The global reference for architecture

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This week, architectural conversations were shaped by themes of resilience, equity, and cultural relevance, brought into focus by World Architecture Day. Across global contexts, the discipline continues to expand its understanding of strength, not only as structural endurance but as a framework for inclusive, adaptable, and environmentally conscious design. From strategies for gender-equitable public space to new commissions grounded in memory and reconciliation, recent developments reflect how architecture is increasingly positioned as a tool for social engagement and long-term stewardship in the face of ongoing global challenges.

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In April 2024, the Diriyah Biennale Foundation announced the AlMusalla Prize, an international architecture competition focused on designing a musalla: a flexible space for prayer and reflection accessible to people of all faiths. The winning project, designed by EAST Architecture Studio in collaboration with artist Rayyane Tabet and engineering firm AKT II, is a modular structure built with materials derived from local date palm waste, including fronds and fibers, and inspired by regional weaving traditions. Installed in the Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the musalla served for four months during the Islamic Arts Biennale as a space for prayer, welcoming both Muslim and non-Muslim visitors. Conceived to be dismantled and reassembled, the structure was recently relocated to Uzbekistan for the inaugural Bukhara Biennial 2025.

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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.

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In contemporary times, architectural practice goes far beyond designing buildings or materializing ideas; it has become a multidimensional field, taking on broader and more complex roles. In contexts marked by inequality, environmental crises, and territorial disputes, architecture becomes a tool for negotiation, capable of mediating interests among diverse actors. In this scenario, architects also assume the roles of cultural translators, social facilitators, and, often, advocates for collective rights.

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Uzbekistan's architectural and artistic heritage reflects a layered history shaped by centuries of cultural exchange along the Silk Road. From the monumental ensembles of Samarkand and Bukhara to the scientific and educational institutions of the Timurid era, architecture has long been a vessel of identity and knowledge across the region. In the twentieth century, Tashkent emerged as a new urban laboratory, where modernist ideals met local craft traditions and environmental pragmatism. The city's reconstruction following the 1966 earthquake became a defining moment, fusing Soviet urbanism with regional aesthetics to produce a distinctly Central Asian expression of modernity, one that translated cultural continuity into concrete, glass, and light.

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