The clock is ticking for architects, urban planners, and engineers to submit their groundbreaking projects to the Holcim Foundation Awards. With the entry deadline of February 11, 2025, at 14:00 hrs UTC, this is the final opportunity to gain global recognition and compete for a share of the USD 1 million prize pool. The awards ceremony will take place at the Venice Forum on November 20, 2025 and winners are invited to attend.
As the global climate crisis intensifies, the construction industry faces increasing pressure to reduce carbon emissions, prompting a fundamental reassessment of building practices. Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, known for its commitment to sustainability, presents an honest exploration of this challenge in "Carbon Confessions," an exhibition at Munich's Architekturgalerie. The exhibition provides insight into the firm's ongoing efforts, highlighting both its achievements and the obstacles encountered in the pursuit of carbon reduction.
The National Athletics Centre in Budapest marks a significant milestone in urban regeneration and architectural innovation. Located on a former industrial site along the Danube, this transformative project revitalizes a neglected brownfield into a vibrant hub for sports, recreation, and community engagement. Designed by Marcel FERENCZ, architect at NAPUR Architect Ltd., with landscape design created by S-TÉR and several hundred pieces of furniture from VPI Concrete, the Centre is a cornerstone for connecting North Csepel to the city and fostering urban development.
Innovation comes in many shapes and forms. 2025 is poised to witness continued advancements in the areas of artificial intelligence, sustainability, and biotechnology. These breakthroughs often arise from experimentation in industries like technology and healthcare, where companies have strong research and development teams and significant budgets. This enables them to produce new products and services that address society's evolving needs.
In a world confronting complex challenges, innovation in architecture plays a distinctive role. Unlike industries driven by rapid innovation cycles, architecture must balance creativity with practical solutions that are deeply rooted in human experience. What will it take for the architecture industry to fully harness its potential in shaping the future of our built environment?
Urban living has become synonymous with limited space and creativity for compact apartments. As cities become more dominated by concrete and steel, there is an exciting, yet unsurprising, rise in interest in embracing the green thumb, even within the constraints of a dense urban environment. This interest is not purely to tend aesthetic tastes, as studies consistently show that exposure to nature reduces stress, improves focus, and enhances overall well-being. However, in dense urban environments, the challenge lies in finding innovative ways to make this vision a reality for apartments where every inch matters.
2025 promises to be a landmark in architecture, heralding a vibrant renaissance of creativity and exploration. As societies confront challenges such as climate change, rapid urbanization, and technological evolution, architecture is both a mirror to these dynamics and a compass pointing toward a sustainable and inclusive future. This year's architectural calendar offers abundant opportunities to celebrate the discipline's transformative power — from boundary-pushing festivals to thought-provoking exhibitions that explore pressing cultural and environmental narratives.
From well-established biennials to inaugural gatherings, including the World Architecture Festival 2025, Desert X Al Ula, and the COP Climate Conference, the 2025 calendar highlights themes such as sustainability, heritage, and community. These events underscore architecture's unique ability to shape a better future, addressing global challenges while honoring cultural diversity and design ingenuity.
For decades, the life cycle of buildings was a simple formula: planning, design, construction, demolition, and, of course, the great villain in this history: the landfill. Over time, architectural practice began embracing concepts like reuse, disassembly, and circular demolition, but often as secondary elements, part of the gradual shift toward a circular economy in construction. But what if these principles were no longer exceptions? What if we crafted or chose every building component to maintain value and purpose beyond its original use? The truth is, there is life after demolition. This transition—from demolition to practices focusing on reuse, repurposing, and sustainable dismantling—is edging closer to reality. By the time 2030 arrives, we could fundamentally reshape how we approach processes, buildings, and the market itself. As these changes unfold, we must assess how our strategies align with the evolving goals and challenges related to sustainability—and, of course, the new opportunities they bring.
The Danish Architecture Center (DAC) will open its new exhibition, "Water is Coming" in October 2024, remaining open until March 12, 2025. The exhibition addresses the escalating global water crisis, prompted by melting polar ice, rising groundwater levels, and increasingly frequent and intense flooding. It acknowledges the reality of rising sea levels and extreme weather events, shifting the focus from mitigation to adaptation. The exhibition aims to foster a deeper understanding of our complex relationship with water, exploring its vital role as both a life-giving resource and a potential threat to human settlements.
The housing crisis, the need for effective land management policies, and the growing demand for housing aid are global challenges, and Spain has taken significant steps to address these issues in recent years. While this effort is closely tied to rehabilitating obsolete buildings, it also tackles the challenges of densification and gentrification. These factors have prompted the exploration of new housing models and ways of living, leading to the development of affordable residential buildings designed to accommodate large numbers of inhabitants while maintaining high-quality living standards.
Nestled near the ruins of Fonthill Abbey in the English countryside, Upper Lawn Pavilion — also known as the Solar Pavilion — is a modest yet profound architectural experiment by Alison and Peter Smithson. Built between 1959 and 1962 as a weekend retreat and laboratory for ideas, the pavilion embodies their ethos of economy, material honesty, and respect for context, reflecting the pioneering spirit of New Brutalism.
Upper Lawn's thoughtful interplay between the new and the existing is particularly compelling. Built on the remains of an 18th-century English farmhouse, the pavilion repurposes thick masonry walls from the original structure, incorporating elements such as the well, trees, and lawn into its design. Using prefabricated materials like timber, glass, and aluminum, the Smithsons constructed a light-filled space that harmonizes with its surroundings, embodying their principle of "as found architecture" — a concept rooted in honoring and adapting to preexisting conditions rather than imposing on them.
With millions of residents flocking to metropolitans each year, South Asia is witnessing staggering levels of urban development. Growth brings economic prosperity and ecological strain as concrete jungles replace natural habitats. The region, home to countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Nepal, is faced with addressing contextual challenges when it comes to balancing urbanization with environmental sustainability. These negotiations are fairly nuanced, with a need to understand the economic, social, and political scenarios systematically in each country.
In architectural design, materials convey narratives, shaping how spaces are perceived and experienced. Weathering steel, often known by its genericized trademark name, Corten steel, stands out for its ability to evolve, transforming into a medium that tells its own story. It represents a group of steel alloys that form a stable external layer of rust that replaces the need for paint to protect the steel while allowing it to develop in time. Its weathered patina serves as more than a functional shield; it becomes an aesthetic language, a testament to the interplay between architecture and nature. This ever-changing surface bridges the ephemeral and the enduring, offering architects a material that grows richer with age.
The concept of low-tech architecture recognizes the impact of carbon-intensive technologies and building practices and proposes an alternative: a rediscovery of practical, rational, locally adapted solutions that count on smart design strategies instead of energy-intensive devices to ensure a safe, comfortable living environment. Far from being a regressive approach, the term remains open to innovations but seeks to rebalance the industry's reliance on mechanization. It thus favors an architecture of fewer components, minimized dependence on high-tech solutions, and a preference for low-embodied carbon materials.
The Arabian Peninsula represents one of the world's leading exporters and users of fossil fuels, an economic reality that influences the area's visions for the future and, implicitly, architecture and urban planning's role in these scenarios. A number of emerging offices are however countering these narratives, turning to contextual research to reframe the area's production of architecture. Among these, cultural practice Civil Architecture has become recognized for its provocative works that explore alternative narratives for the identity of the Middle East. While in Bahrain, ArchDaily's Christele Harrouk had the chance to sit down with Ali Karimi, who, together with Hamed Bukhamseen, co-founded Civil Architecture. In the video interview, they discuss the practice of architecture in the Gulf region and the narrative and research-focused approach of the office.
The journey toward renaturalizing urban spaces is an ongoing effort that began as early as the 1970s and continues to shape cities worldwide today. From transforming highways into vibrant parks to restoring waterways and integrating nature into urban planning, these projects reflect a shared commitment to sustainability, livability, and resilience. In Portland, the 1978 creation of Tom McCall Waterfront Park set a pioneering example by replacing a highway with green spaces. Decades later, Boston followed with the Rose Kennedy Greenway, reclaiming land from the elevated Central Artery.
Reflecting on 2024, numerous architectural exhibitions have opened worldwide, addressing various themes, exhibition formats, and featured architects. Architectural design and architecture practice influence our daily lives in subtle and often unnoticed ways, where the end-users embrace built environments as they are. This reaction may arise from a combination of factors, such as a sense of powerlessness to enact significant change after a building is constructed or the experience of growing up in environments over which individuals had little or no agency in shaping. For these reasons, architectural exhibitions serve an essential purpose, offering society a chance to pause, reflect, and critically examine the myriad issues that surface during designing and building. These issues are often overlooked or need to be acknowledged, as practitioners may prioritize delivering projects within strict timelines over exploring more profound reflections.
In 2024, museums, galleries, and curators responded to the evolving challenges within the built environment with various approaches. Some exhibitions questioned the ethics of building materials and the practices behind supply chains, drawing attention to the broader implications of material choices. Others focused on documenting architectural movements worldwide, emphasizing their cultural and historical significance and the urgent need to preserve and adapt rather than replace them with entirely new builds. These efforts highlight the role of exhibitions in raising awareness about pressing issues while fostering a more critical dialogue about the architectural discipline.
The MICROHOME 2025 Competition by Buildner is back, offering a record-breaking 100,000 EUR prize fund to celebrate cutting-edge, sustainable solutions for compact housing. Sponsored by Kingspan, this global competition invites architects, designers, and creative thinkers to redefine the concept of microhomes.
Register before the deadline on 13 February 2025.
The year 2024, following a period of global uncertainty, saw a complex interplay of challenges and advancements. While geopolitical tensions and the lingering effects of past crises remained prominent, a focus shifted towards rebuilding, with communities worldwide seeking local solutions and ways to advance despite the turmoil. The architectural landscape of 2024 saw a growing exploration of new building systems and technologies, often inspired by vernacular solutions. At an urban scale, spaces are reconsidered for their potential to shift towards more pedestrian-friendly activities, more natural areas, and opportunities for community gathering and event organizing.
Discussions around decolonization, the preservation of traditional building techniques, and the integration of local narratives into design continued to gain momentum. The focus was less on singular, iconic structures and more on environmentally responsible and socially conscious projects that addressed the specific needs of communities. Concurrently, new technologies such as AI systems have continued to impact the profession, but are understood more and more not as replacements, but as tools available for architects and designers to improve their processes.
