Today, on the first Monday of October, we celebrate World Architecture Day. This year, the International Union of Architects (UIA) has set the theme "Design for Strength," a powerful call to action that resonates deeply with the UN's focus on urban crisis response. In a world facing unprecedented environmental and social disruptions, this theme challenges us to move beyond temporary fixes. It asks: How can our buildings and cities not only withstand shocks but also foster equity, continuity, and resilience?
While the concept of strength in architecture can easily evoke images of reinforced concrete and steel, a more profound interpretation is emerging, one that defines strength not as mere rigidity, but as a holistic capacity to endure and adapt. This includes many facets, from ecological resilience and stewardship to long-lasting concepts of social resilience or the long-lasting conservation of existing urban structures, all contributing to a built environment more able to respond to the multitude of crises faced by cities worldwide.
As countries in Africa emerged from colonialism in the mid-twentieth century, many expressed their independent identities through architecture. This process continues several decades later, exemplified by several new museums in West Africa, recently completed or in planning. Although varying in purpose and form, they have some common goals: addressing the need for restitution of many artifacts taken during colonialism and mostly kept in European museums; and defining a museum with local identity as opposed to a non-contextual import.
In the Dutch city of Hilversum, a municipal building completed in 1931 redefined the very idea of what a town hall could be. More than a house for local administration, the Hilversum Town Hall became the architectural expression of a community in transformation. With its tower rising above reflective ponds, its brick masses composed around courtyards, and its carefully detailed interiors, the building asserted that civic architecture could unite function with symbolism, efficiency with ceremony.
The architect behind this vision, Willem Marinus Dudok, was not only responsible for individual buildings but for the broader shaping of Hilversum itself. As a city architect and planner, he designed schools, housing districts, and parks, developing a language that fused Dutch craftsmanship with Modernist clarity. The town hall represented the culmination of this trajectory: a civic centerpiece where urban ambition, material refinement, and human scale converged in a single, coherent form.
Across China, a legacy of vast industrial structures stands decommissioned, as a direct result of the nation's economic shift to different forms of industry. These buildings are defined by their colossal height and deep structural capacity. Today, they present an architectural challenge for contemporary urban renewal and a new topic for heritage preservation. As they become absorbed by growing urban developments, architects are tasked with translating them into functional, public-facing assets. Thus, recent interventions are capitalizing on defining elements such as furnaces and chimneys to help reposition these massive complexes as critical urban landmarks.
When exposed to heat, the body activates several physiological mechanisms to maintain thermal homeostasis. However, these natural defenses are often overwhelmed in our modern cities.In an urban environment defined by heat-absorbing asphalt, concrete, and a lack of green spaces, these mechanisms become inefficient. If the surroundings are excessively hot, humid, or poorly ventilated—conditions amplified by the Urban Heat Island effect—the core body temperature begins to rise, and the risk of serious complications increases, ranging from cramps and exhaustion to potentially fatal heat strokes.
Architecture is shaped not only by buildings, but by the ideas that make them possible. Before the constraints of capital, regulation, and procurement, there is a moment when architecture is allowed to think aloud. The first confrontation with this fertile moment usually takes place in academia, in the thesis. It is not merely a requirement for graduation, but a space of speculative freedom where architecture formulates hypotheses, builds arguments, and tests positions.
For many, it is also the first opportunity to think beyond the structure of academic programs — a first chance to explore something more personal, unresolved, or even unreasonable. While often seen as an endpoint, the thesis is better understood as a beginning: the first engagement with architecture as a form of reasoning, where the project is not yet a response, but a question.
The North Gate of Taipei, also known as Beimen, stands not only as a reminder of the city's complex history but also as a witness to the changing urban landscape around it, and its shifting attitudes towards the urban spaces bordering heritage buildings. Initially a Chinese imperial frontier, spared from demolition during the Japanese colonial dominion, crowded by overpasses and highways in the postwar modernization efforts, it has recently regained its prominent status through the development of the plaza that now frames it. The gate's resilience through shifting urban priorities and architectural policies tells a story of heritage preservation not only through the built form, but also through the open spaces framing it.
"Dance, dance… otherwise we are lost." This oft-cited phrase by Pina Bausch encapsulates not only the urgency of movement, but its capacity to reveal space itself. In her choreographies, space is never a neutral backdrop, it becomes a partner, an obstacle, a memory. Floors tilt, chairs accumulate, walls oppress or liberate. These are architectural conditions, staged and contested through the body. What Bausch exposes — and what architecture often forgets — is that space is not simply built, it is performed. Her work invites architects to think not only in terms of materials and forms, but of gestures, relations, and rhythms. It suggests that architecture, like dance, is ultimately about how we inhabit, structure, and emotionally charge the spaces we move through.
Historically, architecture and dance have operated in parallel, shaping human experience through the body's orientation in space and time. From the choreographed rituals of classical temples to the axial logics of Baroque palaces, built space has always implied movement. The Bauhaus took this further, as Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet visualized space as a geometric extension of the body. This was not scenery, but spatial thinking made kinetic. In the 20th century, choreographers like William Forsythe and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker integrated architectural constraints into their scores, while architects such as Steven Holl, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Toyo Ito designed buildings that unfold as spatial sequences, inviting movement, drift, and delay.
Revitalisation of Historic Esna, Egypt. Image Courtesy of Takween ICD
Among the seven winners of this year's 16th Aga Khan Award for Architecture was theRevitalisation of Historic Esna in southern Egypt. Led by the Cairo-based firm Takween, the project was far more than a simple restoration. It was a comprehensive renewal effort that combined deep community engagement with the preservation of both tangible and intangible heritage. By creating thousands of jobs and restoring the historic center, the initiative offered a powerful alternative to demolition. The Aga Khan Trust lauded it as a 'replicable model for sustainable development'.
For most architecture enthusiasts, mentions of the city of Copenhagen will prompt images of pedestrian-friendly streets, suspended bike lanes, quaint water canals, and overall happy residents. The capital of Denmark has many accomplishments to boast: over 60 percent of its residents commute to work by bike, it was among the first cities to set up a strategic plan to achieve carbon neutrality, resulting in an 80% decrease since 2009, and it has become one of the most cited study cases for its urban planning and infrastructure. This reputation was officially cemented when UNESCO named Copenhagen the 2023 World Capital of Architecture, recognizing the city's enduring role as a laboratory for innovative contemporary design and people-centered urbanism. This September,the inaugural Copenhagen Architecture Biennial transforms the city into a global platform for dialogue under the theme "Slow Down," exploring how architecture can respond to global pressures by rethinking the pace of change. The occasion is also marked by the launch of ArchDaily's 5th edition of Next Practices Awards, solidifying the city's status as a nexus for contemporary architectural thought.
The architect's role has traditionally been relatively well-defined: design a building, direct the project, coordinate logistics, and guide construction through to completion. As specialised fields have proliferated, together with a rapidly changing social economy, the practice of architecture has diversified, opening multiple paths for how architects can contribute to society.
Since the 1980s, one of the most consistent shifts may have been the separation between the "design architect" and the "architect of record." Where a single office once carried a project from concept to completion, internationalisation—alongside cross-border work, licensure regimes, procurement models, and liability structures—has encouraged a split. Design teams increasingly set the conceptual and schematic direction, then hand over the design development to local record architects for technical detailing, approvals, and site execution. The model has clear advantages—sharper expertise, efficiency, and often profitability (or services offered at reduced fees)—but it also segments the profession and can distance authorship from delivery.
What, then, might the next shift be, and what new synergies could redefine the architect's role? How should architects adapt to the changing professional climate? One promising trajectory is a turn from singular, permanent objects toward ongoing placemaking—iterative, context-specific programmes that prototype, test, and refine spatial ideas in public. Rather than producing one large, iconic work that fixes a site for decades, this model privileges cycles of making, use, evaluation, and adjustment at the community scale.
Areal am Kronenrain / MONO Architekten. Image Courtesy of Gregor Schmidt
Marginalized in architectural discourse and often dismissed as purely functional, parking garages remain among the most ubiquitous structures in the urban landscape. Designed to accommodate the needs of private vehicles, they occupy central locations, shape skylines, and consume considerable resources, yet rarely receive the same attention — or architectural care — as cultural institutions, schools, or housing. Despite their prevalence, these buildings tend to fade into the background of daily life, treated as infrastructural necessities rather than as design opportunities.
This is beginning to change. As urban mobility undergoes profound transformations — from the decline of car ownership to the rise of electric vehicles and shared transport systems — the role of parking infrastructure is being redefined. Architects and planners are reimagining garages as adaptable frameworks that integrate public space, ecological functions, and mixed-use programs. These new approaches challenge the perception of parking as a residual typology and instead position it as a civic structure with the potential to support more inclusive, flexible, and sustainable urban models.
Comayagua is a city in central Honduras nestled in a valley with the same name. It holds a pivotal place in the nation's history, having served as its colonial and early republican capital for over 300 years. However, when the capital was relocated to Tegucigalpa in 1880, Comayagua's urban expansion halted, inadvertently preserving an ample and rich heritage. By the early 1990s, much of the city's architectural legacy was in a state of disrepair. Recognizing the urgent need to protect it, the governments of Honduras and Spain initiated a collaborative effort, with the objective of initiating a long-term restoration program to create a policy framework that would ensure the preservation of the city's historic center for years to come.
The Mir-i-Arab Madrasa. Image Courtesy of Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation
The inaugural edition of the Bukhara Biennial opened on September 5, 2025, bringing over 70 site-specific commissions by more than 200 participants from 39 countries to the historic core of the Uzbek city. Commissioned by the UzbekistanArt and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF) and Commissioner Gayane Umerova, the Biennial is described as the largest and most diverse cultural event in Central Asia to date. Curated by Diana Campbell under the theme Recipes for Broken Hearts, the ten-week event is staged across a constellation of newly restored sites, including madrassas, caravanserais, and mosques, all part of Bukhara's UNESCOWorld Heritage listing. Beyond an exhibition platform, the biennial is framed as part of a broader master plan, positioning culture as a catalyst for urban transformation and heritage renewal.
Architecture has always been more than bricks and mortar. It is equally constructed through words, ideas, and narratives. From ancient treatises to radical manifestos, from technical manuals to poetic essays, the written word has served as a spatial, pedagogical, and political tool within the field. Writing shapes how architecture is conceptualized, communicated, and critiqued — often long before, or even in the absence of, physical construction.
Historically, figures such as Vitruvius, Alberti, and Palladio employed writing to codify principles, project ideals, and legitimize architecture as a discipline. In the modern era, Le Corbusier, Adolf Loos, and Lina Bo Bardi wrote prolifically to expand the scope of architecture beyond form and function, often using publications as tools for persuasion and experimentation. The postwar period gave rise to new editorial strategies, as evident in the manifestos of Archizoom and Superstudio, and the polemical publications of Delirious New York and Oppositions, where writing served as both critique and project.
