Tag: public-space | ArchDaily

Designing Streets Through the Lens of Care

Eduardo Souza — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Reflecting on the modern city, Walter Benjamin described the flâneur, a figure who walks without a defined destination, attentive to details, chance encounters, and the narratives that emerge from urban space. This way of being in the city, shaped by observation and openness to the unexpected, has long been in tension with the rationalist and functionalist ideals that came to guide urban planning throughout the twentieth century. Streets designed primarily for efficiency and flow rarely leave room for detours, pauses, or the coexistence of different rhythms of life.

Cultural Venues, Fresh Perspectives on Public Space and One Month until the Winter Olympics: This Week’s Review

Antonia Piñeiro — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 05:30:00 +0000

This week's news compilation brings together current discussions around public and collective space, cultural infrastructure, and long-term urban transformation across diverse geographic contexts. From shared management models redefining public space ownership in cities such as Paris and New York, to large-scale event-driven initiatives linked to Milano Cortina 2026 and the World Urban Forum in Baku, the selected projects and initiatives highlight how governance, culture, and infrastructure intersect in contemporary practice. These themes are further developed through a mix of strategic planning processes, including international test planning efforts in Northern Lviv, and built projects spanning education, culture, and temporary architecture, from a new dental teaching facility in Blantyre, Malawi, to restored and newly opened cultural venues in the United States and Taiwan, and adaptive reuse interventions showcased at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The international examples outline an architectural landscape shaped by reuse, public engagement, and the evolving role of design in responding to social, cultural, and institutional frameworks.

Coming Together and the Making of Place: ArchDaily’s January Editorial Focus

Romullo Baratto — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 05:00:00 +0000

Long before architecture took the form of walls, roofs, or cities, it gathered people around fire. The simple fire pit was one of humanity's earliest spatial devices: a place for warmth, food, storytelling, and ritual. Around it, space took shape through proximity rather than enclosure, through shared presence rather than prescribed use. The fire organized bodies in a circle, fostered alliances, and turned survival into collective life. Today, this ancestral logic persists: architecture has the potential of bringing people together not by commanding how they gather, but by creating the conditions that make togetherness possible.

What Happens When Public Spaces are Without Public Restrooms?

Kaley Overstreet — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 04:00:00 +0000

In the realm of design, we often talk about ensuring that there are enough public spaces to serve a community. We discuss the need for public parks so that people have access to outdoor spaces. We think about public transportation, and how our dwindling reliance on cars will help to ensure that we have a healthier planet. But what about the public spaces we lack? What happens when we don’t have enough public restrooms?

Can Public Space be Created in the Metaverse?

Maria-Cristina Florian — Wed, 24 Aug 2022 07:30:00 +0000

The metaverse promises to revolutionize our way of life. By integrating immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), it hopes to add another layer to the way we experience everyday life. It is suggested that the metaverse will create virtual spaces where people can meet and share experiences regardless of geographical constraints. The possibilities seem endless: exchanging knowledge, encouraging professional collaboration, developing and democratizing art, education, culture, and even enabling political engagement. Social interactions are at the core of the idea of a metaverse. This raises the question: how can the new, virtual spaces acquire the properties of public spaces?

Why We Should Create Cities for Children

Marília Matoso — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 04:00:00 +0000

In the book Design of Childhood, architect and researcher Alexandra Lange states that children were considered nonpersons throughout almost the entire history of ancient and modern architecture, being excluded from the process of creating urban and interior spaces. This process has caused and is still causing several problems when children reach adulthood, since these children grew up being constantly watched by fear of movement and the eyes of adults.

Profit Above the Public: The Logic of the Concession of Use in the City of São Paulo

Giovana Martino — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 05:00:00 +0000

Recently, the city of São Paulo witnessed two events involving spaces that were previously public and are now under private concession. The already renowned Virada Cultural Paulistana took place again after the initial years of the covid-19 pandemic, and had as one of its stages the new Vale do Anhangabaú. In addition, the Pacaembu complex - which recently ceased to be a public facility, became a concession and has been undergoing a series of renovations and transformations - hosted the ArPa Fair, an event that brought together a series of important galleries for exhibition, purchase and sale of artworks. Despite the different nature of these events, their processes arouse reflections upon the privatization model we are experiencing in cities today.

How Gender Inclusion Is Influencing Urban Design

Camilla Ghisleni — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 04:00:00 +0000

In the 1970s, in Berkeley, California, a group of disability rights activists called the Rolling Quads began dismantling curbs and improvising sidewalk ramps, demanding access for wheelchair users. But what people did not expect was that wheelchair users would not be the only ones to benefit from the intervention. Soon, pedestrians with baby strollers, heavy suitcases or simply with reduced mobility started using the ramps. Likewise, a gender-inclusive city works better for everyone. A city where all gender minorities of different ages and abilities can move around easily and safely, participate fully in the workforce and public life, live healthy, sociable and active lives, is a city that improves everyone's lives.

Placemaking through Play: Designing for Urban Enjoyment

Ankitha Gattupalli — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 04:00:00 +0000

Humane cities center around the relationships between people and places. Communities thrive on shared resources, public spaces, and a collective vision for their locality. To nurture happy and healthy cities, designers and the public apply methods of placemaking to the urban setting. Placemaking—the creation of meaningful places—strongly relies on community-based participation to effectively produce magnetic public spaces.

Homomonument: The Importance of a Representative Space in the City

Victor Delaqua — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 07:30:00 +0000

While walking through the city, have you ever felt afraid to be yourself? As strange as the question may sound to some, it is a reality for most LGBTQIA+ people, who at some point have been victims of hostility when they were noticed performing outside the "heteronormative standards" of public spaces. If violence comes from social layers that go beyond the designed space, this does not exempt the importance of thinking about projects that can integrate the physical sphere and insert a symbolic or representational factor to include and educate its citizens. This is the case of Homomonument, which for more than three decades, has become a platform for queer celebration and protest in the heart of Amsterdam.

Studio Fuksas Wins Competition to Design Sveta Nedelya Square in Bulgaria

Christele Harrouk — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 05:30:00 +0000

The Sveta Nedelya Square Competition in Sofia, Bulgaria unveiled that the proposal presented by Studio Fuksas was selected as the winning project. 6 other international teams reached the final stage of the contest, including One Works, Maofficina, Cracknell, Studio Wilmotte, Paola Vigano, and AI Architects LLD, CLAB Architettura, Yuri Sheredega, Dina Dridze, Evgeniy Shirinyan.

Adjaye Associates+ Daniel Boyd Team Up to Design the New Sydney Plaza

Christele Harrouk — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 06:30:00 +0000

The City of Sydney has chosen Adjaye Associates and contemporary Aboriginal artist Daniel Boyd to design a new public square, plaza building, and public artwork. The project attempts to uncover the lost history of the site, reconcile cultures and define identities.

OMA Unveils KUBE at Hong Kong K11 Musea

Christele Harrouk — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 07:55:00 +0000

OMA revealed the KUBE, an installation located in front of the main entrance of K11 MUSEA, on Hong Kong’s waterfront. The multi-functional installation creates an urban landmark, amidst the dense skyline of the city, through very simple yet engaging geometry.

Join 3rd International Placemaking Week in Chattanooga this October

Rene Submissions — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 05:30:00 +0000

The 3rd International Placemaking Week is an intimate, four day-long global gathering of public space practitioners, researchers, and advocates that combines hands-on learning, public space activations, and innovative social events.

This year's event on October 1-4, 2019 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will provide a platform for placemakers to share tools, stories, and lessons learned. Organized by Project for Public Spaces and local co-host The Enterprise Center, the event will present an inspiring and engaging week full of hands-on sessions, off-site workshops, tours, and networking events, all designed to build upon our previous Placemaking Weeks in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in 2017, and

Temporary Plazas: 13 Public Spaces that Activate the City

María Francisca González — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 04:00:00 +0000

Normally the efforts of the construction industry are aimed to design permanent and durable spaces. However, on some occasions creating temporary spaces can be of great help, not only when providing fast assembly infrastructure after the effects of a natural disaster, but also when activating residual or abandoned spaces in our cities. To exemplify the potential of these interventions, we present thirteen successful temporary public spaces.

Historic Mental Hospital Will Transform Into North Carolina’s “Central Park”

Eric Baldwin — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 13:00:00 +0000

The largest park project in the United States is underway at Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. The city purchased the Dorothea Dix campus from the State of North Carolina in 2015 with the intent of creating a great destination park in the heart of the community. This year, Raleigh City Council adopted the Dorothea Dix Park Master Plan, and now an implementation plan is underway for Phase 1. Designed to span decades, the creation of the 300 acre park will include the site of North Carolina’s first mental hospital.

A Pop of Color on Public Spaces

Dima Stouhi — Sat, 29 Jun 2019 06:00:00 +0000

If a painting can trigger its viewers' emotions with just one observation, imagine the impact of a building-sized mural on an entire city.

Plaza Life Revisited: Field Guide Release

Rene Submissions — Thu, 27 Jun 2019 15:00:00 +0000

Join us for the release of Field Guide to Life in Urban Plazas.

The guide outlines a research effort focused on New York City, the primary location of urbanist William H. Whyte’s “Street Life Project,” which formed the basis for his seminal book and film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980). The new guide seeks to understand how different types of public spaces have changed some 40 years later. What’s changed about how people use the public realm, and what makes for successful spaces?

The project looks at 10 plazas in Manhattan constructed or renovated in the last 15 years,