Architecture | Tag

Frida Escobedo and Ma Yansong Among 11 International Architects Named 2026 AIA Honorary Fellows

February 16

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has elevated 78 architects to its College of Fellows, recognizing members whose work has demonstrated a sustained impact on the discipline and on society. Fellowship is described as one of the Institute's highest honors and is conferred upon architects who have advanced design excellence, strengthened professional practice, expanded architectural education, or contributed to public service. Selected by a nine-member Jury of Fellows chaired by Sanford Garner of RG Collaborative, this year's cohort reflects a wide range of geographic and professional backgrounds, with honorees representing firms, public agencies, and academic institutions across the United States.

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London’s Southbank Centre Receives National Heritage Protection After 35-Year Campaign

February 16

The Southbank Centre is a cultural complex in London built between 1963 and 1968 and widely regarded as a representative example of British Brutalism. Today, the site hosts a wide range of events, including visual arts, theatre, dance, classical and contemporary music, literature, poetry, and debate. The building was designed by a team from the Architects' Department of the London County Council, led by architect Norman Engleback. It became a controversial example of modern architecture following its opening in October 1967, when engineers voted Queen Elizabeth Hall "the supreme ugly" in a poll of new buildings, and the Daily Mail referred to it as "Britain's ugliest building." Fifty-nine years later, on February 10, 2026, the complex was granted Grade II listed status by the UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), following a 35-year campaign advocating for its protection as modern architectural heritage.

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Heritage in Motion: Bangkok’s Buildings That Continue to Become

February 15

Architectural heritage is not only what a building was, but what it continues to become: a long process of building, rebuilding, and re-occupying over time. Where opportunities allow, this continuity produces a layered condition—one in which visitors can witness, experience, and feel the gradual shifting of a building's fabric, materiality, spatial order, and patterns of use, and occasionally even participate in that transformation.

Yet many projects—particularly those driven primarily by commercial imperatives—do not choose to value, or even to recognize, this slower work of adaptive reuse and heritage continuation. Developments governed by a numbers-only logic often opt for the easier path of demolition and rebuild: maximizing plot ratio, GFA, and rentable area with the efficiency of a clean slate. And still, every now and then, an opportunity surfaces that allows us to see—and to enjoy—the city's process of architectural "heritaging" in real time.

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ArchDaily Student Project Awards: Submission Deadline Extended

February 14

The ArchDaily Student Project Awards submission deadline has been extended by one week. Students now have until February 20, 2026, at 11:59 pm (CET) to submit their projects.

Open to students subscribed to ArchDaily Campus, the inaugural edition of the Awards centers on the theme Architecture of Coexistence, inviting proposals that explore inclusive spaces for communities and collective forms of care. The extension provides additional time for students to refine their conceptual projects and strengthen both their spatial and narrative arguments.

Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026 Opens at JAX District in Saudi Arabia

February 13

The third edition of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale opened on January 30, 2026, and will remain on view through May 2, 2026, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Organized by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, the Biennale takes place at JAX District, a former industrial area in Diriyah near the UNESCO World Heritage Site of At-Turaif. Titled "في الحِلّ والترحال" / In Interludes and Transitions, the exhibition is led by Co-Artistic Directors Nora Razian and Sabih Ahmed, while Milan-based architect Sammy Zarka contributed as the Associate Architect and Exhibition Designer. The exhibition scenography is designed by Formafantasma, and the event brings together more than 65 artists from over 37 countries, including more than 25 newly commissioned works.

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Kazakhstan's Almaty Named Host City of the 2029 Asian Winter Games After NEOM's Trojena Withdrawal

February 13

On February 5, 2026, Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest metropolis, was officially declared the host city of the 2029 Asian Winter Games. The Host City Contract was signed between the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) and the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan during a ceremony in Milan, Italy, one of the host cities of the ongoing Winter Olympics. Established in 1986 in Sapporo, Japan, the Asian Winter Games will mark their tenth edition in 2029 and are held approximately every four years. The announcement follows an earlier decision to postpone the Games, which were originally scheduled to take place in the Trojena ski resort, masterplanned by LAVA and currently under construction as part of the NEOM mega-project in Saudi Arabia.

When Do Buildings Begin to Matter? Rethinking Heritage in Local Time

February 13

A building still being adjusted, repaired, and debated is declared World Heritage. Another, equally influential, must survive five centuries before anyone considers protecting it. This is not an anomaly in the heritage system; it is the system. Across the world, architecture does not age at the same pace because time itself is not neutral. It is cultural, political, and deeply uneven. What we call "heritage" is not simply old architecture; it is architecture that has reached the right moment in a particular place.

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Rojkind Arquitectos Selected for Tirana Multifunctional Development as Part of Broader Citywide Renewal

February 12

Rojkind Arquitectos, in collaboration with artist Pedro Reyes, SON Architects, Motus Holdings, and ASAB, has been selected as the winner of the mixed-use component in the International Concept Design and Build Competition for the redevelopment of the Zyber Hallulli site in Tirana, Albania. Organized by the Albanian Investment Corporation in partnership with the National Agency for Territorial Planning, the competition was launched in September 2025, with the jury announcing its decision on January 29, 2026. The proposal led by the Mexico-based office was awarded the mixed-use development, while a separate Mexican practice, Taller Héctor Barroso, was selected to design CASA FAMILIA, a new children's campus to be built on a greener, more child-oriented site.

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Heritage Transformations, New Capital Cities, and Residential Innovations: This Week’s Review

February 12

This week's news landscape brought together diverse approaches to built and cultural heritage, ranging from the design of a Museum of Jesus' Baptism at a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Jordan to major transformations of modern industrial sites and the development of major cultural districts. The World Monuments Fund's support for 21 locally led heritage projects foregrounds conservation strategies that reinforce the role of architecture in safeguarding both material and intangible heritage. Across this week's highlighted projects, adaptive reuse, landscape integration, and the reconfiguration of civic space emerge as recurrent strategies for extending the life and relevance of existing built environments. The projects also reflect broader contemporary concerns, including material research in timber construction, zero-waste urban installations, large-scale residential efficiency, and infrastructure upgrades linked to global events like the Olympic Games. Framing these developments within a wider territorial perspective, discussions on relocating capital cities worldwide offer an example of how geopolitical discourses continue to shape architecture, revealing the evolving relationship between the built environment and structures of power over time.

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Playful and Ironic: The Legacy of Postmodernist Architecture in the United States

February 12

Postmodernism in the United States turned architecture into a stage for cultural memory, irony, and heritage at a moment when the built environment was becoming less civic and more commercial and curated. By the late twentieth century, architectural investment no longer centered on monumental public institutions or shared federal commitment to civic space. Private development, corporate expansion, and consumer environments increasingly shaped cities across the country. Buildings took on a new role as cultural images, expected to communicate identity and meaning as much as they provided function.

Postmodernism began as a critique of modernism's exhausted promises. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, many designers no longer treated modernism as radical or socially redemptive. Urban renewal projects accelerated the demolition of historic neighborhoods, and landmark preservation battles raised urgent questions about what the United States valued and, ultimately, protected. The loss of major civic icons, including New York's Penn Station, sharpened public awareness that progress often arrives through erasure. In Chicago, architect and provocateur Stanley Tigerman captured this sense of rupture in his 1978 photomontage The Titanic, which depicts Mies van der Rohe's Crown Hall sinking into Lake Michigan, a blunt image of modernism's symbolic collapse. Postmodern architects worked inside this turbulence, shaped by economic shocks, corporate excess, shifting cultural production, and a growing skepticism toward grand architectural solutions.

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Introducing the 75 Finalists of the 2026 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards

February 11

Two weeks and over 85,000 nominations later, the finalists of this year's Building of the Year Awards are in. The selection is much like the ArchDaily audience that chose it: diverse in geography, generous in ideas, and precise in intent. With projects from 46 countries, in a variety of typologies and scales, they present a beautiful snapshot of the current architectural moment.

We invite you to sit back, browse, and vote for your ultimate favorites. Below, you will find all of the 75 finalists in their respective categories. Voting is open until February 18th at 18:00 EST. Thank you—your participation is key to making this the world's largest community-driven architecture award.

Vote Now

Druzhba Sanatorium: A Soviet Monument Suspended Between Earth and Sea

Subscriber Access | February 11

Perched above the cliffs of Crimea, the Druzhba Thermal Sanatorium appears less as a building than as a landed spacecraft. Its circular forms, suspended decks, and spiraling ramps evoke a scene from Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972), where architecture and psychology merge into a single landscape. Built between 1978 and 1985 by Igor Vasilevsky, the complex was conceived as a thermal resort for workers of the oil industry, part of the Soviet Union's extensive network of sanatoria dedicated to health and recreation.

Beyond its function as a place of recovery, Druzhba, meaning "friendship", embodied a broader political and aesthetic ambition. It sought to merge technological prowess with the restorative ideals of socialist modernity, translating collective well-being into concrete form. Rising from a steep coastal slope overlooking the Black Sea, its massive structure defies gravity, supported by a central concrete core from which radial wings extend like the blades of an enormous gear. Seen from a distance, it feels simultaneously mechanical and organic, a hybrid of infrastructure and landscape.

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Who Should Win the 2026 Pritzker Prize?

February 11

As the architecture community looks ahead to the announcement of the 2026 Pritzker Architecture Prize, anticipation is once again building around who will be named this year's laureate. While the official date has yet to be confirmed, the annual reveal traditionally takes place in early March, marking one of the most closely watched moments in the architectural calendar. Established in 1979 by the Hyatt Foundation, the Pritzker Architecture Prize is widely regarded as "the profession's highest honor." Each year, it recognizes a living architect, or architects, whose work demonstrates a consistent and significant contribution to humanity and the built environment. Over the decades, the award has reflected shifting priorities within the discipline, highlighting practices engaged with social equity, environmental responsibility, material experimentation, and cultural continuity.

World Monuments Fund Backs 21 Locally Led Heritage Projects Addressing Climate Risks and Indigenous Knowledge Loss

February 11

World Monuments Fund (WMF) is an independent organization dedicated to safeguarding treasured places around the world that enrich lives and foster mutual understanding across cultures and communities. On February 10, WMF announced a $7 million commitment to support 21 heritage preservation projects launching in 2026. These investments advance work at sites included on the 2025 World Monuments Watch, WMF's nomination-based advocacy program, while also supporting new phases of conservation, planning, and training at additional heritage sites across five continents. The selected sites reflect a wide chronological and geographic range, from ancient cultural landscapes to modern architectural landmarks. The projects highlight the diversity of global heritage, spanning Mughal gardens and Ottoman religious complexes to modernist cinemas, industrial mining landscapes, Indigenous cultural routes, and sacred shrines, and point to the long-term cultural knowledge embedded in its preservation.

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Tropical Hotels in Costa Rica: Six Projects to Explore Climate-Sensitive Architecture in Central America

Subscriber Access | February 11

In the coastal and jungle regions of Costa Rica, high humidity and intense solar radiation dictate an architectural strategy centered on permeability rather than enclosure. Unlike the airtight envelopes required in cold climates to retain heat, Costa Rican architecture uses the building envelope as a climatic filter to maximize air exchange. The primary mechanism for managing these thermal gradients seems to be the oversized roof overhang. By extending the roof plane significantly beyond the floor plate, architects create a permanent buffer of deep shade that reduces solar gain and lowers the ambient temperature before air enters the structure. This strategy, combined with permeable or non-existent walls, allows for constant airflow. This is a critical technical requirement for humidity control and the prevention of material degradation through mold and rot.

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Material Mediation and Architectural Heritage

February 10

Preserving historic buildings requires simultaneously addressing technical, environmental, and regulatory demands while maintaining the material, cultural, and symbolic continuity of what already exists. As the understanding consolidates that the most sustainable building is the one that is already standing, and that preservation also involves construction knowledge, material traditions, and the social fabrics from which they emerged, these same buildings are increasingly confronted with more rigorous contemporary parameters. Energy efficiency, safety, carbon emission reduction, and regulatory compliance have become unavoidable references, placing architecture before a central tension: how to update what already exists without breaking the continuity that sustains its heritage value.

Níall McLaughlin Architects Wins International Competition for Museum of Jesus’ Baptism at Bethany, Jordan

February 10

Following the release of seven shortlisted proposals in 2025 through an online gallery, the Foundation for the Development of the Lands Adjacent to the Baptism Site has announced the winner of the international design competition for the Museum of Jesus' Baptism at Bethany, Jordan. Managed by Malcolm Reading Consultants, the six-month invited competition brought together architect-led multidisciplinary teams to design a museum and landscape project responding to the sacred character of Al-Maghtas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. After finalist interviews conducted by an international Advisory Panel, the team led by Níall McLaughlin Architects (NMLA) was selected as the competition winner.

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Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics Officially Open as Citywide Events Launch Across Italy

February 10

The Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics officially opened on Friday, February 6, with a ceremony staged across four locations in northern Italy. The main opening event took place at San Siro Stadium, one of Milan's most significant modernist landmarks, and combined dance and performing arts, referencing Italian culture with performances by international artists, including pop star Mariah Carey. Although several competitions had already begun on February 4, the opening ceremony marked the start of a broader programme of sporting, social, and cultural events distributed across Milan and the three Alpine host areas: Cortina d'Ampezzo, Valtellina, and Val di Fiemme. The Games are scheduled to run until February 22, concluding with a closing ceremony at the Verona Arena, ahead of the Paralympic Games, which will take place from March 6 to 15. As a large-scale international event, the Olympics place significant demands on sports infrastructure, transportation networks, accommodation, and tourism capacity, offering early indications of the longer-term urban, architectural, and territorial impacts the Games may leave behind.

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