Archdaily
The Luanda Library Technology Park / Typsa
- architects: Typsa
- Location: Luanda, Angola
- Project Year: 2026
- Photographs: Flavio Ricardo Gomes
- Area: 1918.0 m2
Record Heatwaves in Europe and a New Museum of Comics in Taiwan: This Week’s Review
Covering a broad array of subjects, this week's headline stories have reflected the wide scope of architecture's practice: its potential to respond to the climate crisis, the construction and renovation of cultural infrastructure around the world, and events that promote contemporary disciplinary reflection. This does not preclude questions about the contradiction between the technical and creative skills demanded by the discipline and the role it has come to occupy in today's market. Alongside these reflections, this week we feature projects that reinforce architecture's cultural significance in preserving knowledge, hosting collective entertainment, and supporting new forms of living: a comic book museum in Taiwan, a membership club for families in London, and the renovation of a landmark stadium in Riyadh.
Animal Care: 8 Veterinary Hospitals Redefining Architecture for Health and Emotion
In 2025, the global animal health market was valued at approximately $70 billion, and projections suggest it could double by 2033. Behind this figure, however, lies a quieter transformation of the built environment, exemplified by the veterinary hospital. A building type that for decades occupied the back rooms of improvised clinics and pet shops is increasingly developing its own architectural language and identity. It is the spatial consolidation of a bond that has endured for more than 15,000 years.
Jugnoo Cabin / PMA madhushala
- architects: PMA madhushala
- Location: Panshet, Maharashtra, India
- Project Year: 2026
- Photographs: Onil Shah
- Area: 35.0 m2
Mount Martha House / Victoria Merrett Architects
- architects: Victoria Merrett Architects
- Location: Mornington Peninsula, Australia
- Project Year: 2025
- Photographs: Courtesy of Victoria Merrett Architects
- Area: 365.0 m2
What Cladding Systems Reveal About Local Production in Architecture
Between the moment a material is specified in a project and the moment it is installed, there is an invisible layer that plays a decisive role in the final outcome: fabrication, logistics, and coordination. These factors shape timelines and costs, but more critically, determine whether the original design intent is preserved or diluted in execution. Cladding systems, especially those that function as visible and expressive components of the building envelope, make this gap particularly evident, as they are the most outward-facing layer of a project.
Selecting a cladding system is never a purely aesthetic decision. It activates a chain of dependencies: profile availability, fixing systems, tolerances, sequencing, and compliance with local codes. When elements are misaligned, the fallout is rarely subtle. Integrated cladding systems—those that anticipate assembly as much as appearance—tend to close this gap, embedding coordination into their logic and reducing the need for on-site improvisation.
Bent by Spring / HCCH Studio
- architects: HCCH Studio
- Location: Shanghai, China
- Project Year: 2026
- Photographs: Guowei Liu
- Photographs:
Nalme House / Wright Inspires
- architects: Wright Inspires
- Location: Bengaluru, India
- Project Year: 2025
- Photographs: Studio Envy – Mr. Raaj
- Area: 1837.0 ft2
The Porch House / Vasco Burnay Arquitectura
- architects: Vasco Burnay Arquitectura
- Location: Vila Franca de Xira, Portugal
- Project Year: 2024
- Photographs: Ivo Tavares Studio
- Area: 2691 ft2
Art Building – Cardenal Spellman Educational Unit / STUDIO BLUR
- architects: STUDIO BLUR
- Ubicación: Quito, Ecuador
- Año Proyecto: 2024
- Fotografías: JAG Studio
- Área: 519.0 m2
House #474 / PLATAFORMArq
- architects: PLATAFORMArq
- Location: Teixoso, Portugal
- Project Year: 2025
- Photographs: João Saraiva
- Area: 220.0 m2
Unearthing the Ground: Architecture and the Politics of Soil
What architecture leaves in the ground outlasts what it puts in the air. A demolished building disappears from the skyline in a matter of days, but its foundations remain embedded in the soil for generations. The contamination caused by an industrial complex does not clear when the complex is torn down. The legal boundaries inscribed across colonial territory do not dissolve when the colonial administration ends. The ground holds what architecture quickly forgets.
This is what makes soil so uncomfortable as a subject. The discipline tends to orient itself upward, toward the form, the façade, the spatial experience of inhabitation. The ground is where architecture begins and, in a certain sense, where it ends: the point at which building becomes geology, legal title becomes territorial claim, and construction becomes extraction. Treating soil as a medium rather than a datum means acknowledging that the acts of building carry consequences that run deeper than the visible object above grade.
Sorrento House / Victoria Merrett Architects
- architects: Victoria Merrett Architects
- Location: Sorrento, Victoria, Australia
- Project Year: 2025
- Photographs: Courtesy of Victoria Merrett Architects
- Area: 313.0 m2
Buildner Announces Museum of Emotions Edition 7 Winners as Edition 8 Registration Deadline Approaches
Buildner has announced the results of its Museum of Emotions Competition Edition 7. The Museum of Emotions is an annual international design competition that tasks participants to explore the extent to which architecture can be used as a tool to evoke emotion.
The brief calls for the design of a conceptual museum with two exhibition halls: one designed to induce negative emotions; the other designed to induce positive emotions. Participants are free to choose any site of their liking, real or imaginary, as well as choose the scale of the project. The meaning of 'positive' and 'negative' is up for interpretation: What two emotions might a designer consider contrasting? How might an architect conceive spaces which elicit fear, anger, anxiety, love or happiness?
Why Software Adoption Fails Without Enablement
Moving from the drafting table to the computer screen, the digitization of drawings and documentation marked the first phase of digital transformation in architecture firms. The second introduced BIM, connecting project information through cloud platforms and collaborative workflows. Nowadays, a new phase is emerging, defined by artificial intelligence, automation, and more specialized software ecosystems. The paradox is that while previous phases were dominated by a small number of tools, today's landscape offers an abundance of highly specialized, AI-enabled, and often overlapping solutions competing for attention. While purchasing new software is often the easiest part of digital transformation, the greater challenge lies in changing established workflows and behaviors, which is why many new tools struggle to achieve lasting adoption.
Icelandic Pavilion Explores Bathing Culture as Civic Infrastructure at the 2027 Venice Architecture Biennale
The Icelandic Pavilion at the 20th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will present SOAK: Rituals of Collective Belonging, an exhibition examining Iceland's bathing culture through the lens of architecture, public space, and social interaction. Commissioned by Halla Helgadóttir, Iceland Design and Architecture, the project is curated by Marcos Zotes, partner at Basalt Architects, and developed through a multidisciplinary collaboration between Basalt Architects, design studio Gagarin, and artist Rán Flygenring. SOAK marks the second Icelandic participation in the Architecture Biennale selected through an open call process, following Lavaforming by s.ap architects, which represented Iceland at the 2025 edition.
Casa Cielo / NV/design architecture
- architects: NV/ design architecture
- Location: Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico
- Project Year: 2025
- Photographs: Amy Bello
- Area: 4000.0 ft2
Herzog & de Meuron to Revitalize Tirana's Communist-Era Palace of Congresses
On June 3, 2026, Herzog & de Meuron was selected to revitalize the Palace of Congresses building in Tirana, Albania. The project was designed along with collaborators Julian Beqiri, Marsela Demaj, Michel Desvigne Paysagistes (MDP), ARUP, LDK, Gentian Shkurti, SUEB Industries sh.p.k., The Space Factory Ltd, MBBM, and KLAR sh.p.k. The Palace of Congresses (or Pallati i Kongreseve) was built during the People's Socialist Republic of Albania and opened in 1986 to host the Congresses of the Party of Labour of Albania and other official activities. The International Competition for the Redevelopment of the Palace of Congresses, carried out by the Albanian government, called for a comprehensive transformation of the building while preserving its historical identity. The project should address serious infrastructural issues and bring the Palace to contemporary standards in terms of technology, functionality, and quality of spaces.
Architecture Inspired by Birds: Fundación Cosmos and the Wetland Parks of Chile
How can architectural design become an active tool for conservation? By considering nature as an inexhaustible source of inspiration, a harmonious connection with it frames the countless interrelationships that exist among humans, living organisms, and natural cycles. Designing with the landscape means learning to coexist with its temporal dynamics without controlling its processes. Traditions, ecology, and the past and present of a place all contribute to creating spaces that interpret their communities. Landscape architecture can draw inspiration from birds, plants, and other natural elements to shape the complex, dynamic network of ecosystems and human activities that make up the environment.
Śhālā Twam Community Hub / Bhoomija Creations
- architects: Bhoomija Creations
- Location: Thrippunithara, Ernakulam, Kerala, India
- Project Year: 2024
- Photographs: Prasanth Mohan, Running Studios
- Area: 2755.0 ft2