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Interactive Vector Design Solutions. Image Courtesy of D.TO
Initial sketches in notebooks and tracing paper, conceptual diagrams, perspectives, physical models, and massing studies capture the architectural imagination. But they represent only the beginning of the practice. The real challenge is translating ideas into buildable systems. Every wall, junction, and assembly must be resolved in detail, with systems working together in a way that allows the project to be built as intended. This is where most of the effort, complexity, and risk are concentrated, and where projects are ultimately resolved or begin to stumble.
It is in this context that the Design Development (DD) and Construction Documentation (CD) take place, when the project must address the full weight of coordination, components, performance, and constructability. While schematic design defines spatial and formal directions, DD and CD demand answers to a different set of questions: how do systems come together? How is performance maintained at transitions? Which products, tolerances, and sequences will allow the project to hold together as it moves from model to construction?
In temperate and cold climates, architecture typically begins with a defensive gesture. The building envelope is a sealed boundary designed to resist the exterior environment through insulation, vapor barriers, and mechanical control. In cold countries like Canada, where winter temperatures can plunge well below freezing, airtightness is not a luxury. In this context, buildings must resist the exterior environment entirely to maintain interior comfort. However, in Central America, a region spanning from Belize to Panama, architectural logic shifts from exclusion to negotiation. In this region, the envelope is not a wall of defense but a specialized filter.
Ontario Science Centre Exterior South View. Image Courtesy of Snøhetta and Hariri Pontarini Architects
Hariri Pontarini Architects and Snøhetta have been selected to design the new Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. Announced in February 2026, the 400,000-square-foot facility will anchor the site's ongoing transformation through a 220,000-square-foot building defined by a series of scalloped, modular volumes. A central component of the proposal is the physical integration of the existing Pods and the historic Cinesphere via elevated connections and a continuous public promenade. Construction is expected to begin in Spring 2026, with completion anticipated in 2029 as part of a broader waterfrontredevelopment strategy.
Diagram of the services in Barba Jupiter. Image Courtesy of Géométral
Founded in 2022 by Clément Masurier and based in Paris, France, Géométral is an architectural practice defined by design strategies that are linked to the landscape, which it treats as a primary determinant of form. The studio, one of the winners of the ArchDaily 2025 Next Practices Awards, approaches each project as a small universe that combines program, atmosphere, and spatial narratives. Rather than a single signature style, they focus on crafting moods and situations tailored to each context and user.
In its early stages, the studio lacked a built portfolio and responded by developing "fictional architectures" situated on real topographies. This exercise was not merely an aesthetic pursuit but a methodological anchor, as it allowed the firm to establish a rigorous process of site analysis and typological testing before receiving physical commissions. By treating imaginary projects with the same technical scrutiny as real ones, the studio developed a library of formal responses to environmental constraints that now dictate their built work.
Second Prize Winner + Buildner Student Award: Silent Equilibrium
Buildner is pleased to announce the results of its Architect's Chair Competition Edition 4, an annual international competition that invites architects and designers worldwide to submit designs for a signature chair. Following in the footsteps of iconic figures like Charles and Ray Eames, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, and Arne Jacobsen, participants are tasked with creating custom chairs that reflect their unique design philosophies and visions.
A long table can sit almost anywhere and still do the same work. It can stretch beneath a market canopy, run along a school dining hall, or occupy the center of a shared living room, and it immediately changes the room's temperature.
That is why the long table is less an object than a spatial instrument. It does not guarantee a connection, and it rarely looks "inclusive" by default. Instead, it sets conditions: a shared edge, a common rhythm of arrival, a field of mutual visibility, or a rule that turns eating into a scene with others. Food studies describe this practice as commensality, the act of eating together and the social order it can create, reinforce, or contest. But what matters here is not a specific dimension or the table's function, but the way a long surface holds difference, conversation, and silence; intimacy and distance; the decision to join and the right to hesitate.
Salone del Mobile.Milano has announced the framework for its 64th edition, scheduled to take place from April 21 to 26, 2026, at Fiera Milano, Rho. The upcoming edition will bring together more than 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries across over 169,000 square meters of exhibition space, highlighting the fair's continued scale and international reach. Beyond its quantitative dimension, the 2026 Salone positions itself as an evolving cultural and economic infrastructure, increasingly structured around long-term strategies rather than isolated events. The program reflects a growing emphasis on accessibility, curatorial depth, and cross-sector dialogue, pointing at the Salone's role not only as a marketplace for the industry but also as a platform where architectural thinking, industrial production, and global dynamics intersect within a single, coordinated framework.
When developing an architectural project, there are multiple possible points of departure. Some architects begin with volume, gradually carving form in dialogue with its context. Others start from the longitudinal section, while some organize the project around the functional layout of the plan. There is no right or wrong method, but rather distinct approaches that reflect different ways of thinking about and making architecture. Since the widespread adoption of solar panels and photovoltaic energy, however, a recurring pattern has emerged: these systems are almost always introduced later in the process, framed as technical optimizations or responses to regulatory and energy-efficiency requirements. As a result, they tend to be treated as secondary elements, often relegated to rooftops or less visible areas and detached from the architectural language of the building.
Beneath the visible surface of cities lies an invisible architecture. Subways, tunnels, water systems, data cables, and bunkers form a dense network that sustains urban life while remaining largely unseen. The ground beneath our feet is not a void but a complex territory that holds the infrastructures, memories, and anxieties of our age. In recent years, as land becomes scarce and climate pressures intensify, architects and urbanists have turned their gaze downward, rediscovering the subterranean as both a physical and conceptual frontier. To design underground is to engage with the unseen mechanisms that shape the world above.
The subterranean has long been a site where architecture intersects with politics, technology, and belief. From the catacombs of Rome to the industrial subways of modernity, descent has symbolized both protection and exposure. Twentieth-century urbanism transformed this gesture into a system: metros, shelters, and utilities redefined the city section as an instrument of governance. Beneath the promise of efficiency and progress, the underground absorbed the anxieties of an era of war, surveillance, and collapse. Its evolution reveals not only how societies build, but also how they fear.
Today, the ground has become the new frontier of urban expansion and ecological adaptation. As digital infrastructures, energy systems, and climatic buffers migrate below grade, architecture confronts a space both technical and metaphysical — essential yet marginal, invisible yet decisive. To think in sections rather than in plan is to recognise that contemporary cities no longer exist solely in their skylines but also in their depths. The challenge for architecture is not only to occupy that space, but to render it legible, to turn the unseen into knowledge, and the hidden into a new terrain of design.
Snøhetta, in collaboration with the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD), has won the international competition to design the Beijing Art Museum in Tongzhou District, Beijing. The project officially broke ground on December 31, 2025, with completion and public opening anticipated in 2029. Conceived as a new landmark for the eastern part of the city, the museum will form part of Tongzhou's cultural and civic development strategy as Beijing's sub-center. The commission marks Snøhetta's second major cultural project in the Chinese capital, following the Beijing Library, which opened to the public in 2023 and has since become a key reference for contemporary civic architecture in the city.
Having explored adaptability at the city scale, we are now zooming in on the building itself—and, crucially, on practice. How can architects, developers, and consultants embed adaptability as a measurable, mainstream outcome? This question will be on the agenda at the Adaptable Building Conference (ABC) on January 22 at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, where architects, engineers, policymakers, and industry leaders will explore the potential of adaptable buildings—and how to deliver them at scale.
NPO Aoyama Design Forum (ADF), a non-profit organization, has announced the ADF Design Award 2026, celebrating architecture that does more than please the eye—it aims to make a meaningful impact on society, culture, and the environment. The award aims to recognize outstanding works that challenge existing conventions, demonstrate innovative thinking, and enrich people's lives through visionary, responsible design. Architects and designers around the world are invited to submit their proposals on a unique platform that fosters connections, promotes the exchange of ideas, and encourages meaningful cross-cultural collaboration.
Where cities were once shaped by simple structures that could adapt to new uses, they are now packed with rigid dwellings—often designed with a single use in mind and fixed in both layout and lifespan. As climate deadlines tighten, communities demand more resilient, resource-conscious spaces, and work and living patterns continue to shift, this rigidity is becoming a liability. When buildings refuse to bend, they are often treated as disposable, triggering cycles of demolition, downtime, and loss. Adaptability, once considered an added convenience, is becoming an imperative—something the inaugural Adaptable Building Conference (ABC) in Rotterdam aims to put front and center.
How does the construction sector shape the future of cities? What challenges does it face? At the crossroads of demographic, social, energy, and climate pressures, the construction sector is changing fast. Professionals, institutions, and citizens are working together to build environments that improve health and well-being, encourages durable and place-responsive solutions, cut carbon emissions, withstand climate risks, and provide affordable, high-quality housing.
The European Cultural Centre (ECC) has announced the winners of the ECCAwards 2025, selected from participants of the seventh edition of Time Space Existence and unveiled during the exhibition's Closing Day on 23 November 2025 in Venice. Bringing together 207 practices from more than 52 countries, this year's edition highlighted a broad spectrum of architectural and design approaches responding to the themes of Repair, Regenerate, and Reuse. The awards recognise four projects that stood out for their originality, execution, narrative clarity, and forward-looking engagement with questions of sustainability, community, and the future of the built environment.
The ultimate accolades of World Building of the Year supported by GROHE, World Interior of the Year, Future Project of the Year and Landscape of the Year were announced today as hundreds of architects from across the world convened at a grand finale Gala Dinner at Miami Beach Convention Center in Florida. A host of Special Prizes, including the American Beauty Prize supported by the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, were also announced at the closing event to celebrate the eighteenth edition of the festival. The announcement follows the final day of WAF, in which prize winners across all 43 categories have been competing for the winning titles.
https://www.archdaily.com/1036083/world-building-of-the-year-and-interior-of-the-year-revealed-at-world-architecture-festival-2025Enrique Tovar
In total, the three-day festival will see over 460 live pitches from the 2025 finalists, presented to more than 160 international judges. Today has seen shortlisted projects from around the world compete for 21 award categories within Completed Buildings, Future Projects, and Interiors. Award winners include OMA, Sordo Madaleno, Studio Arthur Casas, and NIKKEN SEKKEI.
https://www.archdaily.com/1036039/world-architecture-festival-2025-day-two-winners-announcedEnrique Tovar
