Land Use: The Latest Architecture and News

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) launched a documentary and exhibition, "With an Acre", the third and final chapter of the series Groundwork, which explores how contemporary architects cultivate alternative modes of practice to address the ecological crisis. The documentary follows the work of architect Carla Juaçaba in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where she is developing pavilions in a coffee field where collectives resist extractive industrial agriculture. The narrative examines the role of architects in extractivist contexts facing land regeneration challenges and unstable climatic conditions, as well as the tools smallholder farmers can use to cope with the environmental and social consequences of colonial settlement, urbanization, and industrialization.

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The Lebanese Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 explores the land as a site of memory, intelligence, and resistance. Titled The Land Remembers, the exhibition is presented by the Collective for Architecture Lebanon, composed of Lynn Chamoun, Elias Tamer, Shereen Doummar, and Edouard Souhaid, and takes the form of a fictional public institution: the Ministry of Land Intelligens. The pavilion addresses the ongoing ecological crisis in Lebanon through an architectural lens, framing ecocide as both an environmental and social injustice. Positioned within this year's curatorial framework Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective. the project calls for a reevaluation of how architecture engages with damaged landscapes. In this interview with ArchDaily editors during the Biennale, the curators explain how the project impels a rethinking of architecture's foundational commitment to the land.

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Danish architecture firm Third Nature, together with Sophie Sahlqvist Landskab, Arkaia, ILC, and Artelia, recently shared images of Øhjem, their proposed strategic vision for the re-naturalization of Denmark's Greater Copenhagen region toward 2050. The regenerative plan is part of the Water's Ways program under the Agenda Earth initiative, an interdisciplinary project run by the Danish Association of Architects in collaboration with the Dreyers Foundation and the Danish Bar Association. Led by urbanist Boris Brorman Jensen, the program calls for long-term solutions to restore 15% of Danish agricultural land while also protecting 600,000 homes from water-related threats. Third Nature's Øhjem masterplan reimagines the 25 km Ramsø Dale as a step toward implementing the land management objectives outlined in the Danish Green Tripartite Agreement (Grøn Trepart), signed in June 2024.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

For the past three decades, YIMBYs and NIMBYs have been fighting pitched battles across the U.S. for the heart and soul of future development, but the housing crisis has only grown worse, especially since the crash of 2008, which changed so many things on the supply side.

This was followed a dozen years later by 2020, the strangest year of our lifetimes, which made those supply-side challenges even more pronounced. The roots of the problem, however, go back further than that, with mistakes made as long as 75 years ago now being repeated by completely new generations. Failure to understand those errors—and even why they are errors and not good practice—will perpetuate and exacerbate today’s crisis into future generations.

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Cities face much criticism with how they handle their car population, but have you ever thought about how much land use is dedicated to surface parking lots? In fact, it may be one of the most prominent features of the postwar city in the United States. Housing, community facilities, highway infrastructure, often garner much attention, but the amount of land dedicated just to park cars is astounding.

Young entrepreneurs gravitate to places where they can become the founders of a revitalized culture; where land is cheap and available and innovation is uninhibited by a status quo. Detroit, Michigan has become one of those places. The media gives us a portrayal of a wasteland, a post apocalyptic landscape of dilapidated homes and infrastructure. But there is plenty opportunity for start-ups to redefine Detroit's future. That it why young innovators and risk-takers are needed to bring new energy and awaken new markets within the city. A recent article by Chuck Salter for Fast Company identifies six entrepreneurs who have started businesses in Detroit. They vary from grassroots campaigns to inform people of opportunities within the city to small scale enterprises that bring retail and infrastructure to the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods.

More after the break.