Alex Martínez Suárez, “View of Erwin Cott and Manuel Salvador Gautier, Capilla del Hogar Escuela Salesiana de Haina, Santo Domingo, República Dominicana, built 1965,” 2013. From the 2026 grant to Alex Martínez Suárez for the publication “Concrete under the Sun: Brutalism in the Dominican Republic”. Image Courtesy of Alex Martínez Suárez
The Graham Foundation has announced the recipients of its 2026 Grants to Individuals program, awarding a total of $506,000 to 54 projects that investigate architecture through exhibitions, films, publications, and research initiatives. Selected from more than 600 submissions to the Foundation's September 2025 application cycle, the grants support work by 86 architects, artists, curators, designers, filmmakers, historians, scholars, and writers, reflecting a broad range of interdisciplinary approaches to the built environment and its cultural, social, and political dimensions.
Historically—like other cultural forms—architecture has been documented, shared, and promoted primarily through print. Books, journals, and magazines carried the discipline's arguments and images, and because architectural practice relies so heavily on visual communication, printed journals created a bridge between academic publications and commercial magazines. Through the postwar decades, beautifully produced volumes curated a collective point of view, signaling what the field broadly considered discussion-worthy or exemplary.
Across major cultural centers, a handful of publications shaped this discourse: Their perspectives were typically sophisticated, professional, and carefully edited—distilling an unruly global output into a small constellation of remarkable projects. The system arguably privileged certain practices and geographies, but it also amplified architecture for wider audiences. Buildings began to lodge in public imagination; cultural travel—journeys taken expressly to experience architecture—moved from rarity toward ritual.
Architecture has always been more than bricks and mortar. It is equally constructed through words, ideas, and narratives. From ancient treatises to radical manifestos, from technical manuals to poetic essays, the written word has served as a spatial, pedagogical, and political tool within the field. Writing shapes how architecture is conceptualized, communicated, and critiqued — often long before, or even in the absence of, physical construction.
Historically, figures such as Vitruvius, Alberti, and Palladio employed writing to codify principles, project ideals, and legitimize architecture as a discipline. In the modern era, Le Corbusier, Adolf Loos, and Lina Bo Bardi wrote prolifically to expand the scope of architecture beyond form and function, often using publications as tools for persuasion and experimentation. The postwar period gave rise to new editorial strategies, as evident in the manifestos of Archizoom and Superstudio, and the polemical publications of Delirious New York and Oppositions, where writing served as both critique and project.
“Glen and Anna Harder House, Mountain Lake, Minnesota,” 1970. Color transparency, 4 x 5 in. Copyright J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10). Photo: Julius Shulman. For the 2025 grant to the Art Institute of Chicago for the exhibition “Bruce Goff: Material Worlds”. Image Courtesy of Graham Foundation
The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts has announced $573,300 in grants to 39 organizations worldwide. Chosen from more than 200 submissions, the 2025 awards support a broad range of initiatives, including exhibitions, installations, publications, podcasts, student-led journals, internationalarchitectureevents, and public programs that contribute to advancing architectural discourse and design experimentation. Over nearly seven decades, the Graham Foundation has provided more than $45 million in direct support to over 5,200 projects. With the addition of the 2025 grantees, the Foundation aims to continue to strengthen its international network of individuals and organizations advancing architectural ideas and public engagement around the world.
The Graham Foundation has announced 56 new grants to individuals, selected from nearly 600 submissions. Centered on publications, research, exhibitions, films, site-specific installations, and digital initiatives, the funded projects "expand contemporary architecture ideas through innovative rigorous interdisciplinary work on the design and the built environment." The projects are led by 84 individuals, including established and emerging architects, artists, curators, designers, filmmakers, historians, and writers.
The Feynan Ecolodge project. Image Courtesy of Dongola DAS 01 | Notes on Formation and Ammar Khammash
Ammar Khammash is a Jordanian architect, designer, and artist best known for his approach that focuses on the preservation of cultural and natural heritage while crafting an architecture that engages with its surroundings. With deep admiration for nature and its ecosystems, Khammash trusts that "the site is the architect”, a statement for which he is renowned that underscores the profound influence of context on his architectural design. With over three decades of experience spanning various disciplines and across several Middle Eastern countries such as Jordan, Oman, Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and the UAE, Ammar Khammash has consistently attempted to preserve and enhance the symbiosis between human constructions and the natural environment. His contributions include the Royal Academy for Nature Conservation, the Wild Jordan Center, and the restoration of the Church of Apostles.
In 2022, he was featured in the first edition of the Dongola Architecture Series, a biannual publication that offers unique perspectives into Arab culture by highlighting prominent contemporary architects. The issue, titled “Notes on Formation: Ammar Khammash,” written by Raafat Majzoub, explores "architecture as a transdisciplinary tool of expression, and as a method of imagining and reimagining the future," encapsulating the ethos of the publication. ArchDaily had the opportunity to talk to Ammar Khammash and Sarah Chalabi, founder of Dongola Limited Editions, to delve into the architect’s perspectives on site, materiality, and culture, along with his philosophy, notions on academia, and insights into the future of the profession.
The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture, book cover
Dear community,
As your trusted companion along the journey of constant learning and inspiration, we are very excited to share a new format by announcing our first book ever: The ArchDaily Guide to Good Architecture.
In partnership with renowned international publisher gestalten, we have taken a pause to look back on the more than 40,000 projects curated over the past 15 years, to distill their contributions and answer the bold question of what is good architecture. The sheer scale of ArchDaily is a reflection of how important architecture is today, as the deepening complexity of our world places increasing pressure and demands upon our built environment. To deal with issues such as the climate crisis, energy scarcity, population density, social inequality, housing shortages, fast-moving urbanization, diminished local identity, and a lack of diversity, architecture needs to open itself.
To answer this challenging question the book spotlights the most innovative built environments of our age—those paving the way for a better, more sustainable future. Centered around ArchDaily’s 10 principles of good architecture developed by our team, the book showcases a rich variety of projects—both built and planned—from a sunken restaurant with subterranean views to a Mediterranean cave transformed into a remarkable residence. Reflecting a global community of world-shapers, it celebrates the most visionary architects, and introduces bold new talent. It explores the key topics and trends redefining the built environment, marking the forefront of architectural thought and practice today, with an eye on tomorrow.
Architecture Without Borders Quebec (AWBQ) has made public the catalog of practices “Architecture + Homelessness: Inclusive Practices for a Supportive City.” The publication, publicly available in both English and French, is created to encourage architecture and design practices that have the potential to contribute to the well-being of people experiencing homelessness. The catalog is part of an ongoing research project initiated by AWBQ and supported by the Government of Quebec and the City of Montreal.
Believing firmly that "architecture is [...] too important to leave solely to architects", Ole Bouman embarked on diverse activities throughout his three decades of work, reflecting on “architecture, not so much as the art or technique of making buildings, but architecture as the intelligent way to organize our lives on earth, and infuse it with purpose”.
After having shared Bouman's essay Finding Measure, ArchDaily had the chance to discuss with DesignSociety’s founding director his thoughts on the role of architecture, the current challenges of the world, the digital revolution, and many other thought-provoking topics.
MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas has been named Domus’ 2019 10x10x10 Editor-In-Chief. The publication began the Domus 10x10x10 in 2018 as an initiative to bring new ideas and alternative editorial styles to the magazine. The 10-year initiative leads to Domus' 100th anniversary in 2028.
As much an architect as a researcher, Maas will provide an original editorial strategy founded on intellectual exploration and catalyzing creative ways of thinking about contemporary and future design efforts. In a manifesto titled “Everything is Urbanism,” Maas describes his primary goals for Domus 2019, a series of 10 publications over 10 months that explore contemporary design questions and theoretical problems, spark dialogue, and examine ongoing architectural research.
Get ready to add to your reading and watch lists because the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) just announced the 2018 award recipients for the SAH Publication, Film and Video Awards. Winners received their awards at SAH’s 71st Annual International Conference awards ceremony on April 20th in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The list of SAH Award recipients represents some of the best media in architectural, urban, and landscape history, as well as historic preservation scholarship and architectural exhibition catalogs. Nominations for the 2019 awards will be accepted by SAH on June 1st of this year.
See the list of this year's SAH Award recipients below.
In this book, stories portray the production of our built environment, guided by three characters: Giraffes, Telegraphs, and Hero of Alexandria. Having developed its long neck to reach the leaves of high trees, the giraffe represents the vernacular approach to architecture, in which construction follows forces of nature. The telegraph, in contrast, embodies the modernist paradigm, in which technology reigns supreme and forces nature to adapt. Inspired by Hero of Alexandria, we subscribe to a third paradigm – using technology to optimize nature and, inversely, nature to assimilate technology.
Ice Cream Books is a conceptual art project with a rather predictable, if not delightful, output: "great reads paired with frozen desserts." The work is beguilingly simple and stunningly direct – wafer cones act as columns and space frames, ziggurats and buttresses, all supporting popular tomes.
And so, for little other reason than pure gratification—and to ease you into your Monday morning—enjoy these books paired with (largely structurally sound) frozen desserts!
Publishing is a cultural project, first collecting and condensing ideas and then diffusing them. In the architectural sphere, it is a pursuit which has often struggled to tackle an inherent paradox: is a book, for instance, speaking to an audience entirely “in the know” or one completely fresh to the concepts, ideas, and figures which tend to envelop the discourse – often resonating like records on repeat.
Unplugging architectural publishing from its conventional realm while, at the same time, seeking to challenge existing tropes in discourse, has been made at once easier and more challenging by the dawn—and subsequent acceleration—of online publishing. Yet the book, as opposed to the magazine—printed, bound, and representing a cohesive and finite exploration of thoughts—is beginning to benefit from more innovative models of circulation, responding to the territory presently occupied by it’s ubiquitous counterpart.Archifutures, an initiative of the Future Architecture Platform, has emerged as one of the more ambitious of these projects.
https://www.archdaily.com/876751/archifutures-future-architecture-platform-eu-represents-a-vital-infusion-of-oxygen-into-the-arena-of-architectural-discourseAD Editorial Team
Created by paper engineer and artist Marc Hagan-Guirey, the book contains templates for creating 14 Wright-designed structures using the Japanese art of kirigami. The book leads you through the assembly of each model, which providing photographs, drawings and information for each building, including favorites like Fallingwater and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
In this article, originally published by Strelka Magazine, journalist and writer Stanislav Lvovskiy recommends ten forthcoming books (which will be published this year) on architecture and urbanism written by leading experts and scholars.
A person of prescience never renounces the pleasures (and, yes, perils) of forecasting, especially the realistic kind, and even more so after all the "bad news" of the past year. Without a doubt, the year to come has its own surprises in store. For those who still relish reading or, at the very least, find it useful, let’s now have a preview of the pleasures we can expect from the university presses in 2017.
In the 1960s James Stirling asked Ludwig Mies van der Rohe why he didn’t design utopian visions for new societies, like those of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City or Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse. Mies replied that he wasn’t interested in fantasies, but only in “making the existing city beautiful.” When Stirling recounted the conversation several decades later it was to the audience of a public enquiry convened in London – he was desperately trying to save Mies’ only UK design from being rejected in planning.
In June last year, PARTISANS published Rise and Sprawl: The Condominiumization of Toronto with architecture historian and critic Hans Ibelings. An effort to contextualize the role of the condo in Toronto’s unprecedented and intense growth over the past ten years, this thoughtful, if provocative, work offers a scathing criticism of the architecture (or lack thereof) deployed in much of the recent residential constructions in the city. It is a formal demand that the city be built more thoughtfully.
Alex Josephson is a founding partner of PARTISANS, one of Toronto’s youngest and more innovative architecture practices. Only in its fifth year, PARTISANS has already earned accolades and awards from the American Institute of Architecture, the Ontario Association of Architects, Architect Magazine, Interior Design Magazine, and the World Architecture Festival (WAF).
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