Barcelona: The Latest Architecture and News

This week's review focuses on concrete responses to shared urban challenges, including housing affordability, long-term resilience, and the role of cultural and material innovation in shaping cities. The selection spans regulatory measures affecting housing markets in European cities, high-density residential and mixed-income proposals in New York, and major renewal and planning efforts in London, Barcelona, Ulaanbaatar, and Drammen. It also highlights research-driven and built projects in Chicago, Buenos Aires, Las Vegas, and Riyadh that explore circular construction, adaptive reuse, and new models for cultural and public infrastructure. Together, these worldwide projects offer a snapshot of how architecture and urban planning are addressing immediate pressures while laying the groundwork for more resilient and inclusive urban futures across diverse geographic and cultural contexts.

+ 17

Across Europe's major tourist cities, housing affordability has increasingly emerged as one of the most pressing urban challenges, prompting governments to reassess the role of short-term rentals within residential neighborhoods. In Barcelona, Mayor Jaume Collboni recently announced plans to phase out tourist short-term rentals entirely by 2028, framing the decision as part of a broader effort to protect residents' right to remain in the city. The announcement coincides with a €64 million fine imposed by the Spanish government on Airbnb for advertising unlicensed properties, placing Spain at the center of an intensifying debate over how tourism-driven accommodation models intersect with housing access, inequality, and urban stability.

+ 1

The UIA World Congress of Architects is an international event for architectural dialogue organised by the International Union of Architects (UIA, by its French acronym), a non-governmental organisation that unites national associations of architects from over 100 countries, representing more than one million professionals. The first UIA Congress of Architects, which also marked the institution's founding, was held in Lausanne in 1948 during the post-war reconstruction period. Since then, UIA congresses have been held every three years in a different city within a member country, serving as the organisation's main recurring event. In 2026, the Congress will be held in Barcelona, and UNESCO has consequently designated the city as the World Capital of Architecture 2026. Each Congress focuses on a key topic relevant to the profession, articulated through a central theme. Recent themes include Copenhagen 2023: "Sustainable Futures. Leave no one behind." and Rio 2020–2021: "All the worlds. Just one World." The topic for 2026 is "Becoming. Architectures for a Planet in Transition," welcoming renowned figures in contemporary architectural thought and practice for a broad and critical overview of the possible futures of architecture.

+ 7

Created by California surfers who wanted to bring the lines of surfing onto asphalt, skateboarding soon outgrew its role as a simple alternative for flat days. It established itself as a practice that reads the city through a different logic, reinterpreting steps, handrails, walls, and interstitial spaces as possible lines, challenges, and opportunities. Over time, it evolved into a global urban culture, a way of inhabiting and transforming public space through movement. What was once marginal has become a catalyst for urban activation, community building, and new uses for overlooked spaces. At its core, skateboarding reveals how many cities coexist within the same city, depending on who moves through them and how each person is able to reinterpret their surroundings.

+ 12

+ 16

+ 14

Innovation is at the core of architecture, expressed through new approaches to design, material experimentation, and, of course, ways of living. As a result, the conception of buildings and indoor spaces is constantly evolving. This evolution is especially evident in regions with a rich cultural heritage, such as Spain, where innovation reinterprets traditional ways of relating to space. This attentiveness to memory and daily life extends into interiors, where each intervention has the potential to actively reshape how people experience a space and open new possibilities for living and interaction.

+ 10

This curated selection of projects from the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale explores regeneration as a deliberate, intelligent process rooted in the specific conditions of a place. For decades, the Biennale has been a testing ground for architecture's most urgent ideas, allowing designers, researchers, and institutions to present visions that address evolving environmental, cultural, and social challenges. This year's projects reveal how regeneration, whether of an entire coastal city, a disused industrial site, or a neglected public space, requires more than replacing the old with the new. It calls for a precise reading of existing contexts, the preservation of embedded knowledge, and the careful integration of contemporary needs.

The eight selected works show that regeneration can emerge from multiple starting points: reactivating heritage through adaptive reuse, restoring ecological systems as part of urban planning, developing open and modular strategies for social housing renewal, or layering technological innovation onto historically rooted practices. While the scale of intervention varies, each project demonstrates a sensitivity to what is already there and existing, be it material resources, urban patterns, or cultural memory, and a willingness to work with these assets as catalysts for transformation. Together, they suggest that regeneration must start somewhere, and that its success lies in balancing innovation with the intelligence of what already exists.

+ 16

+ 21

Andanzas y visiones españolas is the book in which Miguel de Unamuno collects his experiences during excursions through Spain's cities and countryside, accompanied by friends and colleagues. More than a precise geographical description, the text consists of narratives in which each region and every feature of the territory leaves a deep imprint on his thought. The literary discourse actively weaves the diversity of setting, climate, and contextualism as foundational threads, presenting the territory not only as a physical place but also as a space for reflection and contemplation. This attentive engagement with the landscape—so diverse within Spanish architecture—also resonates in the built environment, fostering in contemporary practice a sensitive adaptation to the country's varied climatic conditions, both through design strategies and material choices.