Heritage | Tag | ArchDaily

Intestines of a Building: Aziza Chaouni on Architecture’s Systems and Resources

February 26

In an age so obsessed with skincare and appearances, few architects are truly interested in the intestines of our buildings. With a practice rooted in contextual awareness and technical pragmatism, sensitive to the needs of the people it serves and to resource limitations, Moroccan architect Aziza Chaouni focuses on the hidden systems that allow architecture to be. Over the past two decades, she has been working on projects across different geographies, particularly in the Saharan region, actively engaging with its communities and heritage.

Currently leading the South–North (SoNo) Lab for Sustainable Construction and Conservation at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, Chaouni brings to the academic realm her architectural expertise in operating under pressing constraints, advocating for reciprocal collaboration between the Global South and the Global North. ArchDaily had the opportunity to speak with Aziza about her experience in Africa and how it can foster more sustainable ways of designing buildings for the future of our cities.

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La Sagrada Familia’s Milestone and New Housing Futures: This Week’s Review

February 26

This week began with the World Day of Social Justice, foregrounding urgent questions of labor rights, spatial equity, and resource governance, and framing architecture as both a product of and a response to the social systems that shape access to land, housing, and opportunity. The announcement of the 15 winning projects of the 2026 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards highlighted a global cross-section of built works recognized for their architectural quality, innovation, and social impact, offering a snapshot of contemporary practice across scales and geographies. This week's news prompts a broader reflection on architecture's civic responsibility, with heritage and community-building through cultural architecture emerging as central themes. Housing, meanwhile, anchors another critical strand of the discussion with three highlighted initiatives: a manifesto reframing housing not as a market commodity but as a civic right and collective project grounded in care; a large-scale waterfront regeneration masterplan responding to regional housing demand through coastal transformation; and a timber residential project that explores the potential of wood in medium-density housing.

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Hospitality as Heritage Catalyst: 5 Adaptive Reuse Strategies Across Diverse Latitudes

Subscriber Access | February 24

Hospitality-driven programs, specifically coffee shops and social hubs, are partly defined by their role as "third places": social anchors that bridge the gap between private and public life. Unlike residential or commercial office programs that require rigid partitioning for privacy and utility, they rely on expansive, open-plan environments. This allows for an architectural strategy of minimal intervention, allowing the structural envelope to remain intact. By avoiding the subdivision of space, architects maintain uninterrupted sightlines to original masonry, timber frames, or decorative ceilings, ensuring the building's historical narrative remains the protagonist. Simultaneously, the commercial activity provides the necessary maintenance and public engagement to ensure the site's continued existence.

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Who Decides What Is Worth Preserving? Power and Heritage in Latin America

February 23

When we enter a museum, walk through a historic center, or review a country’s list of protected heritage sites, we rarely think about the process behind those choices. Who decided, on behalf of all of us, that certain objects, places, and architectures deserved to be preserved and disseminated, while others were discarded?

In most cases, the power of decision lies with specialized professionals—historians, museologists, architects, geographers. But on what basis are these decisions made? Can the complexity of history be reduced to a checklist? Or, more fundamentally, which version of history underlies these choices?

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Land of Wells: Designing for Saharan Nomads

Subscriber Access | February 22

In some languages, the very word for building refers to its immovability. The discipline of engineering related to buildings is referred to as statics. Thus, architecture is closely related to the fixed and the immobile. And yet, for millions of nomadic people around the world, shelters must be of a light and distinctly movable structure, while home is the vast landscape in which they reside. Such lifestyles, which carry centuries of traditions, are constantly under threat from the pull factors of sedentary life in towns and cities. In Tunisia, one project acknowledges the risk of heritage loss and attempts to improve conditions for nomadic herders.

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Heritage Without Permanence: When Architecture Endures by Disappearing

February 20

A Gothic cathedral can take centuries to complete. A world exposition pavilion may stand for six months. A ritual structure in Kolkata rises and vanishes within five days. Yet each draws pilgrimage, shapes collective memory, and reorganizes urban life. If heritage has long been defined by what endures, architecture repeatedly shows that cultural authority can also belong to what gathers people.

For much of the twentieth century, conservation frameworks privileged permanence. The Venice Charter, adopted by the International Council on Monuments and Sites, focused on safeguarding monuments and their material authenticity. Cultural value was tied to physical fabric such as stone, brick, and timber. To protect heritage was to preserve what stood. The logic felt stable, even self-evident.

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Between Materials and Memory: Three Madrid Architecture Practices on Heritage Rehabilitation

February 17, 2026

The role of heritage rehabilitation in the contemporary architectural landscape is shaped by a wide range of research, beliefs, memories, and efforts aimed at redefining and strengthening our built environment. When undertaking a transformation, renovation, or preservation project, architects can employ diverse strategies and tools to encourage a meaningful coexistence between what already exists and what is newly introduced. Together with three Madrid-based architecture practices—SOLAR, Pachón-Paredes, and BA-RRO—we set out to engage in conversation and explore their creative processes and ideals, recognizing the complexity and value of historic buildings as repositories of materials, structures, and construction techniques from other eras.

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London’s Southbank Centre Receives National Heritage Protection After 35-Year Campaign

February 16, 2026

The Southbank Centre is a cultural complex in London built between 1963 and 1968 and widely regarded as a representative example of British Brutalism. Today, the site hosts a wide range of events, including visual arts, theatre, dance, classical and contemporary music, literature, poetry, and debate. The building was designed by a team from the Architects' Department of the London County Council, led by architect Norman Engleback. It became a controversial example of modern architecture following its opening in October 1967, when engineers voted Queen Elizabeth Hall "the supreme ugly" in a poll of new buildings, and the Daily Mail referred to it as "Britain's ugliest building." Fifty-nine years later, on February 10, 2026, the complex was granted Grade II listed status by the UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), following a 35-year campaign advocating for its protection as modern architectural heritage.

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Heritage in Motion: Bangkok’s Buildings That Continue to Become

February 15, 2026

Architectural heritage is not only what a building was, but what it continues to become: a long process of building, rebuilding, and re-occupying over time. Where opportunities allow, this continuity produces a layered condition—one in which visitors can witness, experience, and feel the gradual shifting of a building's fabric, materiality, spatial order, and patterns of use, and occasionally even participate in that transformation.

Yet many projects—particularly those driven primarily by commercial imperatives—do not choose to value, or even to recognize, this slower work of adaptive reuse and heritage continuation. Developments governed by a numbers-only logic often opt for the easier path of demolition and rebuild: maximizing plot ratio, GFA, and rentable area with the efficiency of a clean slate. And still, every now and then, an opportunity surfaces that allows us to see—and to enjoy—the city's process of architectural "heritaging" in real time.

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Shaping Architectural Continuity: 25 Revitalization Projects Across Historic, Industrial, and Natural Sites

February 13, 2026

Heritage sites constitute complex spatial archives in which architecture, history, and collective memory converge. They encompass a wide spectrum of contexts—from archaeological remains, ancient and historic townscapes, UNESCO-listed landscapes, to early modern civic structures and industrial infrastructures. Yet these environments confront challenges: climate change, urban transformation, disaster, shifting social needs, and the gradual erosion of material fabric. Revitalization and restoration projects respond to these conditions by positioning architectural and spatial practice as an active mediator between preservation and the contemporary topologies.

In current practice, conservation is understood as a creative process of adaptation and reinterpretation that serves both communities and inhabitants. At the same time, monumental architecture continues to define the identity and landscape of a place for wider audiences and future generations. Architects and planners are called upon to negotiate sensitive historic contexts while introducing new programs, techniques, and spatial experiences. They exemplify diverse design approaches, including precise structural interventions, climate-responsive strategies, and meticulous material restoration, alongside the thoughtful insertion of new architectural elements. Equally important is their engagement with vernacular knowledge and materiality, which preserves the locality and cultural specificity of each site.

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World Monuments Fund Backs 21 Locally Led Heritage Projects Addressing Climate Risks and Indigenous Knowledge Loss

February 11, 2026

World Monuments Fund (WMF) is an independent organization dedicated to safeguarding treasured places around the world that enrich lives and foster mutual understanding across cultures and communities. On February 10, WMF announced a $7 million commitment to support 21 heritage preservation projects launching in 2026. These investments advance work at sites included on the 2025 World Monuments Watch, WMF's nomination-based advocacy program, while also supporting new phases of conservation, planning, and training at additional heritage sites across five continents. The selected sites reflect a wide chronological and geographic range, from ancient cultural landscapes to modern architectural landmarks. The projects highlight the diversity of global heritage, spanning Mughal gardens and Ottoman religious complexes to modernist cinemas, industrial mining landscapes, Indigenous cultural routes, and sacred shrines, and point to the long-term cultural knowledge embedded in its preservation.

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Architectural Heritage Fund: 50 Years of Reimagining Heritage

February 10, 2026

To celebrate the Architectural Heritage Fund's 50th anniversary, we have put together 50 Years of Reimagining Heritage, which tells the story of the difference heritage reuse can make in people's lives and in communities. Across the year, our exhibition will travel to each part of the UK, with openings in Belfast, Glasgow, Cardiff and London. We hope by showcasing these extraordinary stories to inspire more people to get involved in saving local historic buildings to improve places, empower people, and secure a sustainable future for built heritage. For opening dates in each location, see Coming Up below.

Rooms as Heritage: How Interior Typologies Carry Cultural Memory

February 06, 2026

For decades, heritage has been easiest to recognize from the street. We protect facades, skylines, and monuments because they are visible, stable, and legible as cultural assets. Yet most of what we remember about living is how we eat together, withdraw, argue, care, and rest, which happen far from view. It happens inside rooms. As open plans quietly give way to thresholds, corridors, and enclosures, a deeper question emerges: what if cultural memory survives not in what architecture shows, but in how it is lived?

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Heritage After Failure: What We Will Keep From Today’s Architectural Mistakes

February 04, 2026

Architectural heritage is often described as what survives time. Yet survival does not explain why certain buildings are preserved while others disappear. Many works now protected as cultural heritage were once criticized, contested, or openly rejected; they were accused of being socially misguided, materially flawed, or symbolically excessive. Over time, however, these same shortcomings have become central to their meaning as heritage emerges as a slow and unstable process of interpretation.

Contemporary architecture operates under intense scrutiny, pressured by environmental responsibility, social equity, economic volatility, and accelerated technological change. Buildings are expected to perform ethically, efficiently, and symbolically, often simultaneously. As a result, architectural failure is no longer an exception but an increasingly common condition. Projects age faster, materials reveal limitations sooner, and urban strategies quickly fall out of sync with shifting political, social, and environmental realities.

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Rethinking Heritage: ArchDaily’s February Editorial Focus

February 03, 2026

"We know we are not born to die," often said Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha. "We are born to continue." In architecture, this idea of continuity lies at the heart of heritage, not as a static inheritance, but as something that endures, transforms, and is constantly reinterpreted. Yet what continues, and what is allowed to disappear, is never neutral. Decisions about preservation are shaped by power, memory, and value, raising a fundamental question for contemporary practice: who defines what is worth carrying forward, and for whom?

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United Nations’ Africa Hall Restoration in Ethiopia Receives 2026 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize

January 23, 2026

World Monuments Fund (WMF) is an independent organization dedicated to safeguarding significant places that enrich people's lives and foster mutual understanding across cultures and communities. Since 2008, the World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize has been a biennial award recognizing outstanding achievements in the conservation of buildings emblematic of the modernist architectural movement. The prize honors individuals and organizations that revitalize modern built heritage through innovative and sensitive architectural interventions.

On January 22, 2026, WMF and Knoll announced the Australia-based architecture firm Architectus as the recipient of the 2026 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize for its conservation of the United Nations' Historic Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The jury recognized the project for reestablishing a significant work of African modernism as an active venue for diplomacy and cultural exchange. In addition to the main prize, the jury also awarded Paul Rudolph's Umbrella House in Sarasota, Florida, United States, with the Stewardship Award for Modernist Homes.

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Saving the City Fabric: Blanche Lemco van Ginkel and the Preservation of Old Montreal

Subscriber Access | January 14, 2026

The architectural history of North American cities in the 20th century is often characterized by the pursuit of urban renewal. In the United States, Boston, Portland, and San Francisco are just some examples of when municipal governments prioritized high-speed vehicular infrastructure over the existing urban fabric. In Canada, Montreal would have followed this trajectory if not for the intervention of several figures throughout its history, most notably Blanche Lemco van Ginkel (1923–2022). A Harvard-trained planner and architect who, along with her husband Sandy Van Ginkel, advocated for the preservation of urban heritage while applying the principles of modernist infrastructure.

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“For Decades We Have Valued the New More than the Old”: In Dialogue with OBEL Award 2025 Winners HouseEurope!

Subscriber Access | January 12, 2026

The potential of existing buildings to shape cities and communities in flux through reuse and adaptation is the key focus of HouseEurope! and their activism: addressing the pressing challenge across much of Europe, where it is often easier, cheaper, and faster to demolish buildings than to renovate. For decades, construction policies, industrial practices, and market systems have favored new development, often undervaluing the cultural, social, and environmental significance of existing structures. For their work advocating systemic change in architecture, HouseEurope! received the 2025 OBEL Award under the theme "Ready Made." In a conversation with ArchDaily, collective members of HouseEurope! Alina Kolar and Olaf Grawert discussed the organization's approach to architecture, policy, and collective action.

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