Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

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From acoustic and thermal cladding systems to masonry units and textiles made from agricultural waste, experimentation with bio-based materials continues to drive sustainable solutions for the construction industry. Faced with the urgent need to rethink how we conceive of and interact with the materials that shape the built environment, professionals, researchers, and educators are addressing different design scales and project phases, recognizing the importance of reducing carbon emissions and the industry's environmental impact. In partnership with Barcelona-based Bagaceira Project, the Sugarcrete® acoustic and thermal panel prototype, developed by the University of East London (UEL), demonstrates how low-carbon design can transform agricultural waste into high-performance building materials.

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Established through a collaboration between the International Union of Architects (UIA) and UN-Habitat, the UIA 2030 Award recognizes projects that demonstrate how design can contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Announced during the 2026 World Urban Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan, the third cycle of the biennial award honored projects that address issues ranging from water management and affordable housing to participatory planning, access to public space, and climate resilience.

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The Songshan Lake Exhibition and Performance Center, designed by ZHA in collaboration with the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design, is a new cultural and sports facility in Dongguan City, China. It's located in the city's High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, a technological innovation and science city established in 2001 as a hub for research, development, and high-tech manufacturing. Covering a total floor area of 45,000 square metres, the new cultural centre was designed to be a civic and cultural anchor for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). The construction of the riverside building started in 2021, and the complex was officially opened on March 30, 2026.

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ArchDaily started inside a university, with two architecture students who believed that architectural knowledge should travel further than it did. Eighteen years later, that conviction hasn't changed — but the insights, the tools, and the opportunities have grown. We are launching the Student Ambassador Program to give the next generation of architects a direct role in bridging their university and the global architectural conversation.

For centuries, chickens have lived alongside people in settlements of every scale, from rural farms and village compounds to dense urban neighborhoods. Across much of the world, keeping a flock has been part of everyday life, providing eggs and meat to residents, or pest control for the surrounding agricultural land. The structures built to house chickens varied according to local materials, climate, and cultural practices, yet they shared a common purpose: to create a space where chickens and humans could coexist. The chicken coop is not a new architectural typology nor a contemporary response to urban living. Instead, it is a form that has continually adapted to changing social, environmental, and spatial conditions.

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The kitchen has evolved from a functional space into a shared environment and the heart of many households. Serving as the setting for daily rituals in countless families—and even collective practices in urban life—food brings people together, making the design of spaces that respond to these needs essential to everyday living. Beyond the various kitchen layouts, aesthetics, and configurations, the integration of appliances and equipment plays a key role supporting storage, preservation, and daily use that cooking demands. From innovative technologies to advanced materials, these elements shape contemporary kitchen spaces that bring together customs and cultures from diverse backgrounds.

There is a standard way of telling the history of architecture and food. It begins with the human decision to cultivate, to store, to distribute, to consume, and ends with the building that decision produced. In this version of events, food is the occasion and architecture is the response.

But what if the story runs differently? What if the tomato built Almería? What if the cod redesigned the North Atlantic? What if the soybean is, at this moment, constructing a port in Santos and demolishing a forest in the Cerrado simultaneously, and the architect has simply not been told? These are descriptions of processes already complete, or well underway, that have produced some of the most spatially consequential contemporary landscapes. Much of the built environment is shaped by the pressures, metabolisms, and territorial ambitions of what we eat. Architecture, in this, is often less a project than a consequence, and the discipline has been telling its own story from the wrong end.

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Lorcan O'Herlihy, the Irish-born architect, educator, and founder of Los Angeles-based Lorcan O'Herlihy Architects (LOHA), has died at the age of 66. His death was confirmed by the firm on June 14, 2026. Over a career spanning more than three decades, O'Herlihy became known for advancing an architectural practice centered on housing, urbanism, and social engagement, helping shape conversations around density, affordability, and the civic role of design in contemporary cities.

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A collective discussion titled "Beyond Recognition: Exploring the Role of Architectural Awards" is taking place on June 29 in Barcelona, on the occasion of the UIA World Congress of Architects 2026. The debate starts from the conviction that, in today's context of accelerating global challenges, the role of architectural awards must evolve. The event follows the conversation initiated during the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, where the relevance of awards was questioned, paving the way for a new conversation on how architectural awards can contribute to shaping practice, institutions, and public discourse. The discussion sessions are convened by representatives of major international awards: the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Ammodo Architecture Award, EUmies Awards, Holcim Foundation Awards, Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, and the OBEL Award, and are joined by prominent figures in the field of architecture and design.

Architecture continues to draw cities as though humans occupy them alone. Plans trace circulation routes, zoning maps assign functions, and buildings are evaluated according to human comfort, safety, and efficiency. Walking through cities across India and Southwest Asia reveals something much more complex. Dogs sleep beneath market stalls, monkeys move across rooftops, birds nest in temple towers and mosque façades, and insects pollinate urban landscapes hidden in plain sight. These species are woven into daily urban life as consistently as human occupants. Streets, courtyards, roofs, drainage systems, markets, and vacant lots are already occupied by multiple species simultaneously. Architectural thinking has been slower to account for this reality.

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Heatherwick Studio and SPPARC have unveiled the first phase of the transformation of Olympia, a historic exhibition complex in West London, into a mixed-use cultural destination. Originally opened in 1886, the Victorian landmark is undergoing a large-scale redevelopment that aims to reconnect the 14-acre site with the surrounding city through new public spaces, cultural venues, hospitality programs, and commercial facilities. The opening is marked by the completion of a new public canopy, which introduces elevated pedestrian circulation and serves as a gateway into the broader master plan while framing new views across Olympia's historic roofscape. The intervention forms part of a broader master plan that will be implemented through 2026 and 2027.

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Shamballa, an 8-hectare open-air laboratory and research site dedicated to sustainable living and advanced architectural 3D printing, was inaugurated on June 8, 2026, in the hills of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. The project is a collaboration between WASP, a 3D printing technology company, and Olfattiva, an aromatherapy and botanical perfumery company, hosting a makers laboratory, a medicinal botanical garden, and "Itaca," a self-sufficient farm built using 3D printing. The building was designed as a model for 3D-printed construction, representing a certified and replicable structure. The outdoor areas host research and development centers, forming an experimental "ecosystem" to develop new ideas in bio-construction and sustainable living, along with automated gardens, rainwater harvesting systems, and initiatives focused on micro circular economies.

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After Artemis II's return to Earth, NASA unveiled a new phased plan to establish a Moon Base. Although most of the media's attention went to rockets, budgets, and geopolitical competition, a quieter question was lingering for architects in the background: How can a human being actually live on the surface of the Moon, and for how long? The establishment of a permanent human presence on the Moon marks a fundamental shift in space exploration that requires a new architectural paradigm. In their presentation, NASA officials suggested the strategy would drift away from highly constrained, vehicle-dependent environments toward autonomous, site-adaptive, and eventually permanently habitable structures.

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It is afternoon in the summer, and the nave of the Sagrada Família is saturated with warm colors. Shafts of amber and crimson sweep across the stone floor, shift as a cloud passes over Barcelona, then deepen again. Around you, visitors slow without quite realizing it. Some raise their phones — not to capture the architecture, but to step into the light itself, positioning themselves in a pool of orange or gold as if the colours were something you could wear.

They are, without knowing it, doing exactly what Gaudí intended: surrendering, however briefly, to the sensation of being bathed in something larger than themselves.

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"By 2050, almost every child in the world — nearly 2.2 billion children — will be exposed to frequent heat waves." UNICEF's warning is often read as a public health forecast, but it is also a challenge to architecture and the way cities are built. As extreme heat intensifies across Asia, Europe, and beyond, thermal comfort should not be reduced to merely an indoor service delivered by machines. Air-conditioning has become a life-support system for many cities, especially in dense, humid, and rapidly urbanizing regions. Yet to rely on it as the default answer is to treat heat as something that can simply be moved elsewhere (and in the process generating extra heat) — expelled from interiors into streets, service alleys, energy grids, and the atmosphere. Its expansion increases energy demand, produces waste heat, and reinforces unequal access to comfort.

Heat, however, does not stop at the human body. It reorganizes the wider urban ecosystem: trees struggle with compacted soil and radiant paving; birds and insects lose habitat when planting is reduced to decorative greenery; aquatic systems warm, microbial life shifts, and materials absorb and release heat long after the sun has set. Heat is not simply a climatic problem to be escaped indoors. It is an urban actor that reshapes public space, labor, mobility, planting, material choices, and the fragile relationships between human and nonhuman life.

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Unlike many other activities that now take place entirely in digital environments, the final result of work in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry does not remain on a screen. Files become buildings, models transform into structures, and decisions made during the design process ultimately shape streets, neighborhoods, and entire cities. A building often lasts for decades, sometimes centuries, and the impacts of the choices made during its development extend far beyond the moment of delivery, influencing the daily lives of thousands of people.

The Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, near Basel, will begin opening its expanded campus to the public this autumn, with the full ensemble set to be accessible in January 2027. The project brings together the museum building designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and opened in 1997 with a series of new additions by Peter Zumthor, as well as several repurposed historic structures. Through the expansion, the institution increases its exhibition capacity while extending its grounds to include a larger public landscape. The development represents a new phase for the Fondation Beyeler, building on its focus on the relationship between art, architecture, and nature.

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BIG–Bjarke Ingels Group was selected to design the campus of a new STEM university in Arkansas, United States, on a site located near Bentonville's downtown, formerly home to Walmart's headquarters. The project comprises three buildings occupying two city blocks and was designed in collaboration with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, who will serve as the Architect of Record. The campus comprises around 422,000 square feet (nearly 39,200 square meters), including green spaces, public squares, an academic building, a makerspace, and a student residence. While the project was recently unveiled, the university intends to welcome its first class of students in 2029.

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