Tag: agriculture | ArchDaily

The Earthen Towers of Shibam: A Vertical City in the Yemeni Desert

Camilla Ghisleni — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Symbols of technological development and urban density, tall buildings as we know them today emerged in the late nineteenth century, particularly in the United States, as a response to the rapid expansion of urban commerce and the need to grow cities without occupying additional land. The term skyscraper, for instance, was coined in the 1880s and originally referred to buildings with around 10 to 20 stories—an impressive height for the time.

From Cloud to Coast: The Physical Cost of AI in Hong Kong’s Borderlands

Jonathan Yeung — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Amid the rapid build-out of data centres and AI economies across the Greater Bay Area—and alongside the celebration of AI as a tool and "author," as featured in 2025 Hong Kong–Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (Hong Kong)—a parallel question becomes unavoidable: how do the planning and construction of AI infrastructure actually begin to shape everyday life? Many of the facilities already built remain intentionally distant from daily experience. The "cloud" may be marketed as immaterial, but its architecture is profoundly physical: high-power, high-heat, service-heavy environments that are often sited in remote or low-density areas to take advantage of lower land costs and to minimize friction with nearby communities. Security and risk management further reinforce this logic. Data centres hold sensitive, privileged information—corporate assets, legal records, government and institutional data—and remoteness becomes part of their operating model, keeping the infrastructures of AI both spatially and socially out of sight.

Guesthouses and Lessons in Generosity: Spaces of Hospitality in Rural America

Olivia Poston — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Spaces of hospitality are a mirror to how different cultures articulate generosity, care, belonging, and identity. In busy city settings, this is reflected in hotels, service systems, and curated amenities that directly shape the visitor experience. These spaces translate care into measurable forms, where success is correlated with efficiency, luxury, and brand identity.

Kosovo Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale Explores Shifting Agricultural Landscapes Through Soil and Scent

Antonia Piñeiro — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 05:30:00 +0000

The Republic of Kosovo brings this year to the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale an exhibition titled Lulebora nuk çel më. Emerging Assemblages. The exhibit was commissioned by the National Gallery of Kosovo and curated by the architect, interdisciplinary designer, and researcher Erzë Dinarama. Reflecting on the country's shifting agricultural landscapes in the context of ecological uprooting and embodied knowledge systems under climate pressure, the installation offers a sensorial exploration of Kosovan fieldwork. Combining a range of local soil materials with a hanging olfactory calendar, the Pavilion invites visitors to imagine through touch and smell.

Small Structures, Big Impact: 4 Rural Prototypes for a Changing Planet

Miwa Negoro & Susanna Moreira — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Facing an interconnected planetary climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion, regenerative design emerges as a pathway toward building resilient and ecologically attuned rural futures. At the intersection of architecture, agriculture, and local ecosystems, new models of resilient, self-sufficient agricultural practices are emerging. These projects are not grand industrial systems but small-scale, precise, and deeply contextual architectural interventions that create spaces that foster sustainable cultivation while respecting environmental rhythms, local materials, and community knowledge.

Rhythms of the Soil: Architecture as Agroecology

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 04:00:00 +0000

At a time of ecological collapse and rising food insecurity, architecture is increasingly called upon to engage not only with landscapes but with the systems that sustain and regenerate them. Among these systems, agriculture occupies a paradoxical role, as both a leading contributor to environmental degradation and a potential agent of ecological recovery. Industrial farming has depleted soils, fragmented habitats, and driven climate change through monocultures, fossil-fuel dependency, and territorial standardization. In response, agroecology has emerged as a counter-practice rooted in biodiversity, local knowledge, and the cyclical rhythms of nature. It reframes farming not as extraction, but as regeneration of ecosystems, communities, and the soil itself.

Living Cycles in Regenerative Architecture: Lessons from the Goetheanum

Enrique Tovar — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 07:30:00 +0000

As climate uncertainty and ecosystem changes reshape design priorities, architecture plays an increasingly active role in these discussions, rather than merely observing. Within this perspective, the idea of making a "re" encourages a conscious step back to rethink, reconnect, and realign the relationship between buildings and their environments. This approach, central to regenerative architecture, extends beyond specific technologies or scales, encompassing everything from master plans that aim to re-naturalize cities to national pavilions that combine art and science.

The Mexican Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale Explores the Ecological Potential of Ancestral Agricultural Systems

Antonia Piñeiro — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 05:30:00 +0000

Titled "Chinampa Veneta", the Mexican exhibition for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia seeks to promote reflection on how we inhabit, cultivate, and design the world we share. In the face of the global ecological crisis, the project draws attention to chinampas, an ancient Mesoamerican agricultural system with more than four thousand years of history. This ancestral knowledge, interweaving landscape, infrastructure, and technique, is reimagined in the context of the Biennale, activating a living environment within the city of Venice. The Mexican Pavilion consists of two "enactments," one located in the Arsenale and the other built on water.

An Ancestral Legacy with Modern Concerns: The Story Behind the Waru Waru Agricultural Fields in Peru

Agustina Iñiguez — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Offering a path toward resilience and food security in the alluvial plains of Lake Titicaca, the Waru Waru agricultural fields are spread across the Peruvian highlands and constitute an ancient agricultural system. Connecting an ancestral legacy with modern concerns about water and food security, climate resilience, and sustainable land management, these agricultural systems open the debate about efficient water management and the importance of agricultural biodiversity. At the same time, they are part of the sense of identity and pride of the local Aymara community, consolidating cultural knowledge that is passed down and preserved across generations.

Rice Museum: Architecture Rooted in Rural Memory and Ecology

Valentina Díaz — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Located on a farm in southern India, the Rice Museum occupies the upper floor of Syed Ghani's home, nestled in the verdant agricultural landscape of Mandya — a region shaped by brick structures, expansive greenery, and ancestral farming knowledge. Syed Ghani, a farmer, historian, and museologist, has dedicated himself to preserving indigenous rice varieties through seed conservation, proliferation, and educational initiatives. With the support of local farmers, he has helped recover more than 1,000 native paddy (rice) varieties, safeguarding an essential part of India's agricultural heritage.

CCA Releases Documentary on Carla Juaçaba’s Work to Support Forest Conservation in Brazil's Coffee Region

Antonia Piñeiro — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 04:30:00 +0000

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) launched a documentary and exhibition, "With an Acre", the third and final chapter of the series Groundwork, which explores how contemporary architects cultivate alternative modes of practice to address the ecological crisis. The documentary follows the work of architect Carla Juaçaba in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where she is developing pavilions in a coffee field where collectives resist extractive industrial agriculture. The narrative examines the role of architects in extractivist contexts facing land regeneration challenges and unstable climatic conditions, as well as the tools smallholder farmers can use to cope with the environmental and social consequences of colonial settlement, urbanization, and industrialization.

Cultivating Spaces: Where Architecture Meets the Farm-to-Table Movement

Olivia Poston — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 05:00:00 +0000

The farm-to-table movement represents a profound shift in how food is grown, distributed, and consumed. Rooted in sustainability and the support of local economies, it prioritizes fresh, locally sourced ingredients and fosters direct relationships between producers and consumers. While the concept focuses on food, the spaces where these connections occur are equally important in shaping the experience, highlighting the critical role of architecture.

Architecture Beyond Humanity: Designing for Non-Human Species

Olivia Poston — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 07:30:00 +0000

Are humans the only stewards of the built environment? For many architects and planners, spaces are designed with a focus on the needs, comfort, and health of humans. A spatial ordering, in constructed spaces and the urban fabric, designates humans as the default, singular user in this scenario. However, as much as humans have influenced the trajectory of the world, other species play a crucial role in designing, forming, and maintaining the urban landscapes of the twenty-first century.

Studio Gang's Brooklyn Community Center Reimagines Equitable Food Systems in the United States

Nour Fakharany — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 05:30:00 +0000

Studio Gang has just released the design for the new Marlboro Agricultural Education Center in Brooklyn, New York. Reimagining a more equitable and inclusive food system, the design transforms a New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) campus into a hub for multigenerational education, job training, and community leadership in urban agriculture. Operated by the nonprofit organization The Campaign Against Hunger (TCAH), the Center seeks to leverage longstanding efforts across the city to enhance food autonomy and security in underserved neighborhoods.

MVRDV Reveals Construction Progress of the Terraced LAD Headquarters in Shanghai

Maria-Cristina Florian — Fri, 24 May 2024 06:30:00 +0000

In 2021, MVRDV unveiled the design of a terraced office building created for the agriculture company Lankuaikei. Set within a rapidly developing area of Shanghai, the 11-storey structure is covered by a curved technological roof that follows the stepping structure. The project is conceived as a showcase of the company's vision of food production, with an extensive sustainability agenda encompassing various strategies. These include extensive use of greenery, integration of renewable energy, and the use of low-carbon materials. The construction process is now captured by StudioSZ Photo / Justin Szeremeta, revealing an intermediary state where the bare-bone structure begins to reveal the shape and scale of the building. Structural construction details are also visible at this stage,

Landscape Architects Lead Bhutan’s Mindfulness City

Jared Green — Wed, 10 Apr 2024 03:30:00 +0000

“The Mindfulness City will be a sustainable city. To be mindful is to be aware — to perform best,” said Giulia Frittoli, partner and head of landscape at BIG. The Kingdom of Bhutan is a landlocked Buddhist country in the eastern Himalayas, nestled between China and India. It covers 14,000 square miles and has a population of nearly 800,000.

OODA and MassLab Win Competition for a “Building without Devastating” Master Plan in Portugal

Maria-Cristina Florian — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 06:30:00 +0000

In collaboration with MassLab, OODA has been awarded first place in the Barrosinha Agricultural Company competition, aimed at creating a 2,000-hectare development seamlessly integrated into the agro-forestry heritage of Alcácer do Sal, Portugal. The master plan, covering a variety of functions for tourism, housing, commerce, and leisure, is designed in harmony with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, striving to transform Herdade da Barrosinha into a model of sustainable renewal.

Foster + Partners Reveals Designs for Ellison Institute of Technology Campus Expansion in Oxford

Nour Fakharany — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 05:30:00 +0000

Foster + Partners has just revealed the designs for the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) campus in Oxford. Initially established as a research and development center, the campus is now gaining a significant expansion. The Institute’s core focus and research was around cancer, wellness, and public health at large, and it is now extending its mission to encompass new vital domains: medical science and healthcare, food security, sustainable agriculture, clean energy, climate change, and government policy economics.