As Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chauí reminds us, the word derives from the Latin colere, which means "to take care of." In that sense, agriculture means taking care of the soil, while religious cults are the care of the gods. At its core, culture is the creation of symbolic universes, expressed through different languages, including architecture, that weave connections across time.
The Robert Day Sciences Center has opened at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) as the first built project of the school's Roberts Campus masterplan. At 135,000 square feet, the new building extends the campus's north mall toward Ninth Street and Claremont Boulevard, forming a major gateway to the college and supporting a multidisciplinary approach to science and technology.
Barry Bergdoll is the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History at Columbia University, where he has taught for more than three decades. He is internationally recognized for his scholarship on the history of modern architecture and for his innovative curatorial projects. From 2007 to 2014, he served as Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA, organizing influential exhibitions such as Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront (2009-10), Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream (2012), and Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980 (2015).
Located on St. Louis' Grand Boulevard, the project expands and reimagines the 1925-built theater building while preserving its architectural character and acoustic qualites. The global architecture firm worked alongside Christner Architects, Schuler Shook, BSI Constructors, and Kirkegaard to create a 64,000-square-foot addition in time to celebrate the hall's centennial in 2025. The expansion improves accessibility and introduces new public spaces, educational spaces, and backstage areas to support the full scope of the Symphony's programs and community events.
"An office should inspire - we aim to create a pleasant workspace that fuels creativity and reflects our identity as a design-driven practice." "A generous office." "For us, our office space is a home office away from home, with all the comforts of leisure but with the focus on work." "A place in which you can feel the group, the collective project. An atelier more than an office."
Archermit presents the Nujiang River 72 Turns Canyon Scenic Area in Tibet, an infrastructure that translates the peril and grandeur of the Sichuan-Tibet Highway into a visitor experience. Completed after six years of high-altitude construction, the project is located in Buze Village, Baxoi County, along the G318 Highway. It centers on a dramatic glass viewing platform cantilevered 37 meters from a cliff face above the Nujiang Grand Canyon, echoing the legendary hairpin bends of the 'devil's road', the 72 turns of Nujiang.
It is this iconic scene that architect Mark Monaghan says springs to mind when he thinks of his own home. "That's always stuck with me," he says. "From the outside, it looks like it should fit into its environment, but once you go inside, there's no reason why you can't have that feeling of space that most Irish houses just don't have."
NOT A HOTEL announces its latest iteration for the Japanese island of Yakushima, this time with architecture by Jean Nouvel. The lush, rain-soaked location for this upcoming boutique hotel is a UNESCO World Heritage site celebrated for its ancient cedar forests and shifting coastal weather. Commissioned by the hospitality brand NOT A HOTEL, the project will hide within a landscape defined by moss-covered rocks and misty green canopies.
Madrid has long been celebrated as a sanctuary for the Old Masters, a city where works by Picasso, Goya, and Bosch are revered in world-class museums. Yet over the past decade, the Spanish capital has been reshaping its artistic identity, carving out space in the global conversation around contemporary art. The latest - and perhaps most ambitious - development in this evolution is SOLO CSV, a new arts and culture space from the internationally renowned Madrileño project, SOLO.
Christian de Portzamparc has been announced as the recipient of the 2026 Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award by the Créateurs Design Awards (CDA). The recognition honors his influence on architecture and urban planning, situating him among a lineage of practitioners whose work has shaped both the built environment and cultural discourse. The ceremony will be held in Paris on January 17, 2026, where de Portzamparc will accept the award in person.
He understood the power to empower people to embrace ideas gifted to us by nature. His creative vision for Eden was inspired by a handful of soap bubbles as biomes, to inspire the team to create the most elegant solution to address design challenges. They fit so well in the landscape that it is sometimes hard to know where landscape stops and buildings start. Without him there would be no Eden Project biomes,
Three days packed with inspiration: masterclasses, talks, workshops, roundtables, and exhibitions. Recipes and case studies from around the world show how urban (and social) innovation happens - and how the very idea of city-making is being stretched in bold new directions. More than 40 international guests, the most influential media, leading urban gurus, and Europe's sharpest city officials are all gathering in Turin to exchange ideas, tools, experiences, solutions, desires, and passions.
In Plato's allegory of the cave, light symbolizes knowledge: it is what guides the human being out of the shadows of ignorance and toward truth. In many religions, light is also associated with divinity, as a manifestation of the sacred. Over time, light ceased to be merely a symbol of reason and became an instrument of sensitivity, a living material capable of shaping atmospheres, influencing perception, and revealing meaning.
Across the floor and walls sprawl grand mosaics and sculptures depicting lions, piles of gold, thunderbolts and ancient Roman gods. "When this building was created, it was designed as a working bank building. There were people coming and going all day," explains the Bank of England Museum's curator, Jenni Adam. "And immediately they were greeted with this sense of grandeur along with lots and lots of messages about what's happening in this site."
Architecture and design had already entered Taska Cleveland's field of vision when she studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. "My experience as a fine artist has been informative in the way I work now," says the LA-born talent, who struck out on her own three years ago after rising to the position of artistic director of the AD100 firm Studio Shamshiri.
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With expansive views over the San Francisco Bay and its signature rust orange color, it's no wonder the Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most iconic anywhere. In fact, its architecture is so quintessentially San Francisco, the bridge was named the most iconic bridge in the world by car rental company Sixt. Among its myriad of accomplishments, the bridge plays host to more than 100,000 cars every day
The Almaty Museum of Arts has opened its doors in Kazakhstan's cultural capital, welcoming visitors to a monumental new space for modern and contemporary art. Designed by British practice Chapman Taylor, the 10,060-square-meter museum stands at the edge of the city with the Tian Shan mountains rising behind it, an architectural gesture that captures the tension between urban life and the natural landscape.
Later this November, PAM will link its original building with the Masonic Temple expansion by way of the Mark Rothko Pavilion. The new structure will extend across SW Madison and add approximately 10,000 square feet of space to Portland's flagship art museum, finally connecting the two buildings. The Rothko solves a major problem for PAM. Previously, the original part of the museum and the Mark Building were linked via an underground passageway that a lot of guests completely missed during their visits.
The Sijing Town Sports Center, designed by Spanish architecture studio Selgascano, is set to be built on the outskirts of Shanghai and conceived as a sustainable, human-scale landmark. Planned between transport routes and green corridors, the project emphasizes accessibility and active mobility, linking jogging paths, bike trails, and nearby parks into a wider network of wellness-focused public space. In contrast to the surrounding high-density developments, the sports center introduces an architectural language rooted in openness and landscape integration.
Architecture firms Air Matters and 16 ARCH STUDIO present Solar Locus, the new corporate headquarters of a solar energy company in Taiwan, conceived as a 'container of light.' Taking illumination as both symbol and medium, the five-story cube aspires to more than workplace functionality: it embodies the company's ethos of reconnecting humanity with nature. Behind its monumental concrete shell, a delicate glass volume emerges, balancing solidity with transparency while capturing the fleeting interplay of light and shadow throughout the day.
In traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture works through strategically placed needles that trigger healing throughout the entire body. Urban planner Jaime Lerner's concept around targeted architectural interventions find success in China as well as neighboring countries in Asia, where localities are revitalized through simple interventions. Libraries, specifically, are bringing in social, cultural, and economic transformation to the continent. Necessity drives innovation. Rapid urbanization, limited public funding, and diverse geographic and cultural contexts have forced architects and communities to think beyond traditional library models.
Communist East Germany's high-rise prefab residential blocks and their political and cultural impact in what was one of the biggest social housing experiments in history is the focus of a new art exhibition, in which the unspoken challenges of today's housing crisis loom large. Wohnkomplex (living complex) Art and Life in Prefabs explores the legacy of the collective experience of millions of East Germans, as well as serving as a poignant reminder that the housing question, whether under dictatorship or democracy, is far from being solved.
The installation consists of large mirrored spheres tinted in glossy . These elements reflect the surrounding environment, sky, buildings, and passersby, creating a constantly shifting interplay of light and form. Slowly, the spheres move in relation to one another, generating fluid and changing compositions. The motion suggests organic breathing, achieved through a calibrated balance between geometric structure and mechanical precision.
Since its establishment in 1996, the prize has recognized works that respond to contemporary challenges while shaping more inclusive futures. This year's shortlist spans a diverse range of scales and programs, including the restoration of one of the nation's most iconic landmarks, a pioneering medical research facility, a contemporary almshouse designed to reduce isolation among older residents, a university's "factory for fashion," a fully accessible home, and a creative house extension.
The Philippines' Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia presents Soil-beings (Lamánlupa), an exhibition curated by artistic director Renan Laru-an. Through interdisciplinary collaborations, the Pavilion brings together architects, technical experts, indigenous leaders, artists, policymakers, and local communities to explore the cultural, ecological, and technological dimensions of soil. Its objective is to challenge conventional architectural paradigms by shifting the focus from structure to soil, not as a passive material, but as a living force with agency, history, and power.
The structure, developed by Enter Future Construction + HoLebensArt Living Co. + HEJU Architect + Terrarch Design, is composed of ten cast-in-place volumes, each inclined and uniquely shaped to define a sequence of spatial thresholds. These volumes house various functions: a bakery, a meeting room, an exhibition area, stair access, and utility cores, while some remain deliberately undefined to allow future reprogramming.
10 years after 's final bow, the aesthetics of the era maintain a grip on modern design lovers as strong as Don Draper's mid-morning Old Fashioned. The show catalyzed the renewal of public interest in midcentury modern design with its depiction of geometric offices and warm, open residences. Like "hipster" or "democracy," though, the true definition of "midcentury modern" has steadily eroded from overuse and blatant misrepresentation on Facebook Marketplace. Its principles, however, endure.
The Mahamudra Meditation Center sits atop a secluded mountain, about an hour from Kathmandu. It can be reached on foot or by an off-road vehicle during dry weather conditions. The center is a brainchild of a Chogyal Rinpoche, a young Tibetan Buddhist master, torchbearer of an esoteric lineage of Buddhism that dates back to the 12th century. He believes that the time has come for the common people to have access to the knowledge that was hitherto safeguarded by the Tibetan Masters.
The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS) at Bard College in Upstate New York will open the doors to its library and archives facility's new Keith Haring Wing next month. The two-storey masonry structure adds 12,000 sq. ft to the CCS Library and Archives, more than doubling the existing capacity. The expansion was supported by a $10m capital campaign, and is named in recognition of a $3m gift from the Keith Haring Foundation.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of 99% Invisible! If our little design podcast were a person, it would be old enough to have a provisional driver's license in some states or celebrate a quinceañera. Since we first launched on September 3rd, 2010, we've spent 15 years telling stories about design, architecture, and the choices we make that shape our world. That's 15 years of taking the time to stop and read the plaque, and 15 years of you, our incredible listeners, sending us the most amazing observations about the built environment that we never would have noticed on our own.
Variously described as an architect, painter, novelist, communist and convicted fraudster, Fernand Pouillon's life was punctuated by abrupt reversals of fortune that might have sprung from the pages of Dickens or Dumas. Throughout an eventful career, he ricocheted from intoxicating success, to financial scandal, prison, exile and eventual rehabilitation. In 1985, when Pouillon was in his early 70s, he was awarded the Legion d'Honneur by President Francois Mitterrand. Yet just over 20 years earlier, Pouillon found himself in custody awaiting trial on charges of corruption.
Today, September 2, the seven winners of the 16th Cycle (2023-2025) of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture were announced, following on-site reviews of the 19 shortlisted projects revealed in June. Established in 1977, the Award seeks to identify and encourage building concepts that respond to the physical, social, and economic needs of communities with a significant Muslim presence, while also addressing their cultural aspirations.
The exhibition brings together projects from diverse actors in Italian society through an open call, whose objective was to rethink the boundary between land and water as an integrated system of architecture, infrastructure, and landscape. In response to the Biennale's central theme, the exhibition aims to stimulate the awakening of a collective intelligence capable of triggering a renewal in that relationship, starting from the Italian coast and expanding globally.
Its striking entrance-a footbridge suspended above the Ayung River Valley that ends with a rice bowl-shaped rooftop looking out to tiered rice paddies and gardens-is an architectural masterpiece. The resort has recently emerged with a number of updates: last year, the spa underwent a significant renovation, led by a trio of international firms from Australia, Japan, and Indonesia, that transformed it into a 53,496-square-foot wellness sanctuary.