business district of Paris. Announced during MIPIM, the project envisions the transformation of an 8-hectare site at the western edge of the district into a low-carbon mixed-use neighborhood. Commissioned by Paris La Défense, the proposal is developed by a multidisciplinary team led by RSHP and including Atelier SOIL as co-architect and urban planner, Altitude 35 as landscape architect, Arcadis as engineering consultant, as well as Atelier Franck Boutté, Urban Eco, and Mobius.

Designing With, Not For: CatalyticAction’s Participatory Practice

Daniela Andino — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Architecture is often evaluated through finished forms, yet some practices operate in a different register, one where design unfolds through relationships, time, and use rather than through a single outcome. For CatalyticAction, participation is not a parallel social activity, but the means through which spaces are conceived, constructed, and sustained over time.

Festival Concéntrico 2026 Announces Three Selected Urban Installations From Its International Open Calls

Antonia Piñeiro — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 06:30:00 +0000

Concéntrico is an urban innovation laboratory that invites reflection on the city through architecture and design. Since 2015, it has carried out more than 180 interventions in Logroño, Spain. The new 2025/2026 season of the festival expands on this experimental spirit with three international calls for proposals that bring the ideas in the book Concéntrico: Laboratorio de Innovación Urbana (Park Books, 2025) into action. Through these calls, the organization seeks to explore further three lines of research, the ephemeral, the ecological, and the symbolic, to imagine different ways of inhabiting the city. The winning projects from this edition's calls for entries will be developed, built as urban installations, and presented in the exhibition during the festival, taking place in Logroño from June 18–23, 2026.

Dispatched: Architecture of the American Post Office and the Privatization of Civic Space

Olivia Poston — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Post offices stand among the most enduring monuments of civic life in the United States. Across towns and city centers, they carry the shifting architectural ambitions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Greek Revival formality to Beaux-Arts monumentality and Art Deco ornament. Architects and federal planners would give these buildings a clear public role and a powerful physical presence. Stone façades, monumental halls, and crafted interiors projected stability, trust, and permanence. The post office placed the federal government directly into the everyday landscape of American life.