Bjarke Ingels Group has just won the competition to design the new Sankt Lukas Hospice and Lukashuset, an 8,500 m² palliative care center envisioned as a village surrounded by nature. Rooted in the history of the Sankt Lukas Foundation, which dates back to the 1930s, the project will expand Denmark's palliative care facilities, tripling current capacity to accommodate around 2,100 patients annually.
In October 2025, the Fernando Romero Foundation will officially open the doors of La Cuadra San Cristóbal, one of the late projects of Mexican architect and Pritzker Prize winner Luis Barragán. The goal is to transform the architectural complex into a cultural campus open to the public, with a curatorial program focused on exploring the dynamic interaction between architecture and art.
The project, known as Cuadra San Cristóbal, was built between 1966 and 1968 and includes a house, a stables building, and auxiliary facilities such as the Fuente de los Amantes (Fountain of the Lovers). The complex showcases characteristic elements of Barragán's Latin American modernism, including his use of color and the integration of shadows, textures, and sounds into the experience of space.
Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), in collaboration with ALB-Architect, has unveiled the design for the Opera & Ballet Theatre of Kosovo, a new cultural venue set to reshape Prishtina's performing arts landscape. As the first opera house in the Republic of Kosovo, the theatre will serve as a home for the country's Philharmonic, Ballet, and Opera, marking a significant step in the development of Kosovo's artistic institutions. The project includes multiple performance halls and a public plaza, reinforcing its role as a cultural hub within the capital.
Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) has announced the five finalist projects for the 2025 Americas Prize, highlighting projects from Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The announcement was made by MCHAP Director Dirk Denison and this year's Jury Chair Maurice Cox. The biennial award established in 2013 by the Illinois Institute of Technology's College of Architecture, recognizes exceptional architectural achievements across North, Central, and South America. Considering projects completed between June 2022 and December 2023, it aims to highlight those projects that significantly contribute to their communities and elevate professional standards.
The winning project will be announced on May 5 during a symposium at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The winning authors will receive the MCHAP Award, a chair at IIT's College of Architecture, and a $50,000 research and publication grant.
Architecture competitions have long been a means for nations to shape their identity, cultural landscapes, and built environment. They provide a platform for international architects to contribute to national projects, often reflecting broader ambitions of modernization and global recognition. In 1976, Bahrain launched potentially the first major architectural competition—a call for designs for a National Cultural Centre, bringing some of the world's leading architects into the Gulf's emerging architectural discourse. Though the winning design by Timo Penttilä was never built, the competition remains a key moment in Bahrain's history, illustrating the challenges of translating external visions into local realities.
The Latin American territory encompasses a vast diversity of climates, atmospheres, and temperatures across its entire expanse. Amid forested landscapes, jungles, or coastal settings, many architects choose to design cabins immersed in natural surroundings, seeking to foster a deeper connection with nature by distancing themselves from the city. While experimenting with different materials and local techniques enhances a stronger bond with the site's traditions and creates a distinct architectural identity for each region, the integration of technological innovations and new construction materials can offer greater resilience to climate change, improve short- and long-term maintenance, optimize construction timelines, and address other key considerations.
In recent years, working from home has become increasingly common, creating a need for domestic spaces that accommodate both professional and personal life. This is especially true for artists, where the integration of living and working spaces is essential. Often, these spaces must also serve as areas for exhibiting artistic production, such as paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and more.
This fusion of work and living environments has influenced architectural and interior design trends, prioritizing flexibility, multifunctionality, and aesthetics that foster both creativity and comfort. Open-plan layouts, modular furniture, and adaptable lighting solutions are now key elements in designs that support the seamless coexistence of work and personal life.
The term "Kop," traditionally referring to the summit of a hill or peak, reflects the origins of passionate fan gatherings in football stadiums. In the UK, a "Kop Stand" specifically designates a typically single-tiered stand situated at the goal end of a stadium, renowned for housing the loudest and most dedicated supporters of a football club. Sports and entertainment-focused architecture office Populous has just released the design of the new Kop Stand for Wrexham AFC's stadium. The proposal pays homage to Wrexham's architectural character by incorporating a brick façade pattern that mirrors the city's traditional building styles.
The 2025 edition of Salone del Mobile.Milano has just announced its opening dates and events program. The 63rd edition is set to take place from April 8 to 13 at Fiera Milano, Rho. This year's event will bring together over 2,000 exhibitors from 37 countries, reinforcing its role as a strategic platform for the design industry. The fair will highlight industrial manufacturing, sustainable innovation, and emotional intelligence as key themes, aiming to shape the future of design.
In the early 20th century, tuberculosis presented a significant public health challenge across Europe, prompting the construction of specialized facilities for patient recovery. The Paimio Sanatorium in Finland stands as a groundbreaking example of architecture's potential to promote healing. Designed by Alvar Aalto between 1929 and 1933, the sanatorium combined innovative design principles with a deep understanding of human needs, setting new benchmarks for healthcare architecture.
Alvar Aalto, a leading figure in modernist architecture, envisioned the Paimio Sanatorium as more than a functional response to a medical crisis. He crafted a space where architecture became an instrument of care, integrating natural light, ventilation, and harmonious forms to support physical and emotional well-being. This project marked a turning point in Aalto's career, showcasing his ability to blend modernist ideals with a profound sensitivity to context and human experience.
Examining the houses that architects designed for themselves can provide insight into their design process, priorities, and philosophy. While often reduced in scale, these personal residences offer a peek into the architects' mindsets and the way in which they translate their ideas into lived spaces without having client-imposed restrictions on the end result. The structures also reflect their creators' personal values, lifestyles, and aesthetic preferences.
These projects are often experiments and testing grounds for their own design principles, pushing the boundaries of architectural expression. From Ray and Charles Eames, who ended up spending their lives in an experimental house created for prefabrication, to Frank Gehry, who used his Santa Monica Dutch colonial house to test out the ideas of deconstructivism that would later come to define his career, these projects represent showcase a different face of the design process of world-renowned architects.
For almost four decades, ABB, the Swedish-Swiss multinational leader in electrical engineering, has been at the cutting edge of innovation and expertise. A standout initiative in their portfolio is the Frozen Music video series, a video series showcasing exceptional architectural projects and the architects who create them. As Katrin Förster, Global Key Account Manager at ABB, explains, 'When producing an episode for Frozen Music, I always begin by sending a bespoke questionnaire to the architect.' For Episode #24, a conversation with Mustafa Chehabeddine, Design Director at KPF, helped shape the narrative, emphasizing the formal and functional qualities of Ziraat Bank's new headquarters in Istanbul.
The OBEL Award is an international prize for architectural practice, presented annually by the Henrik Frode Obel Foundation. The jury, composed of representatives from firms such as Snøhetta and MVRDV, alongside professionals from other disciplines, selects a theme to guide the choice of winners for each edition. The goal is to steer proposals toward solutions that foster dialogue and generate knowledge on emerging issues, aiming to promote architecture in service of social and ecological development worldwide. For its seventh edition, the 2025 call focus is Ready Made, targeting projects that place reuse and repurposing at the core of architecture for the common good.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced that Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, founders of the practice SANAA, will receive the 2025 Royal Gold Medal for architecture. Awarded on behalf of His Majesty the King, the medal is one of the highest honors in the field, recognizing what RIBA describes as SANAA's contribution to shaping contemporary architecture through simplicity, light, and refined design.
The concept of "sponge cities" has gained prominence since it was introduced by Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu, founder of Turenscape, and was officially adopted as a national policy in China in 2013 to combat urban flooding. This approach prioritizes nature-based infrastructure such as wetlands, rain gardens, and permeable pavements, creating landscapes with porous soil where native plants can thrive with minimal maintenance. When it rains, these systems absorb and slow down water flow, reducing flood risks. In contrast, traditional concrete- and pipe-based drainage solutions, though widely used, are costly, rigid, and require frequent maintenance, sometimes even making cities more vulnerable to flooding due to blockages and overflows.
The site of Expo 2020 Dubai is scheduled to undergo a major transformation, developed by UNStudio in collaboration with several other firms. The master plan aims to reimagine the location of the first World Expo held in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia into a new urban center, integrating the structures of the original Expo with new developments to create a cohesive and engaging new district. The development, part of Dubai's 2040 Urban Master Plan, leverages approximately 80% of the existing infrastructure and buildings from Expo 2020, minimizing waste and maximizing the value of previous investments.
We invite you to participate in the ArchDaily 2025 Building of the Year Awards. We ask you to recognize and reward the projects that you feel are creating the largest impact in the built environment, that ArchDaily has published on our projects database in 2024. By nominating and voting, you form part of an interdependent, impartial, distributed network of jurors and peers that has consistently helped us celebrate architecture of every scale, purpose, and condition, from countries large and small, and architects of all descriptions. Over the coming weeks, your votes will result in 4000 projects being filtered down to just 15 – representing the best in each project category on ArchDaily.
Park Hill, a large social housing complex in Sheffield, stands out as one of the most ambitious examples of modernist architecture in post-war Britain. Designed in 1961 by Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith, its innovative concept of "streets in the sky" aimed to combine high-density housing with the community spirit of traditional neighborhoods. By the late 20th century, the complex had fallen into severe neglect, marked by social problems and structural degradation that undermined both its functionality and reputation. Gradually, Park Hill became synonymous with the failure of modernism, carrying a heavy social stigma and marginalizing its residents.
Starting in the 2000s, significant efforts began to reverse this narrative through a two-phase revitalization process. The first phase, led by Urban Splash in collaboration with the architectural firms Hawkins\Brown and Studio Egret West, focused on preserving and enhancing the building's historical elements while introducing modern interventions to create a livable, functional, and attractive space. This stage demonstrated the potential of adaptive reuse in revitalizing communities and reclaiming architectural icons. The second phase of the renovation, carried out by the firm Mikhail Riches, sought to build on this initial work by introducing new elements that deepened the connection between the existing spaces and contemporary living. With an approach that combined historical sensitivity and architectural innovation, Mikhail Riches continued the process of transforming Park Hill into a landmark example of how modernist architecture can be adapted to meet current needs without losing its original identity.
