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UN-Habitat has announced the five recipients of the 2026 Scroll of Honour Award, recognizing contributions to adequate housing and sustainable urban development in Brazil, Myanmar, Pakistan, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom. This year's winners include a housing organization working with communities affected by conflict and displacement, a researcher developing building materials from local and mining residues, an Indigenous village in Brazil, a public housing agency in Pakistan, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Selected from 101 nominations submitted across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, the recipients represent a range of approaches to addressing housing and urban development challenges.

OASIS is rooted in the singular geography of the Plaine du Var, a transitional landscape between the city, the river, the Mediterranean and the hills of Nice. At the meeting point of Grand Parc Méridia and Avenue de l'Université, the project establishes a dialogue between human settlement and nature, urban density and living systems.

Colburn's 100,000-square-foot campus expansion, designed by Frank Gehry, will open on September 25, 2027, with an event in the new 1,000-seat Terri and Jerry Kohl Hall, a round concert hall. Colburn is a school of music and dance in Los Angeles, on a downtown campus that welcomes an estimated 10,000 people weekly. The institution provides performing arts education, and more than 500 music and dance performances open to the public each year. The first images of the design were released in 2022. The expansion triples the facilities currently dedicated to dance and will house Colburn's Trudl Zipper Dance Institute. The building, finished in a metallic pink coating, is located adjacent to Colburn's Grand Avenue campus in downtown Los Angeles and is expected to reach substantial completion in summer 2027.

Reclaimed land is often presented as new ground: flat, available, and ready for architecture. It promises cities more space where space is scarce, allowing them to extend waterfronts and build cultural districts. Sometimes, these newly claimed lands may also develop into financial centers, create parks, and imagine futures beyond the limits of existing land. Yet reclaimed land is never simply land. It is an engineered surface, produced through fill, seawalls, drainage, and soil stabilization — a long-term negotiation with the water it claims to have displaced.

Every year since 1950, Japan has commissioned a temporary piece of state architecture to host the National Tree-Planting Festival—a significant ode to forest preservation that is rarely publicized outside the archipelago. The onodatesho, a ceremonial pavilion occupied by the Emperor and Empress, serves as the centerpiece of the event and is traditionally dismantled soon after the festivities end.

House Q is a monolithic concrete residence designed as a serene retreat for a middle-aged couple in Nghệ An, Vietnam. Set on a generous corner plot at a busy intersection, the house balances privacy and openness, creating a sanctuary that contrasts with the lively commercial surroundings nearby.

A Millennium Cross-Section on a Living Street — This project originates from a major breakthrough in the archaeological discovery and conservation practice at Bastion No. 11 of the Jingzhou City Wall. Since 2016, this section of the ancient wall had been listed for emergency conservation due to foundation settlement and structural cracking. During the repair process, a stratified structure of "walls built upon walls," spanning the Five Dynasties, Song, Ming, and Qing periods, was uncovered. This led to the approval by the National Cultural Heritage Administration for systematic archaeological excavation.

For yacht owners arriving in a Mediterranean port, finding a way to explore the surrounding town presents a different sort of transportation challenge. Zipping around on a Vespa might sound charming, but not everyone is made for the scooter life. Italian auto custom shop Garage Italia has created its own take on the classic Fiat 500 Spiaggina to give the yachting crowd a stylish alternative for getting around town.

Photography courtesy of Garage Italia

At its core, the Spiaggina is a humble Fiat 500. The “Cinquecento,” as it’s called in Italian, was created to be to Italy what the Mini Cooper was to Britain and the VW Beetle to Germany: small, basic transportation to bring mobility to the masses in the post-WWII era. The original Fiat 500 Jolly, also known as the Spiaggina, transformed that practical foundation into a doorless, open-air vehicle designed for leisurely drives along the Mediterranean coast. With its distinctive woven seating and removable canopy, it became a fixture of Italian resort culture.

Photography courtesy of Garage Italia

The Garage Italia remake distinguishes itself from its forebears by using electric power, with a rear-mounted motor delivering 13 horsepower and 60 lb-ft of torque. Hardly muscle-car statistics, but it’s enough to get the convertible up to more than 45 miles per hour. The 11 kWh battery gives it 87 miles of range on the WLTP test cycle. That should be more than enough for short trips around coastal towns, while electric power eliminates the need to carry additional gasoline aboard a yacht.

Photography courtesy of Garage Italia

But the other way this Jolly stands out is a bit more obvious: it’s extensively customizable. The sheet metal comes in 18 shades (off-menu colors are also an option), and the weather-resistant roof, cushions, and other components are available in dozens of fabric patterns from Italian textile company Mariaflora. The seats are handcrafted by Bonacina, an Italian furniture maker specializing in woven designs since 1889, and are available in natural or tinted rattan or Polycore, a composite material designed to withstand sun and salt exposure. Even the flooring takes its cues from the marine world, using durable, waterproof EVA material from ItalDek. And as with Porsches, Ferraris, and all sorts of other exotic machinery these days, you can configure your ideal version on its maker’s website.

Photography courtesy of Garage Italia

At €85,000 (around $97,000) before options and taxes, this electric runabout costs roughly as much as a BMW 7-Series. It’s a considerable departure from the Fiat 500’s affordable origins, but practicality has never been the point of the Spiaggina. With its open-air design, handcrafted materials, and seemingly endless customization options, Garage Italia has transformed a humble Italian icon into something closer to a bespoke design object on wheels.

Photography courtesy of Garage Italia

The kitchen in Josephine Yaa Akuamoa’s new home on Copenhagen’s Paper Island spent its first five years in a workspace. Danish kitchen design company Garde Hvalsøe created it for Akuamoa’s studio, File Under Pop, before moving it into her home as the space’s central element.

Photography by Heid Lerkenfeldt

Built in ash on a zinc frame, the kitchen is Garde Hvalsøe’s Solid model. Long, wide planks run across the finger-jointed drawer fronts to show off the grain. Each drawer has chamfered sides, allowing them to sit close together and read as a single plank. The upper cabinets use the brand’s Koshi-do fronts, developed with Copenhagen-based OEO Studio to combine Japanese aesthetics with Danish craftsmanship.

Photography by Heid Lerkenfeldt

Søren Lundh Aagaard, partner and CEO of Garde Hvalsøe, had previously worked with Akuamoa on another home. “Bringing something previously used and lived in into a newly built space was both a challenge and a statement,” he says. Akuamoa points to the zinc framing, the lava sink, and the pale ash. “The three materials complement each other beautifully and age with grace,” she says.

Photography by Heid Lerkenfeldt

Before the kitchen went in, the team stripped the house back, demolishing the existing kitchen and its electrical installations, the bathroom, the wooden wall panels, and the staircase connecting all three floors. The kitchen and dining area now take up the ground floor, with bedrooms on the middle level and an adaptable room at the top. One side of the house looks out over the sea and sky, and the other onto a shared garden. Garde Hvalsøe also made the bespoke ash wardrobes.

Photography by Heid Lerkenfeldt

Paper Island served as an armory for the Danish navy under Christian IV and later as a paper warehouse for the national newspapers. The new building’s contemporary architecture draws on the island’s historic harbor warehouses.

Wooden maritime gates frame the structure, and a diagonal element in the roof references Copenhagen’s harbor architecture. Akuamoa’s interior takes its cues from the water and open sky on every side of the island. The house uses nearly equal parts wood, raw stone, and ceramics. Ash runs throughout, and the limestone echoes the sandstone harbor walls and the yellow brick of the neighboring buildings.

Photography by Heid Lerkenfeldt

In the historic centre of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, this house turns the constraints of a narrow plot into an opportunity for spatial invention. An off-centre courtyard brings light and air into the interior and organises the spaces around it, breaking with conventional room divisions to create an open setting where economy and pleasure overlap. The narrowness of the site becomes a starting point for the design, shaping the layout, ventilation and everyday use of the house.

Designed to make the most of the native vegetation and enhance the natural beauty of the land, Casa Varanda was born from a careful listening to the place itself. The project was built on a spacious lot with a gentle slope and rich vegetation of Cerrado trees such as paineiras and other species.

Initiated in 2022, Zayma is a residential development comprising eleven units organized into three volumes articulated around a central courtyard. Conceived as the project's primary spatial device, the courtyard is more than a void between buildings; it is the element that establishes the relationships among the complex's diverse components. It organizes circulation, access, views, and shared spaces, while introducing vegetation, natural light, and ventilation into the heart of the project.

This project emerges from the dialogue between topography, material and the act of inhabiting. More than a response to a functional brief, the house seeks to interpret the site and inscribe within it a serene everyday experience, where space, light and time intertwine with natural ease.