In the low-lying deltas of Bangladesh, water defines both life and loss. Every year, millions are forced to rebuild after floods wash away their homes, crops, and livelihoods. In these precarious territories, the act of building has become an act of resilience. It is here that Khudi Bari emerges as a modest yet radical proposal. Designed by Marina Tabassum Architects, the project provides a lightweight, modular, and affordable dwelling for communities displaced by climate change. Recognized as one of the winners of the 2025 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, it represents a form of architecture that empowers rather than imposes.
The conversation with VOID emerges within the framework of the 2025 Latin American Architecture Biennial, offering an opportunity to explore a practice that listens, cares, and accompanies. Their work unfolds as an act of mediation: through interdisciplinary research and attention to the plurality of natural and social factors, they seek to understand the many natures of a place. Since its beginning in 2012, this process has evolved, consolidating a stance that seeks to design architecture from and for the place—caring for it, healing it, and regenerating it—opening spaces where territories sustain and unfold their own adaptive processes.
Construction of Zaha Hadid Architects' Yidan Center in Shenzhen, China, has reached full height. The new landmark will serve as the headquarters of the Chen Yidan Foundation and the Yidan Prize, organizations dedicated to promoting lifelong learning and innovation in education. The center will host facilities for academic research, cultural events, and exhibitions, supporting the foundation's mission to advance global education. Located adjacent to the Qianhai Museum, the Yidan Center helps define a new cultural quarter in China's third-most-populous city.
Foster + Partners has opened Civic Vision, the first comprehensive exhibition of the practice's work to be presented in Australia. On view until December 21, 2025, at Parkline Place, the firm's latest completed project in Sydney, developed by Investa on behalf of Oxford Properties Group and Mitsubishi Estate Asia, the exhibition offers an in-depth overview of Foster + Partners' global portfolio since its founding in 1967 by Norman Foster. It explores the evolution of the practice's design approach and its exploration of civic architecture across different contexts and scales.
In many parts of the world, remoteness is not only defined by distance. It may describe a mountain settlement far from infrastructure or an urban and suburban neighborhood on the margins of visibility and opportunity. Across these diverse contexts, the library has been one of the most vital typologies—a space where architecture embodies the modes of accessibility, inclusivity, and community care.
Rapid urbanization, driven by population growth, is among the powerful megatrends transforming how cities are built. The world is adding a city the size of Madrid every single week — and will do so for decades to come. To meet this demand sustainably, a collaborative, systems-thinking approach to construction is needed.
Like the famous Russian Matryoshka doll, opening a package often feels like uncovering endless layers. Inside a cardboard box, there might be molded Styrofoam, then several plastic air pillows, and finally, individual plastic wrapping around each piece. Even a small product can leave behind a trail of plastic waste far larger than its size. Now imagine this logic applied to a construction site where every component, every delivery of materials, often arrives wrapped in multiple layers of protection. What already seems excessive in retail becomes monumental when repeated daily on large construction projects.
There are places in the world where temperatures already exceed fifty degrees, and others where water levels rise meters above expected levels. Meanwhile, in the heart of São Paulo, architects, researchers, artists, and communities come together to ask: how can we inhabit the Earth in times of extremes? This question drives the 14th International Architecture Biennial of São Paulo, held at the Oca in Ibirapuera Park, focusing on the theme Extremes: Architectures for a Hot World. More than an exhibition, it is a call to confront the climate crisis, social inequality, and the urgent need to reinvent ways of living.
Unlike previous editions, which were spread across multiple locations in the city, curators Clevio Rabelo, Jera Guarani, Karina de Souza, Marcella Arruda, Marcos Certo, and Renato Anelli chose to concentrate this year’s edition under a single roof, allowing the curatorial narrative to unfold clearly and directly. The entire journey is there, organized into sections that weave together ancestral practices and emerging technologies, material experiments and critical perspectives, local projects and global debates. The Oca thus becomes a crossroads: a space where diverse architectural visions overlap, offering a platform for collective reflection on society and the environment.
The preservation of the environment and the harmonious integration of the built and natural elements are fundamental principles in contemporary architecture. Various design strategies are employed to achieve this balance, ranging from the revival of vernacular techniques to the use of advanced technologies. However, this concern goes beyond the choice of specific construction systems or innovative materials; it also manifests in the design approach that ensures the preservation of the site's natural elements. In this context, we present 15 homes designed to protect local trees, showcasing how architectural decisions can adapt to nature rather than impose on it.
What is architecture? For some, its traditional role is to bring together imagination, technical knowledge, and problem-solving, allowing architects to design and construct while balancing ideas with the means to realize them. From the stone and wood of early buildings to the steel and concrete of the 20th century, each era demanded not only an understanding of form but also of the properties and potential of the materials in use. This grasp of materials has always been a core part of the creative process, though its scope was limited by the know-how and technologies available.
Over time, that balance has begun to shift. Architects have moved from merely using materials to actively designing them, applying scientific principles and experimenting with biological, chemical, and computational processes. This evolution has expanded the possibilities of architecture, intersecting nature, technology, and art, while pushing the role of the architect into a more experimental, science-driven dimension, where the manipulation and creation of materials becomes central to the creative act rather than merely a means to achieve forms or structures.
Revitalisation of Historic Esna, Egypt. Image Courtesy of Takween ICD
Among the seven winners of this year's 16th Aga Khan Award for Architecture was theRevitalisation of Historic Esna in southern Egypt. Led by the Cairo-based firm Takween, the project was far more than a simple restoration. It was a comprehensive renewal effort that combined deep community engagement with the preservation of both tangible and intangible heritage. By creating thousands of jobs and restoring the historic center, the initiative offered a powerful alternative to demolition. The Aga Khan Trust lauded it as a 'replicable model for sustainable development'.
Surfing is, without a doubt, one of the most visually striking and fascinating sports. A fluid choreography that combines strength and delicacy, like a dance on the waves, gathers enthusiasts across the world's oceans. Yet, behind this image of freedom and connection with nature, the sport also carries contradictions. It is a symbol of outdoor life and respect for the ocean, but on the other hand, it is marked by territorial disputes over waves and by an environmental footprint that rarely receives the same attention given to its aesthetics. In times of climate crisis, this paradox becomes even more evident. Surfing depends directly on the health of marine ecosystems, the very ones most affected by pollution and global warming. This tension has been pushing a new generation of shapers, architects, and material designers to seek alternatives, from plant-based and recycled foams to the reuse of industrial waste, in order to reconnect the sport with its ecological dimension.
All materials come from somewhere, embedded in a chain of extraction, supply, production, and disposal that, depending on its scale, leaves more or less significant marks on the environment. In architecture, we usually approach this trajectory through the lens of materials' circularity, considering how they can re-enter production cycles rather than become waste. Yet, broadening our view to unexpected places reveals parallel systems where by-products from one industry become resources for another. This approach has found fertile ground in organic waste transformed into biomaterials, with one of the most recent examples being the work of Fahrenheit Works. Through their installation, "From the Tagus to the Tile", they repurpose oyster shells initially discarded by food systems to create a reinterpretation of Lisbon's iconic tiles.
The City of Chicago and the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA) have broken ground on Concourse D at O'Hare International Airport, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in collaboration with Ross Barney Architects, Juan Gabriel Moreno Architects (JGMA), and Arup. The project marks the first building in ORDNext, O'Hare's most ambitious expansion to date, and introduces a new chapter in the airport's modernization. Construction management is led by AECOM Hunt Clayco Bowa, with completion expected in late 2028. Planning is also progressing on Concourse E, the second satellite concourse designed by the same team.
