In today's architectural discourse, masterplanning is increasingly recognized as a means to reconcile growth with long-term social, cultural, and environmental priorities. Beyond organizing buildings and infrastructure, these large-scale proposals aim to regenerate urban fabrics, adapt historic or underutilized sites, and establish frameworks for inclusive and resilient communities. Submitted by the ArchDaily community, the projects featured in this edition of Unbuilt Architecture highlight how masterplans can respond to contemporary challenges while preparing cities for an uncertain future.
Spanning diverse geographies, from Europe to the Middle East and the Americas, the selected projects reinterpret industrial complexes, cultural sites, and residential neighborhoods through strategies that prioritize sustainability, mobility, and collective identity. Many share a focus on regenerative design: reopening historic canals, creating climate-adapted public spaces, and introducing green corridors and community hubs to reconnect people with their environments. Together, they showcase how masterplanning is evolving into a critical tool for rethinking how cities grow, adapt, and sustain civic life.
The future of the architecture industry holds countless possibilities, as research in the domain progresses. One innovation is the ability for structures to be rendered acoustically invisible, absorb earthquake energy, or harvest electricity from the sounds around them. Qualities of this nature can help redefine the functionality and sustainability of buildings. Architects and scientists are at the forefront of this creation. What makes this possible are metamaterials that could offer alternative methods of designing good buildings.
Gyumri, the capital of Armenia's Shirak region and the country's second-largest city, was historically known for its culture and architectural heritage. While it was part of the Soviet Union, the city hosted many factories that turned it into a primary industrial center in the region, reaching a population of approximately 225,000 people. However, during the past decades, Gyumri has seen a considerable population decline as a consequence of a devastating earthquake that destroyed the city in 1988 and killed thousands of people. More than 30 years later, Gyumri's regeneration process is still unfolding. The city's ongoing efforts to restore its built environment and boost economic development offer valuable insights into how urban regeneration can be navigated in the aftermath of disaster.
On April 23, 2025, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake in the Sea of Marmara struck Türkiye's largest city, Istanbul, causing widespread panic and injuring over 230 people, primarily due to falls and panic-induced accidents. Over the course of the day, at least 272 aftershocks were recorded, with the strongest reaching a magnitude of 5.9. According to an initial statement by Minister of the Interior Ali Yerlikaya, there was no major destruction apart from the collapse of a single abandoned building. However, the event has reignited public and professional discourse around the city's preparedness for a much larger seismic event, long anticipated by experts monitoring the North Anatolian Fault.
In this roundup, ArchDaily consolidates this year's transformative updates in cities worldwide, organized into thematic clusters that capture the evolving nature of urban design and policy in 2024. Projects like the extensive renovations of Barcelona's La Rambla and the preservation efforts around Chicago's historic skyscrapers highlight preservation of urban heritage, while initiatives in Venice and Los Angeles respond to overtourism and housing pressures, balancing livability with growth. Meanwhile, ambitious master plans have been announced, including the revitalization of industrial sites in Tallinn and Connecticut, reflect how cities are reimagining their urban fabric. Finally, post-disaster rebuilding in Kharkiv and Türkiye underscores the urgency of resilience-driven design, ensuring that cities can endure and evolve even in challenging times. Together, these updates offer a glimpse into the global forces reshaping urban landscapes
Following the devastating earthquake that hit central Turkiye and northwest Syria in February 2023, the province of Hatay, Türkiye, was left with large sections of its urban fabric destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. Türkiye Design Council has commissioned design studio SOUR to contribute to the regeneration initiative as part of a wider design-led revitalization process.
As part of a wider design-led revitalization process, Türkiye Design Council has announced a new urban plan for the revitalization of Antakya and the wider Hatay province in Türkiye, an area heavily affected by the Türkiye-Syria earthquake on 6 February 2023. The master plan has been developed by Foster + Partners, Buro Happold, MIC-HUB, along with Turkish practices DB Architects, and KEYM Urban Renewal Centre. The plan covers a 30-square-kilometer area of Antakya, the capital district of Hatay, and an important urban center of antiquity known as Antioch. Eight design principles have been outlined to guide the rebuilding efforts in an attempt to maintain the spirit of the city, which suffered extensive damages estimated at 80 percent.
On April 3, Taiwan was hit by a 7.4 magnitude earthquake, the strongest one in 25 years. According to the latest reports, nine people have been killed, and at least 900 others have been injured by damaged buildings and landslides on the island. The seism was centered off the eastern coast of Hualien County, severely damaging buildings, some leaning at severe angles. However, the country’s strict building codes, developed in the past two decades in response to the area’s intense seismic activity, have prevented even more extensive damage and loss of life.
Rehabilitation involves repairing, renovating, altering, or reconstructing any building or structure. It addresses the need to significantly improve a building's failing features, primarily through strengthening or replacing elements to restore the structure's optimal performance. The impact of building rehabilitation on the physical environment is significant. It is a sustainable strategy for preserving the built environment and mitigating the construction industry's impact on climate change.
However, its social impact is also considerable when viewed as a fundamental framework for sustainable outcomes. Rehabilitation can serve as a model that brings community members together for inclusive repair and restoration of structures. This positively affects communal life quality, social integration, environmental sustainability, and community perception of local architecture.
As we reflect on the tumultuous events of 2023, it becomes evident that the challenges posed by changing environmental conditions have left an indelible mark on communities worldwide. In response, architects and urban planners have set out, searching for the ways in which their actions can help create safer environments for communities worldwide, responding with both fast-to-deploy emergency architectures and long-term strategies to build resilience and mitigate risks.
Beyond merely responding to events like the devastating earthquakes in Turkey, Syria, and Morocco, or the widespread flooding in Libya or Pakistan, professionals are attempting to take proactive approaches, developing strategies that extend from predictive modeling to the application of re-naturalizing techniques or the ongoing research into the physics of safer and resilient structures.
The terms resiliency and sustainability, although similar in meaning, refer to different design approaches in the context of architecture and cities. Sustainability involves the preservation of natural resources to uphold ecological equilibrium, while resiliency entails the ability to rebound, adapt, and persist in moments of adversity. These concepts greatly influence and complement each other, especially in cases of designing disaster-resilient buildings. Conventional design processes relating to resilient infrastructure have been based on principles of structural robustness and integrity as a measure against anticipated natural disasters. However, sustainable resiliency points at the opportunity of reinforcing buildings by embedding them in biological and ecological systems.
The Türkiye Design Council (TDC) has gathered 13 design practices, including Foster + Partners and Bjarke Ingels Group, to contribute to the revitalization of the historic province of Hatay, an area severely damaged by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in February this year. Foster + Partners has been selected to lead the design and planning of the new master plan for the city of Antakya, known to antiquity as Antioch, while several other offices including Turkish practices DB Architects and KEYM (Urban Renewal Center) will work together to create a vision for the rebuilding of the city. The master plan is expected to be revealed in its entirety in 2024.
As the world grapples with the effects of climate change, natural disasters like flooding, and the spread of incontrollable wildfires are increasingly threatening cities and inhabitants. While architecture and urban planning cannot prevent these occurrences, they still possess strategies to minimize the damage associated with these events and help protect the citizens. Unfortunate events over the course of last year, like the earthquake that hit central Turkey and north-west Syria this February or the more recent earthquake in western Afghanistan, the flooding and dam failures in Libya, and the wildfires that devastated the city of Lahaina, Hawaii, demonstrate the urgency of implementing preventative and mitigation measures in addition to creating procedures for emergency intervention. This article explores the strategies and resources available to architects and urban planners to address these challenges in three types of natural disasters: flooding, wildfires, and earthquakes.
Friday, September 8th, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit Morocco’s High Atlas Mountain range. The epicenter was located just 72 kilometers southwest of Marrakech, the country’s fourth-largest city and a popular tourist destination. The quake is the strongest to hit the nation’s center in more than a century. Estimates put the number of victims at over 2,000 and more injured, but as several towns and villages remain inaccessible high in the mountains, the number is expected to increase. In addition to the human toll, several historical landmarks, including UNESCO World Heritage sites, have been affected, while eyewitnesses in the foothills of the mountains report that several remote towns have been completely destroyed, according to CNN.
When it comes to seismic resistance, there are a number of myths that question the ability of wood to adequately perform in the event of an earthquake. However, its ductility allows it to deform plastically without breaking, absorbing and dissipating the energy generated by movement and vibration. Furthermore, unlike steel or concrete, wood is a lightweight material with a good strength-to-weight ratio, enabling it to withstand seismic forces without adding excessive load to the construction. This has been extensively verified in smaller-scale structures around the world, but how does a high-rise mass timber building behave in the face of an earthquake?
To dispel doubts, the Tallwood Project recently erected a 10-story building made of cross-laminated timber (CLT) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The structure was tested on a shake table that simulated the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, magnitude 6.7, and the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan, magnitude 7.7.
Shigeru Ban Architects, in collaboration with Voluntary Architects’ Network, has developed an improved version of the temporary housing developed to help those affected by the recent Turkey-Syria earthquake. The new prototype represents an upgrade of the paper tube system deployed in northwestern Turkey after the 1999 earthquake. This new version takes into consideration matters of efficiency and the need to minimize construction time on site.
A major 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit central Turkey and north-west Syria this Monday, February 6, with a second 7.4 magnitude quake reported a few hours later in the same region, according to reports from the Guardian. Among the most affected areas is Gaziantep, located 150 miles from the border with Syria and 50 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter in Kahramanmaraş. Tremors were felt as far away as Lebanon, Greece, Israel, and the island of Cyprus. Authorities are still assessing the number of victims, as local and international rescue teams have been deployed to search for survivors. Early estimates report that over 1,700 buildings have collapsed or have been critically damaged, as confirmed by Turkey's Vice President Fuat Oktay.
‘’We’re in a seismic area. Beirut has been buried seven times, so it has to resist any earthquake, and that’s why it also resisted the explosion in the port,’’ expresses Lina Ghotmeh in conversation with Louisiana Channel, in regards to the Stone Garden. A building constructed with resilience in mind, in a city that has been buried within rubble and rebuilt multiple times.
Lina Ghotmeh was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at her studio in Paris in November 2021. Renowned for her Humanist approach to Architecture, the Stone Garden offers a very personal relationship as the first building to be constructed in Ghotmeh’s hometown of Beirut. Positioned on the edge of the city center, it is very much a form of vernacular architecture echoing the lives of the people who reside here.
