Housing Crisis: The Latest Architecture and News

Buildner, in collaboration with the City and County of Denver and AIA Colorado, has announced the winners of the Denver Affordable Housing Challenge, an international ideas competition exploring how affordability and design excellence can reinforce one another within the specific urban, social, and environmental context of Denver.

As the nineteenth edition in Buildner's Affordable Housing Challenge series, the competition invited architects and designers from around the world to respond to Denver's housing crisis through proposals operating at architectural, urban, and systemic scales. The brief did not prescribe a single site or typology but, rather, encouraged flexible strategies capable of addressing affordability, climate resilience, and community impact while contributing positively to Denver's urban identity.

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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During 2024, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) launched a three-part documentary and exhibition series titled Groundwork, exploring alternative modes of practice in light of the current climate crisis. The process began with a series of studio visits in search of offices addressing substantial questions for contemporary architecture through practice, culminating in the selection of three projects: Xu Tiantian's "minimal intervention" museum on Meizhou Island, Carla Juaçaba's community pavilions in a coffee field in Minas Gerais, and bplus.xyz (b+)'s European Citizens' Initiative for a new legal framework to facilitate the renovation and transformation of existing buildings. The latter, HouseEurope!, was recently recognized as the winner of the seventh edition of the OBEL Award and was showcased at the international exhibition of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025.

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Danish maritime architecture studio MAST, in collaboration with construction company BIK Bouw, has designed a new floating community for the disused Spoorweghaven dock in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The proposed neighborhood, which has received initial support from the Municipality of Rotterdam, includes over 100 apartments, public spaces, commercial units, and a recreational harbor near the city center. Floating architecture is MAST's response to the Netherlands' housing crisis, offering a modular, adaptable solution for building a wide range of structures on water.

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The Empire State Development (ESD) Board of Directors has approved a major office-to-residential conversion project at 5 Times Square, New York City, as announced by the New York state government. Originally built in 2002 as the headquarters for Ernst & Young, with Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) as the design architect, the building has been largely vacant since the corporation vacated the premises in 2022, with vacancy rates remaining around 75 percent. Gensler's proposal aims to repurpose this underutilized office space into a mixed-use complex, introducing up to 1,250 new homes, including 313 permanently affordable units.

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The Los Angeles City Council has approved the revised Citywide Adaptive Reuse Ordinance (Citywide ARO), which is planned to take effect in 2025. Building on the success of the 1999 ordinance, which facilitated the creation of over 12,000 housing units in Downtown LA, the updated policy aims to address the city's ongoing housing crisis and repurpose underutilized buildings.

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Devastating wildfires across Los Angelesa have resulted in widespread destruction, displacing thousands of residents, and necessitating a rapid and efficient rebuilding process. Two executive orders have been issued to expedite the rebuilding process, one by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and another by California Governor Newsom, both intending to remove significant regulatory hurdles and expedite project approvals.

The Massachusetts administration, under Governor Maura Healey, has unveiled a new housing-centric proposal for the controversial Boston Government Service Center designed by Paul Rudolph and opened in 1971. Previously proposed to be redeveloped by the architecture office NBBJ with offices and commercial spaces, the updated vision aims to transform the Erich Lindemann and Charles F. Hurley buildings into housing facilities as part of the state’s goal to address the housing crisis while allowing for the historic preservation of the Brutalist structure.

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The Spanish city of Barcelona, one of Europe's top tourist destinations, has announced a plan to ban apartment rentals to tourists by November 2028. The move, announced by Mayor Jaume Collboni, aims to alleviate the long-standing housing crisis, lower prices for residents, improve livability, and increase the city’s affordable housing stock. Over the past 10 years, the rise in short-term rentals has driven rents up by 68%, and the cost of buying a house by 38%, contributing significantly to a cost-of-living crisis.

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