The Arklow wastewater treatment plant in Ireland, designed by Clancy Moore, is an act of public serviceThe Irish Sea near the town of Arklow was once home to 90km ofnaturally occurring oyster reefs. During the 19th century, Arklow was the countrys main port for oysters 40million were harvested in 1863, with many exported to England, the colonial metropole. But by the end of the 1800s, the oyster beds were depleting due to overharvesting and pollution from the Avoca mines upstream; even in the 1860s, oysters were rebedded elsewhere to remove the taste of copper, dispensed into the river by the mines, beforebeing sold.Since the 19th century, the water qualityof the Avoca River and the sea into whichitdischarges has suffered, due to bothindustry and a lack of wastewater infrastructure. Until June 2024, when the new Arklow wastewater treatment plant began operation, raw sewage as well as greywater and surface runoff was released directly into the river. The lower reaches ofthe Avoca River constituted the most polluted stretches of river in Ireland, according to a 2003 Eastern Regional Fisheries Board report. In 2019, the European Court of Justice took Ireland tocourt for its failure to treat wastewater inArklow, along with 37 other Irish towns.Attempts to build a wastewater treatment plant began in the 1990s but were frustrated by searches for a suitable site. In 2016, alocation was selected at the mouth oftheAvoca River, next to the marina andprominently visible from the town tothesouth. We came to the conclusion that if were going to build something there, it needs to be a civic building that were proud of and that speaks to the town, explains Michael Tinsley, an engineer and senior manager at Uisce ireann (formerly Irish Water), who commissioned the project. Weneed to get an architect involved here. There was an invited competition in 2016 for a practice to join the existing design team, led by Arup and Ayesa Engineering. Dublinbased practice Clancy Moore were anunlikely addition to the lineup, invited on the commendation of a planner who hadbeen impressed by a house on a sensitive quarry site which the practice had designed in 2008.The lower reaches of the Avoca River constituted the most polluted stretches of river in IrelandClancy Moore found themselves aconsultant among many; around 20 specialisms were represented in the design team (odour engineerarticularly niche favourite). In the built project, however, thearchitects hand is keenly felt. From a distance, the monumental louvred volumes appear almost toylike, emerging from between tanks and warehouses like oversized pleated origami. This is how thebuildings will be experienced by most people: a landmark viewed across the river from the south quay or glimpsed on a windy walk by the sea to the north. As Andrew Clancy, cofounder of Clancy Moore, explains, while not accessible to the public,the project is fundamentally for andabout the public good.Clancy Moore have achieved more than just smart dresses for giant sheds. In one ofmany meetings, the architects casually asked if it was possible to put this on that, marking a departure from typical sewage plant design, in which processes are arrayed horizontally and tanks are sunk into the ground. At Arklow, the initial treatment processes where grit and nonorganic objects, such as wet wipes and nappies, areremoved take place on an upper level, with large storm tanks and skips for collecting the removed material below. Wastewater ispumped up to the raised level from the underground sewer and then flows by gravity to the second volume which contains aeration tanks effectively giant petri dishes where bacteria break down harmful compounds before making the journey down a kilometrelong outfall pipe to the Irish Sea.This decision to stack processes precipitated a chain reaction of happy consequences. Volumes were able to be morevertical: confident urban figures with acivic presence. The only evidence that the buildings are in fact part of a sewage works will be a lorry coming out a couple of times aweek to take dried sludge away to eitherbe used as fertiliser or incinerated togenerate electricity. The volumes had to have roofs because the higher areas needed to be served by gantry cranes, which in turn meant that solar panels could be installed onthe roofs (currently just one roof but there are plans to roll out on the second inacouple of years). These will be able to contribute up to40 per cent of the plants energy demands reduced compared with typical arrangements, where wastewater ispumped between each tank rather than fed by gravity. The reduced built area alsoallowed a third of the site area toberewilded, including plants that willhelp todecontaminate the ground.The giant louvres, like halfclosed Venetian blinds, allow air circulation without revealing the unsavoury innards, and are already welcoming small birds looking for a nesting spot (though netting prevents wildlife from venturing further inside). The fins of corrugated fibrecement board, the colour of oxidised copper, hang from a steelframed carapace, the steel columns meeting the ground on hefty concrete feet, a precaution against manoeuvring trucks. The small office building at the site entrance speaks the same language as its two larger siblings butin a softer register, with concrete wedges supporting a portico that echoes the louvres, gently lapped cementboard cladding in the same marine green, and windows in a dance along each facade, like notes on a stave.The reference here to John Hejduks Kreuzberg Tower in Berlin is wittily rehearsed (the facade at the entrance resembles I suspect intentionally a face in profile), and the two louvred sheds heavily quote Hans Christian Hansens Amager switching stations in Copenhagen: large warehouselike buildings with corrugated louvres that flap up and down to allow ventilation. Clancy Moores project itself hasalso been quoted; before the wastewater plant was even completed, DMOD Architects headquarters for Arklow Shipping was builtin 2022 with an oversizedgreen sawtooth roof.Concrete was a prerequisite for the tanks and other processes, for which no other material is suitable, and a steel frame was selected due to structural demands and the exposed marine location. The choice of fibrecement cladding emerged following countless iterative studies: a cast in situ concrete facade was vaunted as there was plenty more concrete already being poured on site, and timber options were considered, though it unfolded that withstanding the tough conditions would require slowgrowth oak and copper nails. This was unsurprisingly quickly dismissed. A hardier, more industrial palette was selected; the corrugated cement board rhymes with thesurrounding industrial sheds, still usedfor shipbuilding.One resident welled up as she noticed that the frothy scum that had habitually laced the edges of the river had disappearedThe Arklow wastewater treatment plantisa rare example of a sewage works designed by an architect, and one of, if not the first in Ireland. The project wastendered as part of a design and build engineering contract that did not include a single drawing. Instead, the architects drew through writing, in a document of over 60 pages, meticulously describing the basis of the buildings: from the plans (a foursided structure, rectangular in plan) down to thedetails (there are to be no horizontal joints between fibrecement panels). Thedocument proves, in case there were anydoubt, that a drawing is worth several thousand words.This is a project of conversation between professionals from innumerable disciplines, and with planning authorities and local people. Clancy and cofounder Colm Moore see the practice as stewards or guardians of the project, navigating and negotiating between the various specialist expertises placed on the table, rather than leading theproject. They also proved to be crucial advocates of the project in consultations with the public: The architects had them sitting down and within five minutes, they were nodding about how the project would speak to the marine history of Arklow, Tinsley describes. Very early on we saw thebenefit of having the architects involved.Tinsley also notes that there has been very little resistance to the project from the local community perhaps expected given the previous dire situation, though unusual asnot everyone wants a sewage plant as aneighbour. Any qualms that the public might have about frivolous spending of taxpayers money on aesthetics can be quelled by Tinsleys estimates that only around 3 per cent of the projects budget was spent on the architecture a small price to pay for a civic landmark.This is a socially and ecologically transformative piece of infrastructure. Onanopen day shortly after the plant beganoperations last year, one resident welled up as she noticed that the frothy scum that had habitually laced the edges of the river had disappeared. But perhaps the most dramatic transformation that will result from the operation of the plant will beurban growth, suppressed since the late 1990s on the grounds that there wasnt adequate wastewater treatment provision the population of the town has hovered around 13,000 for the last 15 years. The new wastewater treatment plant is the key that will unlock development: the plant has the capacity to allow the town to nearly triple insize, with two tanks currently dormant. Asingle development of 476 units on agreenfield site to the south of the town wasgranted planning permission in December 2024.But the towns population had been suppressed since long before the 1990s. The population of the Republic of Ireland only recently, in 2022, surpassed five million for the first time since 1851, just recovering after centuries of English then British colonisation, including a genocidal famine. As Clancy points out, the population growth in Arklow will not be an explosion, but areturn to the normal population dynamics ofthe country as a whole. He hopes young people may now choose to stay and that a considered approach will be taken to urban development. One small positive from the failure to build a plant before is that Arklow was spared the substandard developments of the boom, and of the last 10 years.The deprivation caused by British colonisation and economic mismanagement since independence in 1922 has resulted in underdeveloped infrastructure, including wastewater. In 2014, 50 Irish towns were without water treatment; Arklow was the 35th on the todo list (six more are set to receive treatment plants this year, and thelast nine are at planning stage). The stateowned water company Uisce ireann, established in 2013, is funded through taxation rather than householder water bills (it is a strongly held principle in Ireland that water is free). In contrast, across the Irish Sea in England, privatised water companies operate as uncompetitive monopolies, extracting profit for shareholders while allowing water infrastructure to languish. In2024, Londons private water company Thames Water was responsible for 300,000 hours of raw sewage overflowing into waterways, despite having over 350 treatment plants. The same year, it paidshareholders dividends amounting to 158million. Thames Water has announced water bill increases of 31 per cent beginning 1 April to an annual average of 639 per household.The new use of this site to clean water in Arklow is in stark contrast to its historical uses which excreted a plethora of toxic substances; a gypsum board factory, active between 1964 and 2002, was demolished to make way for the project, and an ammunitions factory for the English Kynoch Company factory was on the site before that. Even thesoil itself reclaimed from the sea during the 19th century is likely contaminated spoil from the Avoca mines. Both the weapons and extracted copper and sulphur that continue to leave their traces inArklow were used by England for imperial gain. Large rusting cylindrical tanks that held industrial waste remain on the site areminder of the toxicity that came before.Today, the river runs clean for the first time in over a hundred years. There are hopes that the oysters will return.

The battle against bacteria has shaped modern architecture, but the health of humans as well as the planet depends on letting the bugs inArchitecture and illnesses have always been entangled. Itcould even be argued that the beginning of architecture is the beginning of disease. As doctor Benjamin Ward Richardson put it when introducing Our Homes and Howto Make them Healthy, a compendium of texts by doctors and architects for the 1884 International Health Exhibition in London: Man, by a knowledge and skill not possessed by the inferior animals, in building cities, villages, houses, for his protection from the external elements, has produced for himself a series of fatal diseases, which are so closely associated with the productions of hisknowledge and skill in building as to stand in the position of effect from cause. Man in constructing protections from exposure has constructed conditions of disease.Doctors and architects have always been in a kind of dance, often exchanging roles, collaborating and influencing each other, even if not always synchronised. Imhotep, the Egyptian architect of the step pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara of 2600 BCE, was also a physician and the author of many medical treatises more than two millennia before Hippocrates, usually considered the father of medicine. Vitruvius in the 1st century BCE launched western architectural theory by insisting that all architects needed to study medicine: Healthfulness being their chief object. He devoted a large part ofhis Ten Books on Architecture to the question of health, giving detailed instructions on how to determine the healthiness of a proposed site for a city by returning to the ancient method of sacrificing an animal that lives there and inspecting its liver to make sure it is sound and firm. Likewise for the health of buildings, he discussed the theory of the four humours, which was the dominant medical theory of the time. Vitruvius even argued that those who areunwell can be cured more quickly through design, rebuilding the system of those exhausted by disease including consumption, now known as tuberculosis.In 1985, architect Lina Bo Bardi curated the exhibition Entreato para Crianas (Interlude for Children). The poster included the architect as a toddler anddrawings of insects alongside the words dont step on the ants, dont killthe cockroaches.Credit:Instituto Lina Bo and PM Bardi / Casa de VidroElsewhere, architects and planners have long waged wars against bugs. InLubumbashi, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, disease spread by flies and mosquitoes was used byBelgian colonialists to justify a cordon sanitaire. Sammy Balojis Essay on Urban Planning documents its lasting urban legacyCredit:Photo (detail): Alessandra Bello / Courtesy of Sammy Baloji and Imane Fars Gallery, ParisEvery subsequent architectural theory added something to this medical paradigm. Cities represent an accumulation of theories ofdisease from ancient times to the present. The history of architecture and the history of the city is the history of disease, thehistory of a series of structures and infrastructures put in place to counter the previous epidemic, as if it was always a step behind. From new building types, such as the lazaretti in 15thcentury Italy, designed to contain those infected by the plague, or suspected to beinfected, to the great infrastructure works of the 19th century: sewage systems, clean water, urban grids and parks that completely reshaped cities in the name of health.Modern architecture was produced under emergency conditions. Throughout the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th, millions died of tuberculosis every year all over the world. Modern buildings offered a prophylactic defence against this invisible micro-organism, the tuberculosis bacillus that was only identified in1882 by Robert Koch. All the defining features of modern architecture white walls, terraces, big windows, detachment fromthe ground were presented as both prevention and cure. LeCorbusier, for example, wrote that pilotis separated the housefrom the humid ground where disease breeds.Cities represent an accumulation of theories ofdisease from ancient times to the presentTo produce the idea of modern architecture as healthy, 19thcentury architecture was demonised as nervous, unhealthy andfilled with disease, especially the bacilli of tuberculosis. Decorative excess was itself treated as an infection. Modernising architecture was firstly a form of disinfection, a purification of buildings leading to a healthgiving environment of light, air, cleanliness and smooth white surfaces without cracks or crevices where contagion might lurk.It was not until 1928 that the first modern antibiotic, penicillin, was accidentally discovered by Alexander Fleming when he observedthat mould stopped the growth of bacteria, unknowingly reactivating an ancient knowledge; Imhotep had already applied mouldy bread to skin infections, and plants with antibacterial properties have been central to the health practices of many Indigenous communities all over the world for thousands of years. Streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis, wasnot discovered until 1943 and not widely available for a decade but there was already an antibiotic philosophy of architecture. Modern architecture was the antibiotic. It was modern inasmuch asit was free of bacteria, particularly the bacillus of tuberculosis. Inthat sense, it saved lives.In response to the tuberculosis epidemic in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, modernist sanatoria prioritised access to direct sunlight.The rooms of Lake County Tuberculosis Sanatorium, built in 1939 to designs by William Ganster and William Pereira and appearing on the cover of Revista Nacional de Arquitectura in 1952 (left), all faced south to maximise sun exposure. In todays hospitals, sky ceilings imitate natural light and vegetation, as captured in Lewis Khans Theatre series (lead image), started in 2014Credit:Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid (COAM) and Lewis KhanThe medicinal nature of modern architecture and the unimaginable horror it was responding to has been largely forgotten. We act as if each pandemic is the first, as if trying to bury the pain and uncertainty of the past. In the early days of the Covid19 pandemic in 2020, buildings designed for temporary events hosted an emergency medical architecture, a space for disease. The scene was repeated all over the world, from Belgrade to Lahore, Wuhan toKuala Lumpur, So Paulo to New York City. Vast halls, stadiums, armouries and urban parks were turned into field hospitals. It was not the first time: during the 1918 flu epidemic that killed more people than the two World Wars combined, huge empty spaces werefilled with beds. A photograph of a field hospital in a US armytraining camp in Camp Funston, Kansas, where the 1918 virusfirstemerged, shows hundreds of ill soldiers in a grid of beds inan uncanny resemblance of what would happen a century later. Inhealth emergencies, all buildings are medicalised. Medical crises bring architecture to the foreground.Like antibiotics, modern architecture eventually created its own monsters. It produces sickness, most obviously sick building syndrome. The airconditioning systems that architects such asLeCorbusier celebrated for isolating the inside air from the contaminated outside air turned out to be reservoirs and vectors ofdisease, circulating pathogens. The kind of architecture that wassupposed to inoculate its occupants against disease turned against them as in a sciencefiction horror film.Many of the diseases of our time obesity, diabetes, manyformsofcancer, autoimmune disorders, allergies are nowunderstood to be plausibly connected to the diminishing diversity of bacteria. Buildings have their own microbiomes, and the diversity of these microbiomes is just as important in buildings as they are in human bodies. The bacteria of buildings continuously enter the body and the bacteria in the body are spread out across buildings along with the bacteria of fellow humans, other animals, insects and plants.Models of health paradoxically produce vulnerabilities toillnessAll these archaeological layers of sick architecture are inherently political. Models of health paradoxically produce vulnerabilities toillness. They privilege and shelter a normalised subject from threatening others. The violent exercise of colonial power, whether external or internal, is inseparable from the architecture of health. The ancient emergency strategy of the cordon sanitaire, used to isolate territories during the centuries of plague epidemics, for example, was turned into an instrument of permanent urban planning in the Belgian Congo to separate the Indigenous city fromthe European city in the name of preventing yellow fever, as suggested in the research of the artist Sammy Baloji. A 400mwide band, the distance it was thought no mosquito could fly, divided Black citizens from white settlers. The mosquito dimensioned the city. But the medical border acted as a mechanism of racialisation. In fact, all borders, whether of a room or a nation, are medical borders reinforced by countless protocols and policing. These borders are typically not a single line but a nesting of lines at multiple scales, each with its own architecture.The construction of the Panama Canal, which was first and foremost the conquest of the mosquito, involved hugescale interventions like clearing forests and draining swamps. Thearchitecture of health is always multiscalar, traversing and definingterritory, nation, ethnicity, race, class and domesticities. Itcreates models of normality, which are also models of exclusion, disadvantage and prejudice.Health is not just physical. Already in ancient Greece, a variety ofmental illnesses were identified and spatialised, as sufferers were forced to remain indoors or roam the outdoors without a permanent address. Eventually specialised buildings offered both isolation and care. Thepreeminent philosopher and physician in the Muslim world IbnSina, also known in the west as Avicenna, worked in the first mental health hospital set up in Baghdad in the 8th century to treat the head sick with calming gardens and fountains, in buildings located in the heart of the city to encourage visitors. His Canon of Medicine considered psychology to be very important and was the most influential medical text in Europe up to the 17th century. TheHospital dels Innocents, founded in Valencia, Spain, in 1410, after observing the Islamic institutions that housed the insane, isconsidered the first psychiatric hospital in the western world. Eventually the whole architecture of mental illness was undone by the antipsychiatry movement in the 1960s, but the experimentation continues today in architectures that allow those on an expanded mental spectrum to be at once sheltered and engaged in city life. Inthe Caritas psychiatric centre in Belgium (AR September 2018), designed by de Vylder Vinck Taillieu with BAVO, neurodivergence isnot treated as an illness and the role of the building is not to isolate but provide a platform.Rather than surfaces that are easy to disinfect, championed by many modernist buildings, probiotic tiles designed by Richard Beckett and Aileen Hoenerloh harbour bacteria. Made of concrete and soil, containing millions of microbes, the textured surfaces encourage the growth of a diverse microbiomeCredit:Richard Beckett and AiIleen HoenerlohDesigned for an ecologist, the shower of the Casa Jardn by Al Borde in Quito, Ecuador, is located in a greenhouse, among the plantsCredit:JAG StudioIn fact, the question of mental health has always been part of architectural discourse. Architects act as if their designs will produce a sense of wellbeing. Each mental condition needs to be countered by architecture. At the turn of the 20th century in Vienna, Camillo Sitte diagnosed the modern city as producing agoraphobia, in the very moment and place the Vienna of Freud the disorder was being actively discussed. Sitte presented his urban design, inspired by the eccentric narrow streets and small piazzas of medieval cities, as a psychological counter. In the late 1940s and 50s, Richard Neutra presented himself as a shrink to his clients, which he understood to be his patients. Likewise, when the concept of stress was identified in the 1960s as the predominant reaction tomodern life, experimental architects such as CoopHimmelblau worked with psychiatrists to produce prototypes of relaxation architectures, as discussed by Victoria Bugge ye. Hans Hollein replaced buildings altogether with an architecture pill providing the desired mental state. In reverse, some conditions such as autism are now seen as inherently spatial, and imply an alternative architecture in its own right. In addition to architectures for an expanded mental spectrum, there is the need to embrace an expanded understanding of the physical spectrum. The diverse abilities of children, older people, those with limb differences, deafness, blindness, and people who arechronically ill call for greater hospitality, opportunity and pleasure from architecture, redefining the very concept of care and transforming the role of buildings in a way that impacts many more than those being treated. Using the language of their time, Aino and Alvar Aalto offered a crucial paradigm shift when they argued that architects should always design for the person in the weakest position. The radicality of thisis to rethink architecture from vulnerability itself.The age of antibiotics and antibiotic architecture threatens our species. The microbiologist Martin Blaser writes about the silent extinction of microbes, arguing that the crisis of the diminishing diversity of the human microbiome is a bigger threat to the species than climate change. So what would a probiotic architecture be? Probably it would be like our gut: more porous, versus the prophylactic attitude of modern architecture. The immune system does not simply keep foreign organisms out; it regulates a dynamic balance between insiders and outsiders. Architecture too could be away of bringing the other in. This might mean experimenting with the idea of rewilding the interior. We used to live intimately with all the bacteria of the soil, the plants and other animals. And we may want to reconnect with even embrace this diversity of bacteria.In the UK, NHS providers produce around 156,000 tonnes of clinical waste every year. This rocketed during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the explosion of single-use plastic PPE (personal protective equipment). The photographs of Natasha Durlachers Postcards from the Pandemic depict discarded masks and gloves, a solemn reminder of the devastating impact of growing ocean and landpollutionCredit:Natasha DurlacherThere is a precedent for a probiotic architecture one that fosterstransspecies communities in some of the work of the ItalianBrazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. When she designed her Casa de Vidro in So Paulo in 1949, a house suspended in the forest, like a treehouse, she drew every insect, plant and animal living in the site with the same precision that she drew the building. For her they are part of the building. If architecture is all about keeping the bugs out, Bo Bardi embraces a transspecies architecture where insects are not the enemy, but intelligent members of the community, and humans are just temporary guests. She made exhibitions and plays for children about this new understanding of community, imagining spaces in which insects, animals and plants are the real occupants. For Bo Bardi, architecture is architecture only inasmuch as it is dissolved by other species. Even her dramatic demonstrations of geometry and force, like the remarkable MASP, were originally drawn as if being eaten by plants. This is part of a political ethic ofcelebrating and learning from other species.Architecture today needs to be dramatically reconfigured onhealth grounds just as modern architecture polemically reconfigured the 19thcentury architectures that preceded it. Humancentred design sounds good, but it is terrible for humans, aswell as other species and the planet. The first form of life was bacteria, four billion years ago, while the human is a very recent arrival and might already be on the way out. Bacteria are what madeplants, trees and eventually humans possible. The human isnot just one thing but an endlessly complex, everchanging transspecies collaboration: the human is a bag of bacteria. But bacteria are usually treated as an invisible enemy that needs to be exterminated. Instead, bacteria should be at the centre of design. We are nothing without all these foreigners. We live in them more than they live in us.This is the Keynote essay from AR April 2025: Health. Buy your copy at the ARs online shop, or read more from the issue here

Herzog & de Meuron | Baas Arquitectura | Casa Solo Arquitectos | Nord Architects | 3RW Arkitekter | Witherford Watson Mann | Clancy Moore | Irene Barclay | Ecomimesis Solues Ecolgicas | Adamo FaidenFor most of us, life begins in a hospital and is likely to end in a medical facility too. We visit hospitals during our lives if not for a broken arm or surgery, then for an unwell loved one.Although healthcare is a universal need, access is deeply unequal. The most impressive new hospital buildings, such as Herzog & de Meurons new Kinderspital Zrich, are typically built in wealthy urban centres, and their replicability is questionable. In Catalonia, the public healthcare system has been commissioning primary care centres in the regions smaller towns to improve proximity to facilities while alleviating pressure on the larger complexes.Hospitals and other medical facilities are not the only architectures of health. Interwar social housing advocate Irene Barclay identified houses that are dangerous and injurious to health in her reports of Londons so-called slums. In Rio de Janeiro, the municipality is creating new urban parks so that deprived communities may escape the heat to exercise and socialise. For the first time in a century, the water of Irelands Avoca River is running clear, due to a new treatment plant designed by Clancy Moore.A healthy building supports human life, as well as other living organisms, argues Beatriz Colomina in her keynote. This is not restricted to architectures end users but those who build it too. UK construction workers died at a greater rate than nurses in 2020, Charlotte Banks writes. It is a stark reminder that, even at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the building industry will value profit over human health unless continually and tirelessly checked.1520: Healthcover (above) Damien HirstAs part of a larger group of works featuring shrine-like wall-mounted pill cabinets, Damien Hirsts When the Heart Speaks (2005) explores the boundaries of human belief and challenges societys reliance on drugs as a universal cure. Credit: Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS 2025 / Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd / Courtesy the artist and Gagosianfolio (lead image) Tobias CohenIn Maaseh Tuviyah, a 1708 scientific reference book by rabbi-physician Tobias Cohen, the human body isimagined not as a proverbial temple, but as afour-storey house with an attic for a head, kitchen for a belly, and plumbing and water features for excretion. Credit: Wikimedia / Houghton Library / Harvard UniversitykeynoteA bugs lifeBeatriz ColominabuildingChildrens hospital by Herzog & de Meuron in Zrich, SwitzerlandVera SacchettibuildingRadiotherapy and hemodialysis centre by Baas Arquitectura and Casa Solo Arquitectos in Granollers, SpainRafael Gmez-MorianaessayPride without prejudiceTorsten LangebuildingFuruset Hageby dementia village by Nord Architects and 3RW Arkitekter in Oslo, NorwayFeliks Ulven IsaksenbuildingAppleby Blue almshouse by Witherford Watson Mann in London, UKCatherine SlessoroutrageBuilding killsCharlotte BanksbuildingWastewater treatment plant by Clancy Moore in Arklow, IrelandEleanor BeaumontreputationsIrene BarclayMarianna JanowiczbuildingParque Realengo by Ecomimesis Solues Ecolgicas, Ayako Arquitetura, Helena Meirelles Arquitetura, Larissa Monteiro, Messina Rivas and Zebulun Arquitetura in Rio de Janeiro, BrazilFrancesco Perrotta-BoschbuildingGuayaquil veterinary clinic by Adamo Faiden in Buenos Aires, ArgentinaMagdalena TagliabueessayThe hospital of the future?Annmarie Adams

The trophies for the 2025 W Awards are woven out of rush from Stngn and Lake stjuten in Sweden, as well as strips of plastic, using basket-weaving techniques. In Sweden, rush which grows in freshwater lakes, marshes and wetlands is usually harvested around Midsummer, when the roots loosen their grip. Rush crafts have become nearly extinct in Sweden, though a new education programme in thatching is emerging, so perhaps a turning point is near.Crafted using traditional weaving techniques and human-made and natural materials, each of Myckets trophies has a unique personalityCredit:Luke HayesThey each include a weight a chunk of the bedrock blasted out from underneath ArkDes to make way for new subway linesCredit:Luke HayesThe best way to harvest is to swim out and gather the reeds. Once you have collected a large bundle, you can float on it (rush can carry entire communities the Uru people of Lake Titicaca built islands of Totora reeds to evade aggressive neighbours and colonisers). After harvesting, the rush must be dried in a well-ventilated space, then soaked before crafting begins.The plastic strips in the trophies come from washed snack bags salvaged from the Catastrophe Carnival we organised last year everyone was invited to come dressed as their worst catastrophe as a way of processing the apocalypse. Each trophy also contains a small weight, a piece of the bedrock beneath ArkDes (the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design) in Stockholm. That bedrock is currently being blasted to make way for new metro lines, and we used fragments of the blasted stone in our project The Secret Garden (20242025).The trophies are made from rush as well as salvaged plastic and aluminium packaging from the collectives Catastrophe CarnivalCredit:Luke HayesWe see these trophies as mini-architectures. When we work with rush, we move through time-scales far beyond the human. Rush grows in cyclical loops, while the plastic and aluminium snack bags take hundreds of years to decompose. Working hands-on with rush and snack bags was not just about shaping trophies it is a way to understand time, relationships, and humanitys place in the world order. The inherent slowness of crafting both in the act of making and in the materials life cycle stands in opposition to accelerating capitalist efficiency. The form emerges in dialogue with the materials: we shape them, and they shape us. We call this process shape-shifting a design practice we are currently investigating to transform the architecture and design professions relationship to the Earth and our fellow beings.Mycket was the winner of the Prize for Research into Gender and Architecture at the 2024 W Awards. The collectives trophies will be presented to the 2025 winners at an event in Venice on 9 May.

An open international contest is being held for a new technology and innovation hub in the West Bank city of Ramallah (Deadline: 1 June 2025)The single-stage competition invites creative architects to submit visionary ideas for a landmark new Ramallah Science and Technology City (RSTC) development providing educational and research facilities.Once complete, the new complex will provide year-round interactive learning spaces for a range of visitors of all ages including educational school trips, science festivals and community activities.Al-Manara Square, RamallahCredit:Image by Montecruz Foto Attribution-ShareAlikeAccording to the brief: RSTC aims to establish itself as a landmark in the city of Ramallah and across Palestine as an iconic and major tourist destination, attracting thousands of visitors annually.It will change the stigma and stereotype that scientific knowledge is difficult, and only those who dedicate their lives to it can understand it. It will accomplish that through exhibitions, multimedia productions, community programs, and much more that will target children, youth, and adults of all professions. This project will be the first of its kind in Palestine.Ramallah is a major Palestinian city located around 10km north of Jerusalem in the West Bank. Local landmarks include Al-Manara Square (pictured), the Arafat Mausoleum and Jamal Abdel Nasser Mosque.Irish practice Heneghan Peng completed a new Palestinian Museum in the city in 2016 telling the story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Palestinian perspective. The 3,500m2 museum features a gallery, amphitheatre, caf, library and offices.It was won in a competition against UKs Cullinan Studio, Henning Larsen Architects of Denmark, Canadian firm Moriyama & Teshima, and Consolidated Consultants from Jordan.The latest project will create a major new tourist destination for Ramallah attracting thousands of visitors annually. The complex is expected to feature dynamic exhibitions, multimedia productions, and community programmes.Submissions must include a masterplan, concept description, 3D images, floor plans, spatial configuration and other images. The overall winner will receive a $6,000 USD prize while a second prize of $4,000 and third prize of $2,000 will also be awarded along with two honourable mentions.How to applyDeadline: 1 June 2025Competition funding source: Not suppliedProject funding source: Not suppliedOwner of site(s): Not suppliedContact details: competition@rstc.psVisit the competition website for more information

An open international competition featuring a 500,000 prize fund is being held for small-scale concepts to enhance public spaces (Deadline: 7 May)The competition invites architects, artists, and creatives to put forward proposals for new small-scale architectural elements that could enhance public spaces and contribute to the evolving urban identity of the country bordering the Gulf.Organised by Buildner in collaboration with the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority the contest aims to re-imagine human-scale architecture and come up with a range of solutions to promote community, enhance urban life and contribute to Dubais evolving identity.Marina Street, DubaiCredit:Image by Capitaine Chikor Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International licenseAccording to the brief: Dubai is a city of ambition a global symbol of innovation, culture, and rapid evolution. Yet, as it continues to expand and redefine itself, Dubai now turns its focus inward, seeking meaning not only in iconic structures but in the spaces that shape daily life. It looks to the in-between the bridges, pathways, and gathering spaces to strengthen its urban identity and connect its communities.Participants are challenged to develop a cohesive design concept across seven distinct zones, each with its own unique character, density, and rhythm. The aim is to craft thoughtful, context-driven solutions that strengthen Dubais urban fabric while responding to the specific needs and identities of each zone.Dubai is the most populous city in the UAE and in 2022 became the first city within the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia region to host a world expo. The House of the Future contest comes five years after London-based IJP Architects and engineer AKT II won a competition to design a 230m-long footbridge in Dubai.The latest competition seeks visionary, functional, and context-sensitive proposals which creatively enhance the city while also promoting cultural awareness, sustainability, and public engagement.Proposals should respond to the unique character, density and social dynamics of seven different zones across Dubai spanning residential, suburban, cultural, industrial and high-end uses.Concepts could include pedestrian and cycle bridges and underpasses, street furniture, shading structures, wayfinding and signage, safety structures, lighting, repair stations and pavement designs.The jury has yet to be announced and will include up to nine experts. Submissions will be judged 30 per cent on innovation and creativity, 30 per cent on response to context, 20 per cent on feasibility and cost and 20 per cent on sustainability.The overall winner to be announced 1 July will receive a 250,000 top prize. A second prize of 140,000 and third prize of 50,000 will also be awarded along with six honourable mentions prizes each worth 10,000.How to applyDeadline: 7 MayCompetition funding source: The Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), under the leadership of the Dubai GovernmentProject funding source: The Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), under the leadership of the Dubai GovernmentOwner of site(s): Dubai MunicipalityContact details: contact@buildner.comVisit the competition website for more information

The winners of an open international contest to remodel various venues on the Montjuc trade fair site in Barcelona have been revealedThe winning teams featuring Chilean-Croatian architect Smiljan Radi, local firm Forgas Architectes and Bjarke Ingels Group of Denmark have been announced by Spains Commission for the Centenary of the 1929 International Exposition.Launched last year, the two-stage competition sought proposals to transform the historic city centre site which hosted the International Expo of 1929 into a new modern, flexible and adaptable exhibition centre.The phased 255 million project planned to complete in time for the sites centenary in 2029 is divided into three lots.The first lot will see the existing Hall 1 also known as the Palau de les Comunicacions renovated and an emblematic new 20,500m multipurpose hall constructed on the site of the nearby Hall 4 and Palau de Congressos de Barcelona.This lot was won by a team featuring the architects Smiljan Radi, Miquel Marin Nez, Beatriz Borque and Cesar Rueda Bonet. Their winning proposal, 2029 Artefacto will create a luminous and monumental complex integrated into its surrounding urban environment.The project will include a new 2,000m landscaped walkway connecting the two pavilions together.The second lot will meanwhile see a new congress hall constructed on the site of the current Alfons XIII hall conserving its listed elements and delivering a new large-capacity auditorium.This contest was won by Forgas Architectes, Archambac (Arquitectura Sideral) and lvaro Alejandro Fernndez with the proposal Umbracle.The winning concept will create a large open-plan and flexible space that gives prominence to natural light and respects as much as possible the current structure designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch.It will include a 6,670m courtyard garden, a 3,132m exhibition hall and a large 2,025-capacity auditorium along with several multipurpose meeting rooms. The self-sufficient proposal also features photovoltaic, aerothermal and geothermal systems and stormwater collection.The old Palau del Vestit which is now part of Hall 8 will also be transformed into an innovation hub focussing on smart cities, food, audiovisual and technology.This final lot was won by Bjarke Ingels Group and MIAS Architects. Their LAvantsala de la Fira concept will deliver a functional and flexible Z-shaped, three-storey building surrounded by garden open to the public.The proposal will combine the buildings existing structures designed by Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Josep Maria Jujol with modern interventions featuring flexible and connected workspaces, meeting rooms and a 200-person auditorium.All three lots represent the first phase of the sites regeneration. Each project is planned to complete by 2029 in time for the expos centenerary.A second phase to remodel both the Palacio de las Comunicaciones Hall 1 and the Palacio de la Metalurgia Hall 8 will see an additional architectural competition launched at a later date.

The Faith Museum by Nall McLaughlin Architects in Bishop Auckland, UK, combines the godly with the profaneJacqueline Stephen of Nall McLaughlin Architects is shortlisted for the MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice 2024. Find out more about the W Awards hereFound at the confluence of theRiver Wear and the River Gaunless, Bishop Auckland, in County Durham in the north of England, has a rich but unsung history as ameeting point of the sacred and the civic. Since the 11th century, the bishops of Durham have been central to the towns legacy. Centuries of conquest and religious ceremony laid further layers of history; industrial revolution and decline shaped the Victorian character and grain ofthe town centre. Auckland Palace the home ofthe bishops of Durham until 2012 hassimilarly been subjected to many transformations since it was built in the 12th century. The bishop of Durhams private chapel on the site, built in 1665, isconstructed from stones reclaimed fromthe 12thcentury mansion, which hadthemselves been salvaged from demolished buildings.Click to download drawingsIn 2012, the palace and its contents were purchased by the Auckland Project, aregeneration charity founded by Jonathan Ruffer, a financier and philanthropist; as acollector of religious Spanish art, Ruffer had a particular interest in the palaces collection of Francisco de Zurbarn paintings. By 2020, Ruffer had invested more than a third of his considerable wealth into the area in a bid to establish Bishop Auckland as a mustvisit cultural destination. An ambitious 25year plan was undertaken to transform Bishop Auckland into a centre of art, history and culture, where the lines between spiritual and secular are readily blurred.From the upper floor of the palace, evidence of an everexpanding cultural offering can be surveyed, alongside the significant archaeological excavations taking place within the site and the surrounding square mile. In 2014, NallMcLaughlin Architects (NMA), incollaboration with Purcell, won the competition to transform the Grade Ilisted Auckland Palace and its grounds into a national museum of religion and religious art. The 35mtall Auckland Tower at the tipof the towns high street opened in 2018;reminiscent of a medieval siege tower, the structure offers a viewing platform overlooking the castle, town and parkland beyond. A twostorey, monopitched building at the towers base houses an information centre, ticketing office and theAuckland Project offices. As part of thewider Bishop Auckland development, neighbouring farmhouses were carefully repaired and now contain galleries, arestaurant, a hotel and facilities for thegroundskeepers and gardeners. And inOctober 2023, almost a decade after its inception, the Faith Museum opened its doors to the public an extension to Auckland Palace housing a permanent exhibition showcasing 6,000 years of Britishfaith.References range from tithe barns to the exquisite detail of reliquary boxesEchoing adjacent activities, the architects designs for the museum began with an archaeological study, uncovering the presence of a building that formed acourtyard garden with the palace. This discovery, confirmed by archival drawings, dictated the location of the new museum and the proposed Faith Garden. The palace grounds and Faith Museum lie beyond Robinsons Arch, a squat stone entrance that is partcrenellated castle wall, parttriumphal arch and partclocktower. Once through the arch, the layers of history unfold. Two walls, parallel to the path, stitch together the varied typologies anderas found within the palace curtilage. Tothe south, a 17thcentury walled garden sharply falls away; its beds and orchards provide food for the palaces caf. To thenorth, a stone wall is intermittently interrupted by elevations of adjacent buildings an agricultural yard, timber loadingbay doors, the Faith Museum proudly stepping forward, the palaces grand entrance and finally disappears from view towards woodland.The size and sharpness of the Faith Museum silhouette are imposing, but its simple form, deft details and singularity lend a quietly assured presence. We wanted a bold piece of contemporary architecture from the start, explains ClareBaron, head of exhibitions at the Auckland Project. We wanted to signal that there is a renewed future for the site, through the creation of a destination for art, culture and faith. The monolithic museums design considers themes of monumental and ordinary, secular and sacred, contemporary and historic, says NMA associate Jacqueline Stephen, who led the project between 2016 and 2023. Acombination of the monumental and theordinary informs the references used by the architects, ranging from utilitarian tithe barns used by medieval farmers for their church offerings, to the exquisite detail of reliquary boxes containers forsacred relics. The building is secular inits function as a museum, but because of the nature of its contents and the religious associations of the site, we sought to give ita heightened sense of the sacred, byelevating certain details.Click to download drawingsThis elevation is discernible at every scale, across every surface, from the locally crafted finials at the roofs apex, to the stonelined drains where the museum meets the ground. Locally quarried CopCrag sandstone is used to create amonolith full of depth and interest, in Stephens words. The material specification balances consistency and variety, allowing the assorted tones to neither cluster nor create a clear rhythm. The stone was cut bylocal masons in different ways: at ground level, splitfaced to bring out its richness and depth; cut into largeformat smooth ashlar for the firstfloor walls, which expresses the variation and patterns; and assembled into an openjointed rainscreen on the steeply pitching roof. Ageing is part of the composition, as the different stone formats weather in different ways; an elegant concealed gutter subtly highlights the contrast between the pristine facade and the roof that has developed into adeeper shade.At first, the museum appears to be a standalone building; however, the extension is in fact accessed from Auckland Palace via the 16thcentury Scotland Wing. The lower level is partially sunken and the enfilade of galleries are artificially and dimly lit to protect the works on display. On the floor above, however, the main gallery is radiant and weightless. Delicately formed steel trusses carry the faintly stippled acoustic ceiling above; the soaring pitched ceiling engenders an ecclesiastical feel. As elsewhere, everyday details are elevated: floor vents necessitated by the strict environmental conditions needed todisplay such fragile objects reinforce thecadence of patterned parquet floors, popping out to reveal services below. Otherwise, none of the innumerable security and environmental controls are apparent. Sliding timber screens conceal goods lifts with effortless grace. Wooden finishes and parchmentcoloured walls givethe gallery warmth. Walls are intermittently broken by deep arrowslit openings, with predictably perfect reveals.Click to download drawingsNMA made for fitting collaborators. TheLondonbased practices portfolio is typified by its expressive and exquisitely crafted architecture in challenging contexts often steeped in history. From its mending of a listed west London monastery in the early 1990s, to their more recent student halls, auditoriums, sports pavilions and libraries for Oxford and Cambridge universities, the practice often blurs the line between divinity and the everyday intheir work. Toplit, lofty volumes pair with humble materials, and revered finishes fuse with quiet, familiar details.Stephen shares that she has a particular interest in the technical and construction stages of projects and notes the scarcity offemale voices among contractors. We wanted the project to have an inherent simplicity, but knew its success would hinge on the detailing and delivery. This required working closely with the main contractor and specialist subcontractors to ensure the execution matched the projects aspirations, even when that meant having difficult conversations. With a scheme so seemingly simple, there is nowhere to hide. From concept to completion, Stephen has guided the process with an extraordinary level of care. Despite its significant scale and tight tolerances, the finished Faith Museum does not feel weighed down by anyof its constraints. Instead, it is light: sacrosanct.

Register for free to join AR editors and AR Future Projects winners at Dropcity during the Salone del MobileWinner of AR Future Projects Gort Scott will present their winning project, New Court for Girton College at University of Cambridge, on Wednesday 9 April at Dropcity in Milan, during the Salone del Mobile.AR Future Projects Live 2025Wednesday 9 April, 6pmDropcity, 60 Via Giovanni Battista Sammartini, 20125 MilanoRegister hereto attend for freeNew Court for Girton College at University of Cambridge by Gort ScottWe will also hear from Malta-based practice AP Valletta as well as Guillaume Othenin-Girard at the University of Hong Kong about their highly commended projects: the restoration of a school in Ghana and an archaeological field laboratory in Armenia.Osu Salem Presbyterian School in Accra, Ghana, designed by AP Valletta and David Kojo DerbanGlkhatun archaeological field laboratory in Urtsadzor, Armenia, designed by Guillaume Othenin-Girard and the University of Hong KongLaunched in 2002, the AR Future Projects awards are a window into tomorrows cities. Spanning 12 categories, they celebrate excellence in unbuilt and incomplete projects, and the potential for positive contribution to communities, neighbourhoods and urban landscapes around the world. Find out more about this years winners here.All winners have been published in the 2025 Future Projects awards catalogue purchase a copy here2025-03-26AR EditorsShare

dMFK Architects renovation of the fin de sicle offices of a wallpaper manufacturer strikes a delicate balance between restoration and upgradingMathilda Lewis of dMFK Architects is shortlisted for the MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice 2024. Find out more about the W Awards hereDoes a landmark have to mark the landscape? Voysey House is nestled in a network of alleys off Chiswick High Road in west London. Anattentive stroller might easily miss it. Yetfor admirers of the fin de sicle architect and designer CFA Voysey, it is a landmark indeed, even if you have to peep down one of the slender passages that surround it to see its gleaming white brick walls and Portland stone peaks. I think the photographers feltduped, says Mathilda Lewis of Londonbased firm dMFK Architects, whenthey came and realised that they couldnt get the perspective for a great photo.Voysey specialised in a distinctively streamlined Arts and Crafts style. His country houses reconcile vernacular forms such as pitched roofs with clean, modernising features like white rendered walls. Completed at the height of his practice, Voysey House transferred his ethos to a structure of a verydifferent stripe. Previously known as the White Building, it was erected for the wallpaper manufacturer Arthur Sanderson & Sons in 1902 to complement a redbrick Victorian factory across the passage.After a fire gutted the Victorian factory in 1928, Sanderson moved out to Perivale. Now its successor company, Sanderson Design Group, has moved back in, thanks to property developer and investor Dorrington. After buying the building in 2020, Dorrington invited Sanderson back and began a competition for its restoration. This waswon by dMFK, with Lewis as project architect. Work started on the site in January 2021 and construction took three years.Its architect aside, the building has a significant place in design history. Sanderson was established in 1860, a year before William Morris started his own company. At one point its Chiswick factory accounted for 98 per centof all British wallpaper manufacture. Sanderson hired many of the leading designers of the day, including Voysey. In1940, it bought the wallpaper business, blocks, logbooks, stock and name of Morris & Co, absorbing its most famous rival. The present incarnation encompasses six British luxury interior brands. The companys 75,000item archive, now housed within thebuilding, is a remarkable repository ofwallpaper design.Voysey approached his sole industrial commission with a typical combination offunctionalism and flourish. The buildings hulking dimensions allowed rolls of wallpaper the length of tube carriages to be unfurled atonce. The walls are built of white glazed bricks, with plinths and window frames in a Staffordshire blue variety. Voysey installed huge windows with curved frames toallow in light for work, but also punched whimsical portholelike round windows onthe top floor. The buildings buttresses resemble those of a parish church. Seen from the south, the roof alternates the crowns ofthese structures with parapets topped with cambered Portland stone coping. But any lofty ornamental flourishes are balanced with concessions to the reality of a working building in a 20thcentury city: the buttresses are fitted with urine deflectors to protect them from drinkers from the adjacent pub.Originally known as the White Building, wallpaper-maker Sandersons office used to be connected to its factory across the passage. Its architect wasthe arts and crafts designer CFA VoyseyCredit:RIBA CollectionsAfter Sanderson left, the White Building became a printing works. In 1968, it was purchased by the National Transit Insurance Company. During this period two shuttered garage doors were sawed into the west end of Voyseys structure. They made partitions, added an internal glass lobby and raised deck and removed the original roof. When it was Grade II* listed in 1973 the transformations had already been done. In the 1980s, architect Charles Lawrence bought the building. Lawrence was a member of the Voysey Society and engaged in piecemeal restoration. He rented out the lower three storeys as anoffice while converting the uppermost into a family home, adding another floor, alightwell and a roof terrace while doing so.Over the years, Voyseys bricks had deteriorated. dMFK collaborated with stonework and restoration contractor Paye to repair them, brick by brick. Lewis worked with the client to mark up every damaged brick. It was almost like a game of Jenga, she smiles. How many bricks could we remove without the building falling down? This was possibly the most painful bit of thejob, and in the end you almost dont notice itbecause its so seamlessly repaired.The practices plan sought to bring the building closer to Voysey without turning back time.dMFK director Joshua Scott says: Refurbished glazed brick buildings canlooklike theyve just come outof the factory.They look almost like afacsimile ofthemselves rather than an authentic restoration. dMFK and their partners aimed to instead embrace the buildings wear and age. The exterior isconsequently clean but not glossy.By renewing Voysey House, the architects have made its layers of history all the more conspicuousThe approach continues inside the building. The steel structure is visible, painted in an intumescent paint to protect it from fire. Voyseys original ceiling of white corrugated metal has been cleaned, but dMFK has kept its joins and irregularities. The first and second floors, home to Sandersons offices and design studios, retain Voyseys original wooden flooring, with visible ink stains andmarks from the presses.dMFK also retained Voyseys service coreat the eastern end of the building, adding modern amenities such as showers and bicycle storage, extending the lift to the upper storey and redesigning the staircase with a bespoke nosing of brass inlay and Staffordshire blue brick. These are all hidden from the main space. Network and power sockets are also concealed behind skirting and in the ceiling. The partitions, lobby and raised deck were removed to create freeflowing, open spaces, as Voysey would have recognised. The ground floor is fitted with movable wall panels, allowing separate areas to be created while retaining sight of the entire space.For the windows, dMFK restored the aesthetics of Voyseys original while doing something new. dMFK reimplememted hissmall panes and thick metal frames, replacing his castiron with heatretaining steel. This has both a heritage and security function, with the portcullislike lattice making it difficult for breakins and dispensing with the need for shutters. Through material investigation the architects also discovered and reapplied the frames original bottle green colour.These windows use double glazing, which enhances the buildings heat retention. Thiswas something weve had to fight for in planning, recalls Lewis, because Hounslow Council has a blanket no double glazing policy to avoid double reflectivity. The solution was to place ultrathin panels of Fineo glazing close together. This decreased the buildings Uvalue by over 50 per cent. Itunlocked us getting an EPC A rating, which is quite an achievement for a building of this age, adds Scott.dMFK did not reverse all the interventions of the previous century. The garage doors wereturned into large windows, allowing thebuildings ground floor to serve as a showroom. Lawrences upper floors and lightwell were kept, but heavily adapted. The third floor, with abundant natural light on one side but none on the other, was perfect for Sandersons climatecontrolled archive, while the floor above has been converted into an office space, retaining Lawrences undulating steel ceiling. Weinitially wondered whether this was a good addition, says Lewis. Do we want to embrace it? But taking all that steel away didnt seem like the right thing to do in thecurrent climate. Other features were removed. There were some very strange drainage strategies when we got in, explains Scott. There used to be an internal gulley where rainwater would just run down. Youdpull a bit of wood off the top and thered be water flowing through it. The lightwell was turned into a terrace, with architectural metalwork and vaulted transoms that resemble the outer windows. dMFK clad the walls of the lightwell with TECU oxidised brass panelling. It already demonstrates a vivid patina. In this it represents the project as a whole. By renewing Voysey House, dMFK has madeits layers of history all the more conspicuous. Returning to the building over the past year has been a reminder that its not the glossy photographs that bring the most joy at the end of a job, says Lewis, but seeing how the spaces work for the people who usethem.

An ideas competition is being held to rethink a soon-to-be-demolished flyover in Newcastle, England (Deadline: 28 April)The contest organised by Newcastles Farrell Centre with support from the Northern Architectural Association seeks concepts to transform the A167 Gateshead flyover which closed amid safety concerns at the end of last year and is now expected to be demolished.The competition invites participants to put forward bold, original and compelling solutions to transform the raised road running between St Edmunds Road and Gateshead Foodbank into a new accessible destination which serves as a connector for the local area.The Gateshead flyoverCredit:Image by the Farrell CentreAccording to the brief: This ideas competition looks beyond demolition to explore the possibilities for re-using, re-imagining and re-constituting the Gateshead flyover and what that could offer the city and the region: from the environmental and economic upsides, to the opportunities for supporting health, wellbeing and civic pride by creating a new green space in the heart of Gateshead.Entries will be reviewed by a panel of experts who will select four winning projects, which will be displayed in a small exhibition at the Farrell Centre in May 2025.Gateshead is large town of around 200,000 inhabitants located on the south banks of the River Tyne opposite Newcastle. Local landmarks include the Anthony Gormley-designed Angel of the North sculpture on the town's fringes.The Flyover Futures contest focusses on transforming the elevated Gateshead flyover which closed to traffic in December 2024 following the discovery of structural defects that could have led to its collapse.The Gateshead flyoverCredit:Image by the Farrell CentreThe structure is expected to be demolished and replaced with a new surface-level boulevard however the contest organisers are seeking surprising and transformative ideas to re-use the structure as an ecologically vibrant destination for pedestrians and active travel.Participants are encouraged to consider new ways of accessing the structure and also the inclusive re-development of the immediate environment. The competition is open to everyone with multidisciplinary teams encouraged.Applications should include a maximum of three images and a short 300-text of description. The four winning teams due to be announced on 21 May will each receive a 250 honorarium.How to applyDeadline: 28 AprilCompetition funding source: Northern Architectural AssociationProject funding source: N/AOwner of site(s): Gateshead CouncilContact details: hello@farrellcentre.org.ukVisit the competition website for more information

Lynch Architects renovation andextension of Westminster Coroners Court reintroduces death in the city while paying particular attention to the needs of the bereavedRachel Elliott of Lynch Architects is shortlisted for the MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice 2024. Find out more about the W Awards hereWestern culture does not seemto be growing any less squeamish about death. Not for us the towers of silence, or dakhma, of Zoroastrianism, where the dead are left in soaring stone structures for vultures to consume. Passing on in Britain today is perhaps even more taboo than it was for the Victorians, with their jetblack mourning jewellery and widows weeds.With the silhouette of a little Queen Anne house and the colouring and magpielike architectural expression of late Victorian civic values, Westminster Coroners Court was built in 1893 to the designs of municipal architect and surveyor, GRW Wheeler. Themain function of the building, which lies not far from the UKs Houses of Commons and Lords, is a firstfloor courtroom with acoved ceiling and skylight hidden from view by the domestic front of a hipped roof. In the 1990s, an anonymous mortuary was added to the rear, while to the side an innocentlooking taxi rank doubles as overspill space in the event of terror incidents like the 2018 Westminster Bridge attack or tragedies such as the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire.The buildings original purpose to investigate the circumstances of unexplained deaths remains unchanged. In recent decades, Westminster Coroners Court hasbeen used by four London boroughs to process some of the around 200,000 deaths reported annually to coroners across England and Wales. Around 40 per cent ofthese require inquests a procedure that involves bereaved people, witnesses, police, lawyers and sometimes jurors (the salacious nature of some cases attracts paparazzi like flies to jam). What have shifted since 1893, along with perceptions of thestate, are attitudes to the needs of thebereaved, something architect Patrick Lynch has written about in relation to hisown experience of a coroners court following thedeath of his father in a 1992 accident.The job of extending and renovating the Grade IIlisted building was won by Lynch Architects in 2016. What was needed was an additional courtroom, an improved entrance sequence, dedicated waiting spaces, more meeting rooms and modern office space. Project architect Rachel Elliott has been with the job since the beginning, attending competition interviews with Lynch shortly before maternity leave and returning to seethe building through design development tolast summers practical completion (by which time her child was well advanced at primary school).Lynch Architects urbanminded response to an ostensibly practical brief was to offset the Victorian aedicule with the monumental (and far more ancient) counterpoint of a barrelvaulted tomb or stone sarcophagus a move that unequivocally introduces the spectre of death into the teeming life of thecity. From Horseferry Road today, theundeniably tombstonelike face of thepalenew volume ghosts the red brick and Portland stone banding of the old structure in two cuts of Jura limestone, aseam formed millions of years ago.A dimly lit, timberlined space offers a cavelike embrace to the bereavedAccessed from the original front door andbreaking through the existing west wall, thenew wing comprises a tall, barrelvaulted courtroom with a zincclad roof above offices and a waiting area a dimly lit, timberlined space offering a cavelike embrace to the bereaved. Here, the 19thcentury memorial symbolism of a truncated stone column, speaking of life cut short, is borrowed to provide a prop or leaning postfor people unmoored by grief and circumstance. Aleitmotif of arches emanating from Lynchand Elliotts first readings of thesite,including the main elevations projecting apse of window seat, isextended through new and remodelled interiors to signal key spaces and routes. The architects wanted people to be aware of transitioning from old to new; this is achieved at ground level by the marker of a line of exposed CLT columns running through the new openplan office space. Upstairs, openings through theold fabric to the new corridor link are arched and colonnaded, facing off against the limestoneclad wall of the courtroom in atall channel. Passing through to the court, the eye might catch a line from Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, Wordsworths odeto London, chiselled in cursive script high up on the wall like a frieze. The lofty character of the inner chamber, which can besubdivided to accommodate different scales and styles of hearing, echoes the calm, toplit dignity of the original court, including its cloak of timber panelling. Outside, the whole is flanked by a pair ofnew secluded gardens, offering space for finding composure alongside flowing water and greenery. (To provide mourning space for the Grenfell bereaved, the eastern garden was accelerated as a separate contract in 2018.) The shadow gap of glazed link that connects old and new was set deeper during design development at the suggestion of Westminsters planners and Historic England. It was a good call, and one of very few comments. Now you can see the corners of both buildings clearly, says Elliott.Soon after the commission became public, artist Brian Clarke contacted the architects with the offer of customdesigned stained glass. Like Lynch, Clarke had experienced the inside of coroner courts, not least as executor for artist Francis Bacon, and had strong views on how user experience might be improved. The stained glass is a way of elevating a secular building, of adding a dimension, comments Elliott. Clarkes panels, evocative of flora that might be found in cemeteries or left by graves, are employed to inject poetry and privacy at key junctures: the ends of the glazed link, the family waiting room, and as a glowing, westfacing triptych in the courtroom. Incorporating a gift into a contractual situation was actually quite tricky, observes Elliott. For the art to be fundamental to the building, the points where the architecture and stained glass meet were important in terms of detailing.In contrast to protracted groundworks involving sheetpiling of the entire site, the buildings CLT structure from Eurban went up in five days during the summer of 2023, with an accuracy and speed Elliott describes as incredibly satisfying. By March 2024, thenew build was watertight and the internal openings could be punched through. Changing attitudes and legislation after the Grenfell tragedy meant that fire engineering was the projects biggest challenge, according to Elliott. Although one cost consultant did suggest that the stone cladding be omitted from the rear of the extension because only the dead in the adjacent mortuary would notice.Elliott studied at Glasgows Mackintosh School of Architecture in the era of Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan, where, shesays, the social purpose of architecture was deeply instilled. Her postqualification experience at van Heyningen & Haward Architects fuelled afurther line of interest in working with historic fabric, leading toaccreditation as anRIBA Conservation Architect as well as aBuilding History masters at Cambridge. AtWestminster Coroners Court, Elliotts work contributed to embedding the spirit of an architectural concept deep into the design development and execution of a newbuild and restoration hybrid, ensuring that the quality of spatial and emotional experience befits the weight and substance of the buildings ongoing public duty. Over time, moving stories of personal encounters with the new building and its stainedglass illuminated spaces willno doubt emerge as part of Londons collective consciousness. Interms of the social mores of death in the city, I would suggest that postoccupancy evaluation might take another century or so.

An open international architecture and urban design contest is being held for a 24.5 million (CSK 730 million) new bus station and civic complex in Valask Mezi, Czechia (Deadline: 17 April)The two-stage competition organised by the Centre for Central European Architecture (CCEA MOBA) on behalf of the City of Valask Mezi will select a design team to create a new bus terminal, municipal office and parking garage in the centre of the historic settlement.The 24.5 million (CSK 730 million) project will transform a large former timber yard located next to Valask Mezis main station. New public spaces and two residential apartment blocks are also planned.Competition site: Valask Mezi bus station, CzechiaAccording to the brief: The city of Valask Mezi is announcing an open, two-phase architectural competition for the design of a bus terminal, municipal office, and parking garage.The competition also includes the design of public space and a conceptual proposal for two residential buildings.The competition is based on an urban study from 2021. The traffic solution, including the roundabout and the underpass connecting the project site with the railway station building and its platforms, is already defined and forms part of the framework for the design.Valask Mezi is a small town of around 23,000 inhabitants located in the Zln Region of eastern Czechia. The town is situated at the convergence of the Ronovsk and Vsetnsk Beva rivers, and includes a major train station.The latest contest comes just months after international competitions were announced for the 244 million upgrade of flood defences in Olomouc and to transform the disused Hotel Stroja in nearby Perov.Competition site: Valask Mezi bus station, CzechiaKey aims of the phased project include creating a new public park, station forecourt and park as well as delivering a new 22-bay bus terminal, a 6,600m municipal office block, a 250-capacity car park and residential development.Judges will include vice-mayor Yvona Wojaczkov, local assembly member Alena Carbolov, Pavla Matjka Enochov of the practice A69, and the towns chief architect Ondej Chybk.The contest language is Czech and English. Submissions will be judged on architectural quality, urban design quality, sustainability and technical design.The overall winner will receive a 33,500 (CZK 1 million) prize while a second prize of 23,500 (CZK 700,000) and third prize of 16,800 (CZK 500,000) will also be awarded.How to applyDeadline: 17 AprilCompetition funding source: The Municipality of Valask MeziProject funding source: The Municipality of Valask MeziOwner of site(s): The Municipality of Valask MeziContact details: ask@cceamoba.czVisit the competition website for more information

The six finalist concepts in an international contest for a $160 million-to-$170 million upgrade of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City have been revealedUS, international, emerging and established architects were invited to participate in the two-stage contest for a 5,670m extension to the historic free-to-visit art museum located at 45th and Oak Streets in the centre of Kansas City.The finalists are Kengo Kuma & Associates of Tokyo, Renzo Piano Building Workshop of Genoa, Selldorf Architects from New York, Studio Gang from Chicago, Weiss/Manfredi Architecture of New York, and WHY Architecture of Los Angeles.The shortlisted concepts feature in a free exhibition at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and in an online gallery with the public invited to submit comments.The project will upgrade the museums original Beaux Arts building while also creating an additional extension featuring a new primary entrance and foyer, a photography centre, exhibition galleries, learning spaces, a theatre and a restaurant for indoor/outdoor dining and events.The first stage of the competition, which launched in October 2024, attracted 182 teams from 30 countries on six continentsRound one applications required architect-led multidisciplinary teams to submit details of project approach, team composition and experience. The six finalists each received a US$75,000 competition fee to draw up concept designs.Evelyn Craft Belger, chair of the museums board of trustees and the architect selection committee, said: These six concept designs articulate six unique visions of a new and even more dynamic Nelson-Atkins.This is a thrilling moment for the museum and our community when we start to visualise an identity that will carry us through the coming decades. We encourage our community to visit the exhibition and share your thoughts which proposal best realises your aspirations?Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art director and chief executive Julin Zugazagoitia said: We asked for bold, inspiring moves that also respected the existing museum campus and Im so happy to say weve received them in these initial designs. Each is a fascinating response to a complex project brief, together they bring myriad perspectives.The teams have shone their beams of thought on our big questions: how do we synthesise our existing icons with a new proposition? How do we modernise and embrace the future but keep the best of our history? And, most of all, how do we create a museum that is transparent for all and instills a sense of belonging and well-being?Originally founded in 1933 the fine art museum has more than 42,000 items in its collection and is particularly known for its displays of Asian art, European and American paintings, photography, modern sculpture, and for its Native American and Egyptian galleries.The museum occupies a historic Beaux Arts building along with a 2007 extension which is known as the Bloch Building and was designed by US architect Steven Holl and a 9ha sculpture park.The latest project aims to integrate the museums existing facilities into a cohesive new experience.Key aims include attracting new audiences and creating a museum for all that speaks to community.An overall winner will be announced in spring 2025.The Nelson-Atkins Museum of ArtCredit:Image courtesy of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

HAT Projects community and industrial centre in Jaywick Sands offers vendors and small businesses much-needed room for growthRebecca Kalbfell of HAT Projects is shortlisted for the MJ Long Prize for Excellence in Practice 2024. Find out more about the W Awards hereIn 1970, the council in charge of the small coastal settlement of Jaywick Sands in Essex issued 770 compulsory purchase orders. The plan was to buy up the marshy land on which the community had grown since the late 1920s, demolish its largely selfbuilt homes, and redevelop Jaywick in its entirety. The residents fought back, winning a High Court order that halted the purchases and the bulldozers. Today, Jaywick is one of the last remaining plotlands in Essex, a rare survival of the relatively unregulated settlements built by workers from Londons East End first for holidaying, later for permanent residence on the inexpensive, floodprone land around the Thames Estuary.The council back then saw Jaywick as a problem that they could just get rid of, says Rebecca Kalbfell, associate at HAT Projects, an architecture practice based in Colchester, 20 minutes inland by car. The local authority restructured into Tendring District Council shortly after the episode, but attitudes towards Jaywick took time to shift. A swathe of masterplans were produced from the 1980s to the early 00s, all of which involved partial demolition and most of which were roundly rejected by residents. But Tendring has changed its tack recently, and its language: in 2018, it commissioned HAT to put together a place plan for Jaywick focused on building new homes and propping up its infrastructure and flood defences rather than flattening it.Kalbfell, who joined HAT in 2014, has worked on the place plan since its inception. Jaywick, the team found, shares many chronic challenges with other seaside communities around the UK. The decline of domestic tourism in the postwar years means that nothing remains of the casino, arcade and boating lake that once sat between Jaywicks Brooklands and Grasslands, stitching the two seafront neighbourhoods together. All those I know who were kids in the 70s would have gone to Jaywick in the summer, says Kalbfell, who grew up in Essex in the 1990s and 00s. Its one of the nicest beaches along this stretch of coast. But for my generation, it wasnt a thing.Compounding its vulnerability is Jaywicks plotlands status. Its lowslung chalets mostly sit just below sea level, and were never meant to be permanent homes; Brooklands and Grasslands were without basic utilities until the 1980s. The roads and lanes remain private; National Highways has no obligation to maintain them. In recent decades, the cheapest chalets have attracted absentee landlords who let them to people claiming housing benefit, while allowing the properties to deteriorate far below the national Decent Homes Standard. As HATs interim report reads, There is a clear correlation between low owner occupation and poor housing conditions. Jaywick topped the governments Deprivation Index for England in 2010, 2015 and 2019.It soon became clear to HAT that residents top priority was the creation of commercial opportunities. As part of their work on the place plan, they helped form a brief for a business and industrial centre where Frank Ernest Bromiges longdemolished art deco arcade first known as the Playdium, then as Sunspot had once stood. Here, on derelict land, a weekly car boot sale was already taking place, but without as much as a pavement, let alone cover. From speaking to residents, we knew that this type of space was missing, says Kalbfell. People did in fact have their own businesses, but they were running them out of their kitchens. Had statistical analysis been done from afar by an agency, that may not have registered, suggests Kalbfell. They would have said there is no demand in Jaywick, because there was nothing here already.When Tendring District Council put out the business centre to tender, HAT were the obvious choice, and Kalbfell became its project architect. With combined funding from Tendring, the Getting Building Fund, Essex County Council and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, the 5.3 million development was named Sunspot after the old arcade. It was slated for long meanwhile use meaning 2550 years and designed by HAT to be easily dismantled and reconstructed elsewhere. A simple steel frame encased in corrugated aluminium and polycarbonate panels, it has piles that burrow deep into the marshy ground. It took only 18 months to construct, completing in September 2023. There are modest flourishes: a sawtooth roofline that mimics the wide pitched roofs of Jaywicks distinctive chalets; bright yellow awnings; red structural steel; a facade the colour of mint ice cream.Sunspots smallest business units face the seafront, forming a promenade along the freshly paved stretch of road. Current groundfloor tenants include Buddies Barbers, the Rainy Bakes bakery and dog groomers Spotty Dotty & Friends, which recently expanded into another larger unit around the back with a pet shop. Upstairs units are accessed via intercom through the main entrance; these house an AI consultant, a masseuse, a handbag designer and a florist, among other businesses. At its eastern end, facing Grasslands and ClactononSea, is a caf run by the charity The Active Wellbeing Society; at the other, facing Brooklands and the holiday parks of Seawick, a doubleheight event space hosts markets, concerts, workshops and exercise classes year round. Within six months of opening, Sunspot hit nearly full occupancy, with one upstairs unit the largest kept empty for 15perday hotdesking.Were inclusive to everyone, says Mick Lister, who manages Sunspot for Tendring District Council. The units are affordable, ranging from 250 to 1,200 per month, and the notice is only 30 days, so if it is not working out for you, you just leave the unit as you found it. Two winters in, however, the pattern is of businesses growing, rather than shuttering. Something of a pipeline has emerged: Two people started in the market, and have gone into units, explains Lister. Eight businesses have gone into small units and then expanded into bigger ones. And the hotdesking option has paid off too, with one person starting there, later taking on a unit. Today, there is a waiting list to rent a business unit at Sunspot.This flexibility is reflected in the barebones design of the building. Groundfloor units are prefitted with a coldwater run which can be connected to the mains if necessary. Businesses such as Rainy Bakes have opted to install ventilation for their ovens an adaptation made relatively simple through easily accessible service hatches on the first floor. The point is that the services are only plugged in if required by the tenant. Not everyone needs it, says Kalbfell. And if you dont need it, you dont pay for it.Jaywick is a resilient community. On a blustery January morning this year, the car boot sale is in full swing in the market space, with the beachfacing shutters pulled close to block out the icy North Sea wind. Inside, the bunting is up, and a space heater hums in the corner. At the other end of the building, the caf is nearly full. The thought that keeps returning when I see all the people in there, says Lister, is where did they go before? The first summer was busier still, with a noticeable uptick in beachgoers coming in from neighbouring areas. Public toilets were previously tucked behind a curtain shop in Grasslands you wouldnt know unless you lived here, says Lister and were frequently shut. Sunspots accessible toilets, by contrast, face the beach and are clearly signposted.While her work on Sunspot is done, Kalbfell has returned to Jaywick over the past 18 months, often walking her dog along the sands. Eyeing a new set of curtains or fresh signage, she will know that another tenant has moved in and personalised their unit. I love that, she says. Its not precious. The building is there to be owned by the businesses. Soon, she will continue work on the place plan with the HAT team: 20 million of government funding was secured at the end of last year to carry out its next phases. This will involve, among other things, raising the seawall to protect Jaywick from flood risk that will only worsen in the coming halfcentury.Nearer in time, Lister is planning a community day during school summer holidays, including live music in Sunspots market space and a sandcastle competition on the beach. He hopes Kalbfell will join as a judge to assess the castles on their architectural merit and, he laughs, do some snagging.2025-03-20Reuben J BrownShare AR March 2025W AwardsBuy Now

Spanning both research and design, this practice documents the layers of Saudi Arabias architectural heritage and breathes new life into historic sitesSara Alissa and Nojoud Alsudairi areshortlisted in the 2025 Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture, part of the W Awards. Read the full announcementAmong the most beautiful installations at the 2024 Desert X AlUla biennial in north-western Saudi Arabia was a jagged cut zigzagging into the desert landscape. Invisible until you got up close, the excavated pathway sloped down into an angular, stepped gathering place before narrowing again, holding visitors within rammed-earth retaining walls. Rather than building upwards and trying to compete with the monumental landscape of AlUla, the installation allowed the subterranean contours of the earth to perform as architecture.Another subtle and poetic temporary space, built for the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah in 2023, was made of palm reed walls. Standing on sand that was raked five times a day, the light enclosure invoked the simplicity of temporary musallas, or prayer spaces, that used to be created along pilgrimage routes. As the installations title suggests, anywhere can be a place of worship.Excavated soil was consolidated with corn starch and water, and rammed into walls to create the 110m-long and 1.5m-deep crack in the desert landscape of AlUla. The installation, called When the Earth Began to Look at Itself, was part of the 2024 Desert X AlUla biennialCredit:Lance Gerber / Courtesy of The Royal Commission for AlUlaSpare and humble yet acutely sensitive to their surroundings, these two installations incarnate Syn Architects research-driven practice. The name Syn derives from the synchronicity between collaborators and the two co-founders, Nojoud Alsudairi and Sara Alissa, who met while working on independent restoration projects Alissa with Henning Larsen and Alsudairi at the Misk Art Institute. They came together in 2015 for Shamalat, the restoration and extension of mud houses into a cultural centre in Diriyah, on the outskirts of Saudi capital Riyadh, which opened to the public in 2023. It was such a good learning exercise for us, Alsudairi remembers, noting that the process opened up questions that would become foundational to their practice. What does it mean to restore? To repurpose? What can adapative reuse look like here? It was their first time working with earthen architecture, and they were keen to introduce contemporary materials and design elements. They would go on to set up their practice in 2019. The Quran holds that man was created from sounding clay moulded from black mud, the kind that cracks and clatters as it dries. This is the beginning, and also the end to which humans will return: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Earth equally forms the basis of vernacular Najdi architecture in Saudi Arabias central plain, where Riyadh is located, typified by mudbrick structures, geometric openings and crenellated battlements. In what has now become a full-throated architectural revival, these treatments are blithely applied to facades across the capital. Suturing the future to the past in this way serves a dual purpose. For outsiders, it promotes cultural tourism as the country moves to diversify away from oil under the aegis of its Vision 2030 blueprint. For Saudis, it reintroduces modern citizenry to their heritage and cultural identity.Old earthen walls and new stone facades make up Shamalat, a new cultural centre located in Diriyah, on the outskirts of Saudi Arabias capital RiyadhCredit:Laurian GhinioiuIt was not always like this. When artist Maha Malluh purchased a pair of disused mud houses in the historic adobe town of Diriyah in 2012, earthen architecture was still associated with pre-oil-boom poverty, with having less. Malluh named the cultural centre Shamalat, after the twin peaks of an epic Jahili poem about forbidden love, and enlisted the help of her architect daughter, Alissa. The result is a cultural centre that brings together an artists residence, facilities such as a workshop, darkroom and library, as well as exhibition spaces, artisanal shops and a caf.The project unfolded in distinct restoration and addition phases, with clear material demarcations between them. Rather than replastering the entire facade, Syn kept the original and just touched up the mud plaster where it fell off, working with preservation expert Mahmoud Bendakir to understand more technical elements such as the roof. The walls of straw-bound mud brick contrast with the new volumes made of white Riyadh limestone, sourced from a nearby quarry. We try not only to understand the scale, but how the material relates to what is next to it, Alsudairi explains. The stone acts as a blank canvas, a backdrop to the earthen buildings.Syn Architects sensitive yet decidedly contemporary intervention integrates remnants of the constructions that previously occupied thesite, seen both on theoutside andthe insideCredit:Hassan Al ShattiThe work on Shamalat coincided with the governments own efforts to restore Diriyah, the ancestral home of the Al Saud dynasty. Largely abandoned in 1818 as its denizens moved to Riyadh following a bloody Ottoman siege, Diriyah was resettled in the late 20th century, with residents building new mudbrick homes, and the government began renovating its ruins in the 1990s. After the citadel of At-Turaif was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010, authorities turned their sights to developing the surrounding area into a US$63 billion giga-project under the roadmap Vision 2030, filled with Najdi-ish shopping centres, hotels, museums and other dining and entertainment venues that seek to deliver the promised Diriyah: City of Earth tagline.Alsudairi notes it is important to acknowledge the watershed societal transformations that have accompanied Vision 2030. After her undergraduate architectural engineering course at Prince Sultan University a recently launched programme she describes as a significant leap forward for womens architectural education in Saudi all her internship applications were rejected for the fact that firms did not have a then-mandated segregated space for women. Imagine how much things have changed in the past eight years. I think we take it for granted, but new leadership has revolutionised how women exist in workplaces. Were integrated, and it has really impacted our careers significantly.Within the last decade or so, much of Diriyah also became a protected site. Shamalat luckily fell just outside it the protected sites boundary wall is right across the street. Still, red tape was a major challenge. When Malluh acquired the site, permits to restore and extend a building did not exist, Alissa remembers. You would either completely demolish the existing and build anew, or carry out a meticulous restoration, faithful to the original, with no new elements. When the area changed hands to the Diriyah Gate Development Authority (DGDA), launched by royal decree in 2017 and replete with a new suite of regulations, Syn had to redo the arduous permission and design approval process they had previously completed with the local municipality. This led to a two-year delay, followed by further slowdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic.There were design impositions too. Syn were, for instance, asked to integrate a series of furjat, the small openings in this case triangular used to improve daylight and ventilation that have now become a lazy synecdoche for the Najdi style. Since the original houses did not feature them, the architects argued they did not see a value in aesthetics for aesthetics sake. The protracted battle took about a year of back and forth, but their case was heard. Instead, the pair draw from the essence of Najdi architecture in the variation of their modular but non-uniform and decidedly non-triangular openings. Each opening is indexical and frames a particular view: looking back at the original building, for example, or to the wadi (seasonal river) just a few steps away.This unconventional approach was met with resistance from the purists who romanticise adobe and who would prefer to freeze, ossify even, Diriyah in time. A lot of restoration around Saudi is for very traditional, museumified archaeological sites, Alissa explains. Shamalat was not supposed to be a pristine but unusable space, a site that would just get looked at by visitors, so functionality took precedence instead. The priority was that every part of it would get used, Alsudairi adds. Our approach is very practical inserting a floor, hiding all the ducting, electrical wiring and the central AC and its a way to keep these buildings alive.The duo is adamant that architectural heritage should not be restricted to a particular era or material, but stretch to the present and encompass the post-oil modernist movement too. In 2020, Syn launched the non-profit research project Saudi Architecture to archive and examine the countrys significant modernist buildings as well as modernist sites at threat of demolition. As designers, we tend to move on and build new projects and new districts, but there is value in documenting, maintaining and restoring the existing built environment. This is also what being an architect is, Alsudairi says. This enquiry into architectural identity finds resonance in similar initiatives across the country, including Bricklabs Saudi Modern project in Jeddah.Another research-based offshoot is the Um Slaim Collective, which Syn launched in 2021 to document fast-fading typologies of Najdi architecture in the eponymous central Riyadh neighbourhood, densely packed with still-inhabited mud houses. The aim is not to advocate revival of the vernacular, but rather its integration in the contemporary city. The architects initially had their eyes on an adobe house, but faced a moratorium on all restoration of mud houses in the area allowing developers to demolish them and profit from increased land value. They chose to rent an old cafeteria instead as a home for the Um Slaim urban research lab. Encompassing ethnography, pedagogy and art exhibitions, the lab considers traditional restoration practices as well as more contemporary and ad hoc ones such as the ongoing maintenance of mud houses by primarily low-income Pakistani tenants, which does not stem from a will to preserve, but instead to retain liveable and affordable bedspaces. Many criticise these tenants efforts, but theyre the reason why these houses are still standing, and still alive, Alissa notes. If they were left empty, they would have just decayed naturally.The duo is also interested in preserving the more intangible heritage associated with these architectures. Earthen constructions carry a lot of inherited values that are lost in contemporary practices, such as the respect of the environment theyre constructed in, explains Alsudairi. For the Saudi Pavilion exhibition at this years Venice Biennale, Syn will present the work of the Um Slaim Collective and launch the Um Slaim School, an alternative pedagogical platform to disseminate their research and grounded approach to practice. They hope it will be, like the Prince Sultan University programme for women, another leap forward for architectural education in Saudi.

For Ashleigh Killa, co-founder of The MAAK in South Africa, buildings are an expression of care and engagementAshleigh Killa is shortlisted in the 2025 Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture, part of the W Awards. Read the full announcementMost of the Western Capes sprawling Winelands towns have two stories to tell: one of idyllic luxury destinations; and the other, visible just as you take the next corner, of the lives of seasonal farmworkers and manual labourers who service that luxury. The littleknown town of RiebeekKasteel, about an hour outside Cape Town along its West Coast Way, is no exception.A few minutes drive from RiebeekKasteel is a remnant of apartheid spatial planning which today remains a lowincome, coloured community. This suburb has been extended in the last five years, with the municipality providing serviced plots to the community, but no built structures. As a result, a whole new area of selfbuilt zinc homes New Rest Valley has developed. It is among these homes that the New Rest Valley Crche raises its head, at once a remarkable sight, and a beacon of hope not just for the families it services, but for the community at large. The only built infrastructure in the area, it was completed in 2023 on a narrow plot of land, sitting flush against selfbuilt homes at one end, while adjacent to vacant land earmarked for a public park on the other. That this land has remained vacant throughout the design, build and opening of the crche is telling. Government projects take a long time to come into fruition here, if indeed at all. New Rest Valley Crche was realised thanks to donor funding coordinated through the local volunteering organisation Rotary Club of Newlands, while the sustained management and maintenance of the facility is assured through the Vuya Foundation, a nonprofit organisation working in the province.With its clean lines, simple materiality and subtle detailing, the building is made to service around 90 children in three classrooms. The playground area runs along these classrooms, shaded by a wall of perforated blocks. Large openings in the roof sheltering the playground welcome in light, as well as allow the growth of wild pear trees, which aid in ventilation and cooling. Jutting out to the skies, these trees are as much an aesthetic detail as they are functional.The first floor of the building is designed as a caretakers quarters, with two rooms currently used as storage and a bathroom. This area is spacious enough to potentially function as an overflow classroom, though there has not yet been a need for this. The northfacing porthole windows on this level are a defining feature of the building, and provide a vantage point not just of the playground, but of the greater area.Pops of colour are thoughtfully used and appear throughout the crche, which is fitting given the little end users, who range in age from two to five years. These pops extend to the rubber surface of the playground. During the building process, architects The MAAK arranged a play day for children from the community, giving them the space to share the kinds of games they ordinarily play on the street. These games informed the shapes and patterns imprinted on the rubber, and send the crucial message that these childrens voices matter. As The MAAK co-founder Ashleigh Killa observes, we are not the experts in play any more. This gesture of carefully engaging with the people who will occupy the building is something the practice incorporates in all their projects. Killa favours an approach that is built on empathy, which she says can only truly be achieved by keeping quiet to make room for listening.The MAAK was founded by Killa and Max Melvill in 2016, with the goal of making social impact architecture an idealistic endeavour at the time. Her vision for this kind of work became clear after a stint at a Cape Townbased firm where Killa was designing extravagant homes for the 1 per cent in between her undergrad and postgrad years. It took being in that space to know where and how she wanted to focus her own practice. The MAAKs establishment was propelled by the commission to design a significant public building for the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation, a nonprofit in the Cape Town township of Masiphumelele. Being exposed to a project of this scale in the very early days of the practice meant that they had the freedom to carve out their own rules and methods of working, alongside the guidance of mentors. It taught Killa the importance of knowing that you dont know.Killa is part of a generation of South Africans who came of age in the postapartheid Rainbow Nation, where the need for change was very real and urgent. As a result, she was set on an architecture that could effect change, even if that meant merely chipping at the surface. She believes that change can happen slowly and incrementally, and through small initiatives that probe bigger issues. For example, The MAAKs Follies in the Veld programme, which has taken place every year since the practices inception, offers a space for learning through collaboration. Comprising up to 20 volunteer participants from various backgrounds, each edition is themed around a different material, and concludes with a largescale installation, often in lowincome or rural settings. It provides an opportunity for experimentation and prototyping not just with design and materiality but exploring what can be achieved by building in community with each other.The MAAKs approach is strongly influenced by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamaras Freespace Manifesto, which was issued in 2018 when the pair curated the Venice Architecture Biennale. The manifesto encourages designers to think beyond form and function in favour of a more peoplecentred, socially conscious approach to architecture. Freespace encompasses freedom to imagine, the free space of time and memory, binding past, present and future together, building on inherited cultural layers, weaving the archaic with the contemporary, reads the concluding line of the manifesto.One can see how this manifesto has been formative in Killas practice, and continues to inform The MAAKs projects. For the recently completed Rahmaniyeh Primary School Library in Cape Towns District Six, the practice thought carefully about the conditions of the site as a social space. Once more, The MAAK consulted learners in a series of workshops to get a better understanding from the expert end users themselves. For example, for the design of a bookshelf, learners were prompted to draw and make models of the space in which they felt the books should live. At the time of writing, these ideas were in the process of being built by local designers Pedersen + Lennard. It was in these workshops, too, that The MAAK were reminded of the ways in which the children best engage with books lying on their tummies in a calm, quiet space was the preference, and as a result, the library is fitted with soft finishings and various spaces for lying down and sitting. Childrens imaginations are so untamed, its a joy to tap into them to free us from our practical and compliant constraints, says Killa.Like New Rest Valley Crche, this project was funded by the Rotary Club of Newlands, while its operations are supported by the nonprofit Otto Foundation, which champions early literacy by encouraging reading for enjoyment. The foundation has an excellent track record with similar projects, and the architects worked very closely with the childcentred design specialist on the Otto team, Xanel Purn.In addition, the practice collaborated with land activist and artist Zayaan Khan to fire bricks containing rubble of the areas tragically demolished buildings to build the structure. In the 1960s, District Six was declared a whitesonly area under South Africas Group Areas Act. As a result, the vibrant and diverse communities of District Six were forcibly removed; its homes, places of gathering and all infrastructure demolished, leaving in its wake a trauma that the victims and their families are still grappling with today. This intervention by The MAAK and Khan (herself a descendant of evictees) is a sensitive acknowledgement of the deep and troubled context within which they are working.The MAAK has recently completed a new library for the Rahmaniyeh Primary School in CapeTowns District Six.Working alongside child-centred design specialist Xanel Purn, aswell as the children themselves, the architects arrived at a design for theinterior which will encourage the young endusers to read in variousways, both seatedand lying downCredit:The MAAKThe principles of the practices ethos are also being applied to a current public work in progress in Stellenbosch, the Kayamandi MultiSport Community Facility commissioned by the Open Play Foundation. With a brief to design a sports facilities hub for the benefit of the community, The MAAK are reimagining the space as a precinct that encompasses the surrounding activity and behaviours, with the potential to bring together people from both sides of the Stellenbosch privileged/underprivileged divide.The MAAKs projects are threaded with their capacity for empathy and listening, which Killa says is what architecture needs now. But such projects need better financing. At the moment architecture is reserved for people who can afford it, she says, but finding the projects that are delivering to anyone and everyone is really important otherwise we are obsolete. That is not to say things are at the same place they were when The MAAK founded their practice. Killa is confident that their work in this space is being recognised and understood. Corporate social investment and social impact partnerships are finally recognising these kinds of projects, says Killa, in ways that are incentivised, supportive and generative.2025-03-17Reuben J BrownShare AR March 2025W AwardsBuy Now

An international contest is being held to reimagine a pedestrian underpass in the centre of Trenn, Slovakia (Deadline: 4 April)The single-stage competition seeks proposals for a permanent artistic-architectural intervention to upgrade the city centres main underpass attracting new visitors to the space, improving its illumination and enhancing the feeling of safety.Concepts will be expected to draw attention to Trenns status as joint European Capital of Culture Trenn 2026 and respond to the festival theme of Awakening Curiosity. Proposals may include light, sound or space interventions with digital panels highlighting events from the Trenn 2026 programme.Competition site: Trenn underpass, SlovakiaCredit:Image by Marek JanchAccording to the brief, Within the framework of the European Capital of Culture Trenn 2026 project, the Creative Institute Trenn announces an artistic-architectural competition. The aim of the competition is to show the potential of the underpass, to improve its overall impression for pedestrians, and at the same time to use this specific public space for the presentation of the activities of Trenn 2026.The aim of the competition is to define vision and strategy for the underpass and to transform the underground part of the underpass into a safe, pleasant, illuminated and accessible public space with elements of art and design. The intention, of course, is not to motivate people to spend their free time in the underpass, but to contribute to a change in the perception of the place.Located 95km northeast of Bratislava, Trenn is a historic city which developed around the third-largest castle in Slovakia. The settlement will be joint European Capital of Culture alongside Oulu in Finland next year.In 2023, the nearby City of Trnava launched an open international contest to masterplan a new 135ha urban extension.The latest contest comes two years after Londons Studio Egret West and Oslos Snhetta revealed their competition-winning designs for a major mixed-use development in Bratislava.Organised by Creative Institute Trenn the competition focusses on upgrading a key underpass located beneath the Square of the Slovak National Uprising in the centre of the city, connecting the historic core to a nearby park and train station.The project aims to transform the busy but dark and uninteresting underpass into a safe, pleasant, illuminated and accessible public space. Key aims include encouraging pedestrians and cyclists to slow down or stop briefly by having a memorable engagement with a light or sound installation.Judges will include the architect Jana Benkov; the artist and university lecturer Martin Piaek; Samu Forsblom, program director at European Capital of Culture Oulu 2026; and Vivien Doumpa, urbanist and board member of Placemaking Europe.The winner, to be announced in late April, will receive a 3,000 prize and 60,000 to deliver the intervention. A second prize of 2,400 and third prize of 1,800 will also be awarded.How to applyDeadline: 3pm, 4 AprilCompetition funding source: Trenn 2026, European Capital of CultureProject funding source: Trenn 2026, European Capital of CultureOwner of site(s): City of TrennContact details: hana.lassova@trencin2026.euVisit the competition website for more information

The Henrik F Obel Foundation has announced an open call for two teaching fellowships each worth 75,000 (Deadline: 1 August)Now in its third edition, the OBEL Award Teaching Fellowships support universities to incorporate new voices into their institutions and develop impactful courses which promote innovation.This years open call invites prospective academics and their host institutions to respond to the theme of Ready Made with proposals which promote deeper exploration, development, and dissemination of knowledge on this topic.OBEL Award Teaching Fellowships 2025Executive director of the OBEL Award Jesper Eis said: Supporting influential ideas and approaches that can drive architectural discourse is a key focus for the foundation.We are excited to welcome applications from around the world to gain diverse perspectives on the Ready Made agenda. Ultimately, we seek fellows who explore how new value and new values can be discovered through the materials and mechanisms of what already exists.Just like the Ready Made agenda, education works in a similar way: the essence of a fellowship is to take an existing body of knowledge and build upon it with new ideas and contributions.The fellowships are part of the annual Obel Award which is supported by the Henrik F Obel Foundation. The foundation was created by the Danish businessman Henrik Frode Obel and is based in Copenhagen. The first Obel Award of 100,000 was granted to Japanese architect Jun'ya Ishigami in 2019.The latest open call invites academics and universities to put forward proposals for new courses starting in 2026 or soon after. Two winning applicants will each receive 75,000 to cover the fellows salary, travel and teaching materials.Last years winners included Dele Adeyemo and the Department of Architecture & the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development at The University of Lagos. Adeyemos course focuses on indigenous settlement practices in contemporary Nigerian cities.How to applyDeadline: 3pm, 4 AprilCompetition funding source: The Henrik F Obel FoundationProject funding source: The Henrik F Obel FoundationOwner of site(s): Not applicableContact details: hana.lassova@trencin2026.euVisit the competition website for more information

The director of cityLAB and UCLA professor of architecture discusses her ambitions for the competition for new small-scale, community focused housing concepts in Los AngelesDana CuffWhy are you holding a competition focusing on small underused sites in LA?LA needs to find as many means as possible to create new housing, especially after the fires in January, when so many people lost so much. Small residential lots are the DNA of LA, after all, and there are tens of thousands of these scattered across the city, ready for new housing. The competition foregrounds architectural prototypes that work in this context, so they simultaneously unlock myriad other development opportunities, incrementally shifting the fabric of LA. Furthermore, this city has a storied history of small-scale, multifamily development making LA the perfect place to host a competition focused on residential lots.What is your ambition for how sites like these could be transformed into new community-focused housing?Wed like to see submissions that focus on community at two scales: at the scale of the buildings themselves and at the scale of the neighbourhood. Especially in the face of an increasingly volatile climate, building housing that fosters community connections will be paramount. Weve set five complementary design goals for the competition: staying power, liveability, performance and replicability, resilience, and adaptability. There is more information available in the brief, but projects that successfully engage with these design principles will capture the housing qualities that LA, and other cities, need right now.What sort of teams would you like to see step forward for this unique opportunity?The competition is intentionally organized to accommodate a wide range of designers, from students to emerging design firms and established architectural practices. It would be great to see a variety of approaches, like fire-resilient building or manufactured housing strategies. Each site offers its own set of design challenges that should pique the interest of different types of firms. Its also important to remember that while LAs housing issues are acute, they represent many of the same forces driving housing affordability and sustainability issues worldwide. We welcome all creative ideas into this competition.2025-03-14Merlin Fulcher Share

This practices work in the Ecuadorian Amazon is shaped by the communities it servesMarialuisa Borja is shortlisted in the 2025 Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture, part of the W Awards. Read the full announcementThe Huaticocha community live in the untamed forest of the Sumaco National Park, in eastern Ecuador, a few hours drive from the countrys capital, Quito. In this protected area, the conservation of biodiversity is combined with the protection of ancestral Indigenous culture. Green dominates the landscape, the clouds descending to touch the canopy of the forest. In the Amazon, humidity envelops everything; the sounds ofthe jungle break the silence.It is here that practice Al Borde have designed the Yuyarina Pacha Library for theHuaticocha community, a group of largely Kichwa heritage, an Amazonian Indigenous people. The community hasdeveloped Witoca, an agricultural coffeeassociation that, together with the Sarawarmi Creative Laboratory, began an informal pilot education project for local children in 2019. Its success resulted in amore permanent school, for which the Huaticocha community decided that a newlibrary was required. They contacted AlBorde, a Quitobased architecture studio known for collaborating with Indigenous groups and realising their ambitions.Consisting of Marialuisa Borja, David Barragn, Pascual Gangotena and EstebanBenavides, Al Borde is more thanan architecture studio; it is a creative collective which integrates cultural, societal and environmental responsibilities into anarchitectural process. From their firstprojects, they have been committed to serving the most economically disadvantaged social groups, to find viable solutions to their needs. In 2009, Al Borde received anunusual commission to design and build aschool in the rural coastal community of Cabuyal in Ecuador, with a budget of only US$200. They managed to achieve this goal within budget with a single structure onthe beach, known as Escuela La Nueva Esperanza (NewHope School).Marialuisa Borja explains that in the Yuyarina Pacha Library, as in all Al Borde projects, the design process is shared by thefour members of the team in a dialectical dynamic. Projects are debated with users in a process that Borja describes as fundamental. Thanks to this dialogue, thecommunities with which Al Borde workcontribute their visions, knowledge and experiences. Informed by this, the team builds models and visits the site as many times as necessary, holding discussions withlocal people. This process means that the users take ownership of the projects, making them their own long before they arebuilt. Through discussions with members of the Huaticocha community, the brief transformed from a library into a multiuse space called Yuyarina Pacha, translating asspacetime to think.The library is located in a clearing in the forest an offering to the place as well as tothe Indigenous children who live there. Thestructure is perceived as a tree that is inhabited from the ground to its crown, with three levels that can be appropriated for different uses. The ground level is used for handson art and science classes and for all activities that require water, from cooking to painting; informal meetings can also be accommodated in the shade it offers. Like the local houses, the main space is elevated on columns, to protect from snakes and other animals. This openplan floor houses the collection of books arranged on open shelves, easily accessible to the children; itisalso large enough for public assemblies and other community activities. An upper mezzanine level runs along the perimeter ofthe room, accommodating, as well as books, digital resources, such as tablets andcomputers, and crucially an audio collection of stories that preserve the oral history oftheHuaticocha community. Reading tables overlook the large space below, like abalcony, and the pitched roof soars above.The building combines both enclosed andopen spaces, with permeable voids thatallow air to pass through and cool the interior a quality informed by the designs of local vernacular houses that breathe inthe same way. The magnificent, steeply sloping thatched roof skilfully withstands the regions copious rainfall and integrates aglass skylight, allowing natural light into the reading spaces.Al Bordes process means that users take ownership of projects, making them their own long before they are builtThe building adopts the qualities of the site as if it had always belonged to it. In fact, the materials with which it was built were collected from the site itself or its nearby surroundings, informed by the Huaticocha communitys experience and knowledge ofthe place, its conditions and products. Thestructure consists of a system of woodenbeams and columns, made of chonta (Iriartea deltoidea), a species of palm tree. As well as a building material, the tree also provides red fruit that is a food source for Indigenous peoples and wild animals alike. This wood is traditionally used in Amazonian houses, and is recognised for its structural durability, resistance to humidity and insects. In the library, the chonta columns are anchored to the ground withoutthe need for preservatives or coatings against humidity. The roof is made of paja, aplant fibre obtained from a local palm tree, which offers great flexibility and lightness, aswell as resistance to humidity.Al Borde have developed a project with minimal use of local resources to the greatest effect. Millimetre precision does not prevail in this architecture; the materials used are organic and irregular. Al Bordes approach allows for an adaptive architecture, in which solutions are found during construction onsite, responding to the imperfection of lowcost, organic and recycled materials. The building was constructed by members ofthe community under Al Bordes direction; though not always qualified builders, the residents gaps in experience were resolved by the architects, as well as the popular wisdom of others working on site. Al Borde persistently create spaces forlearning, not only in their architecture but inlife in general; what and how to do are as important as the final finished product.The project is built with the resources and techniques of the place, Borja explains, the traditions with which the community has built over time and has shared from generation to generation. Al Bordes architectural responses are always unique: solutions that were successful in some contexts may not necessarily be applied inothers. What can be applied, however, istheir method, which has at its heart participatory planning and determined collaboration between users and architects. In all cases, through this participatory process, the project ends up being for everyone: the key to its success.Each Al Borde project represents the will of people to commit to ideas, take risks and participate in decisionmaking, Borja insists. For example, the Casa Jardn, asinglefamily home designed for an environmentalist and completed in 2020, isbuilt from living elements; live trees generate spaces that grow from the garden.Outside Ecuador, at the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial in the UAE, AlBordes pavilion, named Umbral Crudo (Raw Threshold), generates a welcoming space, providing shade created from palm mats that hang from a wooden structure. The project will last as long as space demands it, and the day will come when these materials degrade naturally, closing the cycle of their life in a harmonious way withnature.Al Borde is unlike a conventional architecture office: the practice structure iscollaborative, and they are constantly seeking to involve other professionals who share their perspective. The core team of four are consistently complemented by other architects and students who pass through the office who learn and are also learned from. We have discovered that our work is enhanced when we make decisions together, Borja explains. We cannot work alone. AlBorde proposes a flexible interpretation of professional practice; its members divide their time between various activities inparticular teaching, giving workshops, courses and conferences at schools of architecture around the world allowing them to survive economically and also benefit from new experiences.In Al Borde projects, without exception, aesthetics is important, but not supreme. Instead, the priorities are the ethics of the approach, the energy consumed and the participation of the end users in the process. In their world, or at least the one they are trying to build, being an architect carries theethical duty to resolve urgent needs with common sense, generosity, reflection, open participation and unlimited dedication.

The Co-founder of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office will review adaptive reuse projects for the 2025 awardsRossana Hu is a founding partner at Neri&Hu Design and Research Office and chair of the architecture department at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design.Based in Shanghai, Neri&Hu Design and Research office is known for adaptive reuse projects including the transformation of a former Japanese Army headquarters in Shanghai into a hotel, for which the practice won the 2010 AR Emerging Awards, and the conversion of a Beijing textiles factory into the offices of a pastry brand. Their projects are contextual and varied, not defined by a single style but drawing from the global perspectives and cross-disciplinary approaches of their diverse staff. As well as architecture, the practice works on installation, furniture, product and branding projects.Alongside her design practice, Hu has been deeply committed to architectural education. As well as her position as department chair in Pennsylvania, she has taught and lectured at universities including the University of California, Berkeley, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Yale School of Architecture, the University of Hong Kong and Tongji University, Shanghai.Enter the AR New into Old awards today: extended deadline 21 MarchThe Waterhouse at South Bund by Neri & Hu Design and Research Office, an adaptive reuse project that transformed a former army headquarters into a hotelAs the need for sustainable alternatives to building anew becomes increasingly urgent, the AR New into Old awards celebrate the creative ways buildings are adapted and remodelled to welcome new contemporary uses. Launched in 2017, the awards recognise the imaginative appropriation of existing structures, from innovative insertions to ambitious adaptations, that offer buildings a new lease of life.For more information and to enter the AR New into Old awards, please clickhere.Extended Deadline: 21 March 20252025-03-12AR Editors Share 2025

Working from the Bogot savanna and with communities across the country, the founder of Organizmo prioritises material and cultural practices over architectural designAna Mara Gutirrez is shortlisted in the 2025 Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture, part of the W Awards. Read the full announcementArchitectures complicity in the destruction of the planet remains underacknowledged. Moments that spark awareness are few and far between. It began when I came back toColombia with my foreign diplomas and didnt know how to lay a brick, says Ana Mara Gutirrez. She was raised in Colombia with the thought the western thought imprinted in her mind from early on that it was better to leave the country. She started studying architecture at Universidad de los Andes in Bogot before going to New York on a scholarship. She studied at Parsons School of Design, then NYU, and started working as a architect, spending her days infront of a computer on a vast office floor.A workshop in Barichara, northern Colombia, introduced Gutirrez to earthen construction. The cobblestone streets of thissmall town are lined with buildings made of tapia pisada, or rammed earth, andhave remained untouched by time. Trampling mud with bare feet and learning about the infinite world of fibres and clay proved revelatory.In 2008, she traded the skyscrapers of Manhattan for the sacred mountains of Cundinamarca and founded Organizmo outside the town of Tenjo, an hour and ahalfs drive from Bogot. The family property she inherited sits at the foot of therocky outcrop of Pea de Juaica, a site deemed sacred by the Indigenous Muisca people who lived on this land before the arrival of Spanish colonists. Her grandfather had cows and a dairy farm here, and later her father rented the land for monocultures of corn, beans, potatoes and flowers. Today, she has transformed her 30 acres into a centre for bioconstruction and regeneration.All the structures built on the site over thepast 17 years have been opportunities to experiment, learn and teach. The very first house was made with PET bottles. Filled with soil, they are stacked and bound together to form the walls; a claystraw mix plugs the spaces in between, and the bottles colourful lids become decorative speckles onthe inside. Many other materials and techniques followed: adobe, clay plasters, compressed earth blocks, straw bales, bamboo and Colombias bahareque, where alattice of interwoven sticks or reeds is plastered with mud, similarly to wattle and daub. Other structures are inspired by more remotecultures and geographies: yurts, traditionally built by nomadic populations inthe Mongolian steppes, have been adapted with more permanent foundations, while afew domes on the site were built using theearthbag construction invented by IranianAmerican architect Nader Khalili.The joyful collection of catenary arches, hairy facades and conical roofs peppered around Organizmos vast outdoor laboratory is the product of many hours of workshops, facilitated by Gutirrez and her team as well as invited teachers and external visitors. In 2017, for example, architecture students from the University of Washington travelled to Tenjo with their tutor Travis Price; together with Organizmos team, they designed and built the structure referred to as the banco de semillas, or seed bank. The group consulted members of the Indigenous Muisca community of Sesquil (the town and sacred mountains to the southeast, opposite Juaica) to better understand their tending of the land and the myths that have moulded the place. The sinuous lines of the buildings stepped benches echo the morphology of the mountainous landscape, its cavelike interior now disappearing behind a thick curtain of medicinal plants.The most expressive building on the site isalso the most recent: the 10mtall casa de pensamiento, house of thought. Designed and constructed in collaboration with bamboo specialist Jaime Pea and his Mexicobased studio Arquitectura Mixta, this toroidal structure is made of a Guadua angustifolia, a tropical species of clumping bamboo native to South America. Curved lattice walls rise from the ground, forming abulging shell that is thatched midheight. Inside, a thin layer of soil, or raked sand patterns, depending on the occasion, cover the 200m2 of space used for gatherings, rituals and celebrations.All the structures built on the site over thepast 17 years have been opportunities to experiment, learn and teachEducational programmes are a crucial component of Organizmos model; they provide an enthusiastic workforce and contribute to the practices funding. At thebeginning of 2025, Organizmo launched, together with the ceramicist Mara Cano, who set up the studio Salvaje, a new and more structured course about clay, with 14 days of workshops spread between March and September. The lines blur between different scales, from artefacts to sculptures to buildings to landscape. Just like earth is achallenging, living material which requires constant upkeep, Gutirrez refers to the centre in Tenjo as a living school.Materials that lend themselves to building more ephemeral structures or require significant maintenance help change attitudes towards the built environment. Buildings are no longer hardwearing and static objects that resist the passage of time;instead, built matter is in constant transformation and needs to be looked after,with humans performing acts of maintenance and repair. Gutirrez adds thatthese more vulnerable materials reconnect us with the landscapes they comefrom, placing humans within a muchwider ecosystem and reminding usthat our livesare also ephemeral.Travelling to rural communities after her time in Barichara, Gutirrez observed that they dont build the house without planting the garden. Architecture stops being just about buildings and starts encompassing the crops we grow, the foods we eat, thespaces where we cook. This holistic perspective infuses everything she does, andthe huerta, the kitchen garden, is one ofthe most important classrooms of the centre. With more than 120 different types and species of plants, the compact plot abides by the principles of permaculture, provides ingredients and foods on a daily basis, and hosts workshops on agroecology, fermentation and composting.A few decades ago, when cattle used tograze in these fields, the grasses and eucalyptus they fed on was imported from Australia (the latter reduces methane emissions). An ecological abomination. Native species have been gradually reintroduced on the grounds; during myvisit, naturalist and environmental consultant Mateo Hernandez Schmidt, who works regularly with Organizmo, pointed to the first seeds dropped by a Camargo tree that was planted here three years ago.The boundaries that Gutirrez ispushing are institutional, disciplinary and politicalRegeneration of the landscape goes beyond planting trees, explains Gutirrez. She sees crafts from textiles to ironworks to architecture as cultural expressions that are tied to a territory and speak of millennial relations between raw materials and ecosystems. With more than 67,000 species of plants and animals, Colombia is home to one in 10 of the planets species. Learning experiences extend outside Tenjo to remote parts of the country, where jungles and rivers become new classrooms.With the support of a grant from the re:arc institute, Organizmo is currently working on a longterm project with the community of La Urbana, home to the Indigenous Piaroa people, in the Selva de Matavn from Bogot, the journey involves a short flight to Inrida, a town in the Colombian Amazon close to the border with Venezuela, followed by a fivehour boat ride. The Piaroa use palm to weave artefacts and as building material, but the skills are gradually getting lost. Together with the community, Organizmo has identified the need for aweaving school yet the design of its classrooms are seen by Gutirrez as more of an excuse than apriority. In her eyes, the work lies in understanding where and how the palm is grown, harvested and used; identifying the site for the school; setting upa local construction team; encouraging intergenerational transmission and communication; lobbying the government; making weaving part of the curriculum.The idea of a living school brings to mind Teaching to Transgress, in which bell hooks argued that education is the practice of freedom. Since systems of domination that are already at work in society penetrate theclassroom and architecture schools certain narratives control the curriculum, enforced by institutional power, while marginalised voices are silenced. The engaged pedagogy that hooks puts forward abolishes traditional hierarchies between teacher and student in pursuit of the possibilities to collectively imagine ways tomove beyond boundaries, to transgress.The boundaries that Gutirrez is pushing are institutional, disciplinary and political. Other architects before her have repented, leaving behind a corporate life and turning to ecological materials and social, as well as humanitarian, endeavours Khalili himself, but also Yasmeen Lari or Marc Held. Astheevolution of their practices has shown, sucha move expands the role of the architect, while matters of authorship lose significance. As a designer, Gutirrez admits she learns how to let go, but she believes a bigger part of the architects responsibility is to protect a culture. Her process is one oftrial and error she readily admits that earthen domes belong in the desert and should not live here in Tenjo but her strength lies in the many positions she iswilling to adopt: listener, collaborator, learner, facilitator, coordinator, activist, educator, director, guide, mother and leader,with all their inherent overlaps andcontradictions.

Architects, with the deep material entanglements their buildings embody, do well to engage with ecofeminist ideas and practicesAgroup of women huddle around a table, pulling nowatsome woollen thread, now at some reclaimed plasticrubbish.Together, they are crafting a compositionthat creatively resists planetary devastation. Across more than27 nations, groups of women have been gathering at museums, schools, universities and even at a girls juvenile detention centre, crocheting complex hyperbolic planes to form fibrous and frilly coral atolls, thereby contributing to a planetary consciousnessraising exercise. Mixing environmental activism withmathematics, sciences and the arts, they are handweaving aprosthetic accompaniment to the Great Barrier Reef and its kin. Located on the east coast of Australia, and arguably Earths largest organism, this impressive coral reef suffered its fifth mass bleaching event due to climate change last year. This constitutes a process ofslow death.In her 2016 book, Staying with the Trouble, Donna Haraway (ARFebruary 2022) celebrates the interdisciplinary knowledge andhandson loopy materialities of sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheims Crochet Coral Reef, a collective action that has been unfolding for nearly 20 years now. In the process, theAustralian sisters have been fostering what I would call anecofeminist practice of care, creating an art of living on this damaged planet. What can be witnessed in the Crochet Coral Reefisa remarkable performance of infrastructural love, suggesting ways of rethinking architectural practice as a material and spatial art that places us in intimate sympoietic (Haraways term for collective-creative) relationships with environmental milieus.Ecofeminism, also known as ecological feminism, makes the basicclaim that there is a profound connection between the domination of women and minority groups and the domination ofnature. Failing to acknowledge this connection means that werisk continuing to exploit both. This is something that First Nationspeople the world over have known as practical wisdom formillennia. Ecofeminism argues against the conceit of anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism, and in so doing asksdifficult questions about inherited western rationalist philosophical frameworks, and how they posit progress and growthas inherently good.The Crochet Coral Reef isan ongoing and evolving artwork that depends on a global community of hands to crochet forms for the worlds dying coral reefs. Organised by the sisters Christine and Margaret Wertheim since 2005, the Crochet Coral Reef is an impassioned and militantly un-tech response to the climate catastrophe, they write a one-stitch-at-a-time meditation on the anthropocene (lead image). In 1984, during a cross-country road trip, the US artist Betsy Damon observed many dried-up riverbeds caused by extensive damming and water diversion. They revealed to me the dried bones of the earth, she says. A Memory of Clean Water was her creative response: using handmade paper, she cast 75m of the Castle Creek riverbed in Utah (above), which haddried out after the construction of a dam upstream. The result was adeath mask of the riverCredit:Betsy DamonA contemporary understanding of ecofeminism emerged alongside the environmental movement of the late 1960s and 70s. French feminist, activist and prolific writer Franoise dEaubonne is usually credited with formulating the concept of ecofminisme in her 1974 manifesto Le Fminisme ou la Mort, recently translated by Verso into English as Feminism or Death in 2022. What dEaubonne calls for here is an end to the destructive manifestations of patriarchal power. At the time it was first written, the stark choiceit presented was understood in the context of nuclear catastrophe, and death was one of a planetary scale. Yet, in the halfcentury since it first came out, we have continued to pursue what feminist maintenance artistMierle Laderman Ukeles calls the death instinct whose characteristics are development, separatism and individualism over the life instinct, which Ukeles also calls maintenance, in the ongoing rape and plunder of planet Earth.Back in the 1990s, an orientation towards ecofeminism wasmarked by a special issue of the feminist journal Hypatia. Introducing the special issue, Karen J Warren claimed that the 1990s would be the decade of the environment. If that was the case,then the long 90s have extended into the present day whileplanetary systems have come unhinged, and no warnings notfromthe 1970s, nor from the 1990s have been heeded.More recently, in 2017, for Avery Review, N Claire Napawan, EllenBurke and Sahoko Yui offered an ecofeminist approach toenvironmental design. Drawing attention to a deeper history, theyturned to early work in the ecological sciences led by the US industrial and safety engineer Ellen Swallow at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in the 1870s. Swallow drew attention to thepractical embodied knowledge associated with domestic duties, usually devalued as being mere womens work, and how a custodianship of the environment might be better managed based onthese insights. As the authors of the Avery Review article stress, practical connections can be forged between domestic ritual and thecreative process, as demonstrated in the work of artists like Ukeles and Jo Hanson. Through acts of public sweeping and cleaningperformatively, Ukeles and Hanson make visible the otherwise unseen labour of basic environmental care. Ecology, afterall, pertains to the household of nature, and what architects can learn is that the repetition of daily rituals, the cultivation ofgood habits, and material resourcefulness can go some way towards making a planetary difference. Those who spend a great number of unpaid hours performing reproductive labour within thehome already know this.Ecology pertains to the household of nature those who perform hours of unpaid reproductive labour within thehome already know thisIn 2023, Bryony Roberts and Abriannah Aiken locate ecofeminism on their volcanic Chronograms of Architecture, a vast map of feminist spatial practices from around the world charting how such practices are thoroughly interwoven with unfurling worldhistorical events. I call their lively cartography volcanic because it represents the power of feminist theories as something like dynamic geologic forces, rendered in fiery magenta, blazing orange and calm doses of green. It demonstrates that feminist discourse is not a sedentary nora settled affair but alive with collective actions. Such maps are crucial. They lay out for all to see the diversity of feminist theories and practices, including ecofeminism. Courage gleaned from this impressive feminist genealogy can help in unsettling thestatus quoof architecture by challenging the insistence of patriarchal, capitalist and colonialist systems. The protean ecofeminist architect can be motivated, write Roberts and Aiken, totry out experimental storytelling, communitybuilding, educating, materialtesting, and fabricating new architectures.In this regard I think of the tireless work of the architect Doina Petrescu. With the Parisbased Atelier dArchitecture Autogree, Petrescu, Constantin Petcou and their collective have been undertaking participatory work for nearly three decades now,spending months and then years embedded within local communities rebuilding relational ecologies through architectural acts of commoning and care. Their materials are drawn from a reduced palette, using simple building systems that a community might work on together, and in the process gain new knowledge. EcoBox, for example, is an early systemproject from 2001 which engaged marginalised migrant communities and matched them withunderutilised spaces in theLaChapelle area of Paris to developneighbourhood practices such as gardening. Importantly forPetrescu, as the concept of systemproject suggests, architecture is not just an object, but an unfolding process and aprompt for critical thinking. The rhizomatic connections between ecological and community concerns continue to develop in their praxis as they transfer knowledge from one systemproject to thenext.In Spmi, the scholar Karin Reisinger has been working alongside women from the local Smi community to embroider memories of the town ofMalmberget. Here, theSwedish state-run ironmine is displacing populations to make way for further extraction. This collage shows a 1957 drawing by architect Folke Hederus, together with Reisingers photograph of the housing being demolishedCredit:Karin Reisinger / ArkDes Collections / Photo: Bjrn StrmfeldtKarin Reisinger, a spatial practitioner of care from Austria, worksclosely with a collective of women in the far north of Swedenin a mining town called Malmberget. Her work is also one ofcommunitybuilding and learning, combining handicrafts with critical thinking. The community she visits embroiders memories of a town displaced to make way for the everexpanding, yawning hole that is a local iron ore mining pit. All the while, Reisinger listens keenly to crossspecies stories, understanding that the local ecology is animated by the concerns of many actors including the Smi andtheir cultural tradition of reindeer herding. Here, architecture isas simple as the embroidery thread that recomposes through stitches the memoryimages of a town that once was. As Reisinger observes, the humble work of this community contributes toarchitectural heritage work, documenting a town whose livelihoodand subsequent upheaval is entangled with largescalemineral extraction.On the other side of the world, a woman and her family, working with an expanding and contracting collective of creative practitioners in and around Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, clears invasive blackberries from a former quarry on Gadubanud Country in the Otways. Here, she convenes regular Quarry Camps as pedagogical events, calling on participants to take the time to slowdown and express care for the local ecologies upon which they depend. Her name is Millie Cattlin. She composes modest labels, likethose sewn on childrens clothing for their first day of school TheFuture is Maintenance, Give Us Space and Time deploying humble domestic arts to enunciate urgent environmental imperatives. These days she has been spending time with the humble container technology that is the jar, working on preservation and fermentation. Container technologies, as Ursula Le Guin and Zo Sofia argue, have been fundamental to human sustenance and cultural development for time immemorial. As LeGuinputs it, before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home. Architecture, for Cattlin and thecollective These Are the Projects We Do Together, intersects with the domestic arts, fostering opportunities for gathering andcollective learning. For the Quarry Camp, this has ledto theconstruction of the simplest of pavilions dedicated to bathing, eating, cooking, and gathering to listen and learn from oneanother. All the construction material is reclaimed, and only thescrews are new, because a screw facilitates not just assembly butdisassembly, meaning materials are at the ready for future adventures, rather than destined for the rubbish heap.Julieanna Preston, based in Wellington, New Zealand, combines feminist concerns with environmental ones as she engages in the mixed materials of local environmentworlds. While studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, she pursued many side jobs anything from repairing peoples houses, to gardening, to cleaning peoples homes. She explains how all these things composed a repertoire ofconcern dedicated to daily life and how one lives. Her creative practice persistently pushes the conceptual limits of what it might mean to undertake material tests. Endangering her own health, shehas hauled mud from a toxic river to a main street; wrapped herbody around coastal rocks seeking ecological communion; andwitha broom and cleaners dustcoat explored the legacy of maintenance art by drawing attention to all those marginalised, underrepresented and toooften racialised workers who render our environments liveable. For the ecofeminist the live body is involved, and certainly not inviolable. Her work acutely demonstrates the continuous tradition of feminist embodied and performative practice, including a recognition of the longtime focus of the feminist spatial practitioner on the material of their own body. Hercongress with rocks and stones, for instance, is reminiscent ofBetsy Damons early 80s feminist embodied project, Meditation with Stones for the Survival of the Planet, performed in front oftheAmerican Museum of Natural History in 1983 and on West Broadway in 1984, where the artist simply lay herself down on the pavement amid an assembly of gathered stones. Here, the continuity between the intuition of human embodiment and the vibrant material relations of environmentworlds is extended. The lesson tobe learnt: when our environments sour and wither, so do we.When a woman is penalised for pointing out that manels are not on, then your local institutional ecology has likely gone awry. A little bit weedy, a little bit toxicThere is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology ofweeds: this helpful refrain from Gregory Bateson, reiterated byFlix Guattari in his essay The Three Ecologies, reminds us thatwe need to think with ecologies in an expansive sense. We need to think of worldwide webs of relations that weave together mental, social and environmental ecologies; that crosscut institutional milieus and threatened natural habitats. It is about thinkingfeeling inextricable connections. You will have read about the sour ecologiesblighting schools of architecture where toxic masculinity environmentally takes hold like an algae bloom. A great deal of feminist mopup work, as architect and theorist Jennifer Bloomer would put it, is needed to clean up these messes. It is no easy task transforming a culture inside a petri dish, and the work is often quiet, underpaid and undervalued. The ecofeminist claims sorority with Sara Ahmeds feminist killjoy, someone who calls out everyday misogyny and racism and argues that policies and visionary strategy statements are meaningless without material evidence of practice on the ground. So, for example, when a woman is penalised for pointing out, again and again, that the allmale critical review panel in architecture (a manel) is not on, then things in your local institutional ecology have likely gone awry. A little bit weedy, alittlebit toxic.Despite its resilience and perpetual return, feminism and its critical and creative methodologies are too often sidelined, and atworst, maligned. This means that the work of the ecofeminist must be vigilant and resolute, for violent reprisals are always closeat hand. Sometimes we need an amulet to ward off evil, anadornment to empower us as we make our way through the negativespaces ofurban landscapes. This is especially the case forBlack women, racialised subjects, and any who are forcibly othered, as Miriam Hillawi Abraham argues with her project Objectsfor the Othered. Abraham is a multidisciplinary designer from AddisAbaba, Ethiopia, with a collaborative practice called aIn its current form, the LosAngeles River consists of a concrete 1930s flood control measure funnelling wastewater from the city directly to the sea. Lauren Bon and the Metabolic Studios ongoing Bending the River project redirects a small portion of the lowflow channel through a wetland treatment centre, and then to a number of local parks.This collage of 500photographs taken byDavid Baine in 2021 shows the first 90m of vitrified clay pipes installed as part of the projectCredit:Courtesy of Metabolic StudioLike the monster, the maligned figure of the witch shares a genealogy with the ecofeminist spatial practitioner. Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers and US author and selfproclaimed witch Starhawk, for example, use the conceptual persona of the witch to draw attention to the historical and continued violence against women and their modes of practical knowledge and how their intuition of ecological relationality has been overlooked. Thewitch, like the ecofeminist, stands in for material knowledge practices in contact with environmentworlds, performing rituals and practices that have been denigrated or dismissed. Since at leastthe enclosure of the commons, the guardians of knowledge, asStengers calls them, have divided the world into Exclusive Knowledge Zones, much like Special Economic Zones. In vocal opposition, an ecofeminist fights for the commons as they fight fortheir life and the livelihood of their community. Rather than cordoning off knowledge practices, the ecofeminist shares their expertise and builds community relations, much as the Wertheim sisters have done. Witches and monsters are unlikely figures in the practice of architecture, but they can be reclaimed and celebrated by ecofeminists who aim to joyously and disobediently draw attention to counterpractices by challenging disciplinary and societal norms.What use have architects for ecofeminism? In architecture, aspeculative discipline dedicated to imagining new worlds, andaprofessional practice hooked on the highs of development andrenewal (mixed with the anxiety of where to secure the next job), practitioners forget at their peril that they are not outside theenvironment for which they design. Architects material admixtures and spatial ambitions have lingering aftereffects onhuman and nonhuman communities and ecosystems. Ecofeminism asks us to slow down, to consider the enduring impactof our actions, lift our eyes from the plans and sections thatwe have lovingly drafted to consider the ecological milieus inwhich our best intentions will hit the material ground. As Zosia Dzierawska and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes have argued (AR November 2021), this mightmean radically rethinking the kinds of jobs the architect should be training for: Maintenance architect? Materials nurse? Environmental housekeeper? The imperatives for planetary maintenance and caregleaned from the practices outlined read: Follow the material! Pay close attention! Cultivate curiosity! Andstay with the trouble what choice do we have?This is the Keynote essay from AR March 2025: W Awards. Buy your copy at the ARs online shop, or read more from the issue here2025-03-10Kristina RapackiShare AR March 2025W AwardsBuy Now

New Court, designed by Gort Scott for Girton College at the University of Cambridge, has been announced as this years overall winner, while two projects in Ghana and Armenia have been highly commendedNew Court is the most significant addition to Girton the UKs first full-time institution for the higher education of women since its foundation in 1869. New Court isconceived in the same democratic spirit as the original buildings: rooms are distributed to one side of generous corridors to create a flatter social and spatial hierarchy, taking their cue from the existing accommodation designed by three generations of the Waterhouse family. As well as accommodating more students, the project also incorporates a performance venue, reflecting the colleges musical traditions, with conference spaces, a museum and facilities for visiting scholars.Chosen by this years jury as overall winner of the AR Future Projects awards, as well as winning the education category, Gort Scotts project is architecture for 200 years rather than 25, according to the judging panel. This project reflects an ethos of building to consolidate the colleges longterm future. The jury concluded that the project succeeds on many levels: architectural, social and environmental.New Court by Gort Scott has won the AR Future Projects awards 2025This year, entries were reviewed by Mexican architect Loreta Castro Reguera, cofounder of Taller Capital; cofounder of design studio Space Caviar Joseph Grima; and Indy Johar, cofounder of Architecture00 and design and research practice Dark Matter Labs.Register your interest for AR Future Projects 2026 and be the first to find out when entries openThe winner is joined by two highly commended projects: the Osu Salem Presbyterian School in Accra, Ghana, designed by AP Valletta and David Kojo Derban which won the new and old category and Glkhatun archaeological field laboratory in Urtsadzor, Armenia, designed by Guillaume Othenin-Girard and the University of Hong Kong, the winner in the cultural regeneration category.Osu Salem Presbyterian School in Accra, Ghana, designed by AP Valletta and David Kojo Derban, highly commendedGlkhatun archaeological field laboratory in Urtsadzor, Armenia, designed by Guillaume Othenin-Girard and the University of Hong Kong, highly commendedAlongside the future project categories, the awards include three further prizes, judged by AR editors Manon Mollard and Eleanor Beaumont.This years competition entry prize is awarded to Museum of History and the Future in Finland by Atelier of Spatial Matters, a design that makes visible lowcarbon materials and technologies.Connor Curley, taught by Mark Parsons at University of Sheffield, wins the student prize for Ashpit Retreat an inclusive sanctuary built on the ruins of a power station.The sustainable research and design prize goes to Material Circulation in Zhoushan Village by Zhoushan Community Architecture Team, where research in low-carbon materials is tested on site.Learn about the winning and highly commended projects on Wednesday 9 April at Dropcity in Milan, during the Salone del Mobile. Find out more and register to attend for freeThe full list of 2025 winners:Civic and communityCommercial mixed useCultural regenerationEducationHealthHotels and leisureHousingNew and oldOfficesRegeneration and masterplanningTall buildingsCompetition entry prizeStudent prizeSustainable research and design prizeAll winners have been published in the 2025 Future Projects awards catalogueand you can purchase a copyhere

The winning installations in an international design competition for a series of C$15,000 (9,000) temporary winter installations on Torontos beaches have been unveiledThe 11th annual Winter Stations contest sought proposals for temporary structures to entice visitors to the area during winter. The winning concepts will remain on site throughout March on Kew and Woodbine beaches at the western end of Torontos beaches district, overlooking Lake Ontario.The theme for this years contest organised by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates and Curio was Dawn and participants are encouraged to explore how the annual Winter Stations initiative can adapt, grow and metamorphose in the coming years.Winners included Parade by Jesse Beus and Watch by Trae Horne, both from the United States; Ascolto by Ines Dessaint and Tonin Letondu from France; and Slice of Sun by Cludia Franco, Mariam Daudali and Thomas Byrom from Portugal.The exhibition also features two student designs from Toronto Metropolitan University and Waterloo Department of ArchitectureRAW Design architect Dakota Wares-Tani said: After celebrating a decade of Winter Stations last year, we really wanted to look forward and challenge artists and designers to consider the future of the Stations.In reviewing the hundreds of submissions, we feel the selected installations brought something unique and exciting to the beach for 2025 and we cant wait to see them enjoyed by the public this winter.Last years theme was Resonance and participants were encouraged to reinvent cherished installations from previous Winter Stations editions.The 2024 winners included We Caught A UFO! by Xavier Madden and Katja Banovic from Croatia and Australia, and the Canadian entries: A Kaleidoscopic Odyssey by Brander Architects, Making Waves by Adria Maynard and Purvangi Patel, and Nimbus by David Stein.The exhibition also features three student designs constructed by the Toronto Metropolitan University, University of Waterloo and the University of Guelph along with two designs from the Winter Stations Archive.Torontos beach district stretches from Victoria Park Avenue to Coxwell Avenue. It is popular with tourists, swimmers and volleyball players during the summer months but is notably less busy when cold weather arrives.Previous winners in 2021 included ARc de Blob by UK and Austria-based Aleksandra Belitskaja, Ben James and Shaun McCallum of 'mixed-reality design studio iheartblob. Kaleidoscope of the Senses by Charlie Sutherland of Edinburgh-based SUHUHA was one of several concepts selected for the 2020 instalment of the popular annual commission.Other previous winners of the contest, first launched in 2014, include Obstacle by UK-based Kien Pham, The Beacon by Portuguese practice Joo Arajo Sousa & Joana Correia Silva Arquitectura, Driftwood Throne by Londons DM_Studio, and Sauna Ice Bath by FFLO.

A universities competition is being held for large-scale Peace-Infrastructure art installations at Bethel Woods the site of Woodstock festival in 1969 (Deadline: 21 April)Academics, researchers and students are invited to submit proposals for creative timber art installations that promote peace and could be constructed on the 15ha rural site in New York state that hosted the original 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair.The call for concepts is part of BuildFest 2 the fourth year of the Bethel Woods Art & Architecture Festival. The winning concepts will be constructed on the site during a five-day live-work festival featuring self-build workshops, concerts, lectures and pop-ups.Rise, Repeat by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Image by Breyden AndersonCredit:Image by Breyden AndersonAccording to the brief: Bethel Woods Art and Architecture Festival 2025: BuildFest 2, Peace Rises invites university faculty in design, or a related field, to propose ideas for interactive wooden art installations to be built on the historic grounds of the 1969 Woodstock Festival.BuildFest 2: Peace Rises looks to explore how emerging technologies can be embraced convivially, serving human connection and ecological balance. It is an opportunity to question and reimagine a future where technology, like Prometheus fire, can be wielded for the collective good mindful of both its power to spread peace and its potential to harm.Bethel Woods Center for the Arts opened in 2006 on the site of the former 1969 Woodstock Music & Art Fair. Designed by DLR Group the $2 million complex includes an outdoor amphitheatre, museum and camping areas.The Bethel Woods Art & Architecture Festival explores the legacy of the original festival, which featured leading musicians such as Janis Joplin, Santana and Jimi Hendrix alongside large-scale participatory artworks.Nine winning concepts due to be announced on 12 May will be constructed in the Best Road Camping area near to where Hendrix stayed before performing at the festival in September. Proposals must engage with the festival theme, and the historic site while also demonstrating competency, feasibility, and durability.Last years winners included Curtain Call by Auburn University and Syracuse University; Timberlyn by Princeton University; MycoShell by Cornell University; Rise, Repeat by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; The Pen by Rochester Institute of Technology; Blocks by Kean University and Spring/Summer 24 by Arizona State University.This years winning teams will be invited to form self-organising teams of between eight and 12 people including students and faculty members who can participate in the self-build festival workshops.Six small-scale proposals such as seating or bars will each receive a $1,000 award while two medium-scale proposals such as small stages, shade structures or gateways will meanwhile receive a $3,000 award. A single $6,000 award will be granted to one larger scale pavilion proposal.The organisers will supply tools and three meals a day along with glamping tents, beds, sheets, blankets and pillows. Up to $500 in travel costs is also available for each team. Submissions should include a 250-word project statement, conceptual imagery, a project timeline and team biographies.How to applyDeadline: 21 AprilCompetition funding source: Think Wood, a program funded by the Softwood Lumber BoardProject funding source: Bethel Woods Center for the ArtsOwner of site(s): Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, 200 Hurd Road, Bethel, NY 12720Contact details: BuildFest@BethelWoodsCenter.orgVisit the competition website for more information

From breast pumps to maternity wards, the work of Designing Motherhood concerns not only parents but all humansDesigning Motherhood is the recipient of the Prize for Research in Gender and Architecture 2025, part of the W Awards. Read the full announcementAt the centre of the gallery space in the Designing Motherhood exhibition, on display at ArkDes in Stockholm (27 September 2024 31 August 2025), sits a small machine behind glass. It is the Egnell SMB (Sister Maja Breast) pump, designed by Swedish civil engineer Einar Egnell in 1956 and named after nurse Sister Maja Kindberg, who tested the machine on nursing mothers in Sweden. The machine draws milk from a breast through a pumping mechanism, guiding the milk to bottles for collection via long plastic tubes. The machine is portable with a handle on the top. It looks like a toaster or a small coffee machine.The breast pump is one object of many that have been overlooked in the writing of design histories. The Designing Motherhood project unpacks the inherently political implications of objects and technologies for womens health and reproduction. The breast pump was developed at the same time as new welfare state institutions, homes and technologies were being constructed on display next door as part of ArkDess permanent exhibition, drawing from Swedens national architecture collection. As a piece of technology, the breast pump enabled breastfeeding mothers a new form of flexibility, and was developed as provisions were made in Sweden for women to enter the workforce for example, with organised public childcare and new modern technologies to alleviate domestic labour. As a design object, the breast pump is as emancipatory as it is biopolitical, and deeply interlinked with economy, politics of labour and the private lives of parents and their children to this day.The Designing Motherhood project has materialised in a series of exhibitions and a publication. Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births, edited by Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winick, was published in 2021, and five exhibitions have followed: at Mtter Museum, Philadelphia; MassArt Art Museum, Boston; Gates Foundation, Seattle; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston (on view until 15 March 2025); as well as at ArkDes the sixth instalment of the exhibition will open in New York in autumn 2025. Project curators Millar Fisher, Winick, Juliana Rowen Barton, Gabriella A Nelsonand Zo Greggs have worked collaboratively from the beginning, and the project is a culmination of the work and voices of many different people and institutions. In its conception and form, the project combines the work of design historians and curators with that of policy makers and activists, as well as doulas, midwives and birthing people. Each instalment of the project involves a new collaboration with an institution and a new group of collaborators. We could almost consider it a thinktank at this point, Winick suggests.The breast pump brought into view the issue at the core of Designing Motherhood. While working in the architecture and design department in a large museum, Millar Fisher hoped to acquire the object for the museums collection, and was greeted with a big fat no. We are constantly told that design and architecture is the discipline that is going to save the world, that this is the place where you can have interesting and knotty conversations, Millar Fisher explains. And it seemed, actually, a lie. There is a gap in the history of design and architecture that so far has not included these perspectives or scrutinised these objects and their political and personal implications, despite their relevance and impact not only for people experiencing pregnancy, but society at large. This project aims to address this omission.Designing Motherhood, in both the publication and exhibitions, addresses the arc of reproduction. Conception, contraception and womens agency over their bodies are explored through objects such as speculums, menstrual cups and protest posters, while the changing bodies of people experiencing pregnancy and motherhood are investigated through maternity clothes and pessaries for prolapse. Forceps, Csection drapes and birthing stools are offered as tools in the act of labour and the work of midwives, while breastfeeding demonstration sets, nipple shields and, of course, breast pumps are proposed as design objects shaping the practice of feeding newborns.The project also maps the movement of spaces for birth during the 20th century, from the bedroom to the hospital and back again. In the 1950s, the knowledge of doulas and midwives, passed down from generation to generation, was replaced by ultrasound and electronic foetal monitors, inverting the interior space of the womb. Midcentury American dream hospitals, funded by industrialist Henry J Kaiser and developed by surgeon Sidney R Garfield, included maternity wards with baby drawers which allowed for the transfer of newborns between their mothers and nurses in separate sterile spheres. These dream hospitals included the Panorama City Hospital, built in California in 1962 to designs by Clarence Mayhew and HL Theiderman; a circular maternity ward gave nurses unobstructed views of the mothers and babies in their care. In the 1970s, a renewed attention to the mothers experience during birth and an understanding of the importance of feeling at home brought the domestic sphere back as a birthing place through the homebirth movement.By bringing the steps and missteps in the histories of these spaces into view, the Designing Motherhood project advocates the expansion of access to culturally appropriate care and spaces for reproduction. The Maternity Waiting Village in Malawi by MASS Design Group, completed in 2015, seeks to reduce maternal mortality by fostering knowledgesharing and community in domestic settings, in close proximity to healthcare professionals providing an infrastructure of care within the city. The architecture of birthplaces can, as Designing Motherhood highlights, facilitate as well as hinder the safety, joy and dignity experienced during birth. The Designing Motherhood project originated in the US but includes global perspectives showing how different contexts need different culturally appropriate forms of care. Sweden is, for example, a very different political context to the US when it comes to womens rights over their bodies and the provision of reproductive healthcare, but these discussions still find resonance. Because healthcare provisions in Europe on the surface seem better than in the US, the real discrepancy between what is meant to exist and the actual lived experience of people might be harder to see, Millar Fisher explains. According to Winick, visitors to the Swedish iteration of the exhibition have explained that the trends described in the US are also happening in Sweden: It is different, but some things are the same. The exhibition in the Swedish context narrates a bigger story of the dismantling of the Swedish welfare state in recent years, and how the provision of healthcare has become both privatised and harder to come by. The film Kramp from 2023 by Yennifer Godin, for example, details the maternity care deserts that now exist in rural Sweden following the closure of hospitals. People in Sweden are now offered training so that they know how to deliver babies in cars or en route somewhere because of the long distance between hospitals.The objects included in the Designing Motherhood project are familiar, personal and intimate. As Millar Fisher and Winick write in the introduction to the publication, We dont just remember our first period, but also the technologies that first collected the blood. We dont just remember the way babies arrive but also what they were wrapped in when they finally reached our arms. The objects demand a response: on one visit to the exhibition at ArkDes, a group of young people giggle at posters for condoms; a dad with a baby in a carrier smiles at an advert about legislation allowing paternity leave; three older women debate the issues of closing hospitals in the north of the country; a couple of new mothers discuss their different experiences of giving birth and postpartum; and in front of a documentary film from the 1970s showing a birth in realtime, a retired couple watches, holding hands and maybe recalling a similar experience that they once shared. Designing Motherhood illustrates how the issues and questions relating to reproductive health are universal. As the curators point out in the introduction to the exhibition at ArkDes: These are not just womens issues. They are human issues. We have all been born, and the provision of, and access to, reproductive health affects individuals as well as communities and society at large. The display of these objects within the space of a public gallery allows their political and relational capacities to come into view, and certain (and important) conversations to take place. If the objects arent in the gallery, those conversations simply dont happen, Millar Fisher insists. Histories go completely unremarked. Experiences of reproductive health are personal and contextual, and as this project unpacks, unequal access to objects and spaces for reproductive health shapes and affects the provision of care to this day. The online version of this article has been amended to reflect Gabriella A Nelsons role as co-curator of Designing MotherhoodLead image: Incubators displayed at the 1939 New York Worlds Fair, occupied by real babies. Photo: Bengt Backlund / Upplandsmuseet, Uppsala, Sweden / Medela LLC2025-03-06Anna Livia VrselShare AR March 2025W AwardsBuy Now

The Palestinian conservation advocate and writer teaches spatial practitioners to imagine a built world beyond the rubbleIllustration: Yazan Abu Salameh for The Architectural ReviewCredit:Illustration: Yazan Abu Salameh for The Architectural ReviewSuad Amiry is the recipient of the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecture 2025, part of the W Awards. Read the full announcementSuad Amiry (1951) is not your typical architect; her legacy cannot be reduced to a single line of work. Rather, her work exemplifies a pattern that can be observed in prominent Palestinian figures: a disposition towards life, a multiplicity, an adaptability that withstands their rapidly splintering world. It is in that honourable, defiant legacy that Amirys work demonstrates how entire worlds can be created out of rubble.Amirys childhood memories from her birthplace of Damascus in Syria gave rise to her first exposure to architecture. Amiry went on to study architecture at the American University of Beirut and the University of Michigan. In 1981, she returned to Palestine via Jordan (where she had been brought up) and, on this first trip to her fathers homeland, visited hundreds of villages to study their traditional architecture and terraced lands. Villages across Palestine were sites of rapid economic and political transformations dating to the Ottoman land reforms of the mid1800s. Palestinian villages changed as they were integrated into larger economic flows dominated by Palestinian merchants, urban elites, Ottoman authorities and European markets, resulting in the erosion of farmers mode of subsistence and lifestyle. Such dynamics were further troubled and accelerated by the beginning of Zionist colonisation on Palestines coast in 1882, the British Mandates rule, and then eclipsed by the 1948 catastrophe, or Nakba, that saw the majority of Palestines population expelled by the Israeli protostate and militias.Suad Amiry was born inDamascus in Syria andgrew up in Jordan. Following her studies inarchitecture in Lebanonand the US, Amiry returned to Palestine, which her fathers family had been forced to leave during theNakba of 1948Credit:Leonardo Cendamo / GettyAgainst the grain of these transformations processes that aimed to erase what was left of Palestine Amiry turned her gaze to the material condition of rural Palestinian architecture. Some of the villages, she observed, included giant stone mansions in sharp contrast to more modest farmers housing. These mansions drew Amiry to the village of Deir Ghassaneh perched atop a hill in the Ramallah Governorate, an exemplary qaryat alkursi, or throne village, which had once been a regional centre of power. Amiry conducted research in Deir Ghassaneh for her PhD dissertation between 1982 and 1986, at which time the villages historic core was more or less intact and its houses were still inhabited. The way these traditional villages merged into the surrounding olive groves was truly enchanting, Amiry explains. That is what I miss the most today after the destruction of the rural landscape. It is not only lives but entire landscapes that have been harmed beyond recognition by the relentless forces of settlercolonialism, a transformation that if left unchallenged will result in the total destruction of Palestine.In her dissertation, Amiry followed in the footsteps of Palestinian physician and ethnographer Tawfiq Canaan. But unlike Canaan, Amiry is less preoccupied with classificatory knowledge. She goes much further, developing a hybrid method of inquiry that extrapolates spatial knowledge from stories, memories, even rumours.Through her conversations with the elders of Deir Ghassaneh, Amiry formulated her argument that both kinship and gender were central factors in the spatial organisation of the village. She explains that their stories, historic, real or fictional, were fundamental to understanding why village architecture and its surrounding landscape looked the way it did. Amirys methods of research are typically found in social and ethnographic studies but applying them to the field of architectural history was a brilliant move and necessary given the context of rural Palestine. Her dissertation was adapted into the book Space, Kinship and Gender: The Social Dimension of Peasant Architecture in Palestine, published in 1987.Upon completing her doctorate, Amiry could have moved on to greener less occupied pastures, but instead chose to dedicate herself to Palestine, the country from which her fathers family was expelled in 1948, and the country with which she wasThe question of conservation is no simple matter in Palestine. Palestinian buildings have become direct targets of settlercolonial destruction, using any and all available tools of destruction: bombs, bulldozers, military and zoning policies and neglect. Israels very founding was built on the destruction of about 530 villages between 1947 and 1949. This was a tactical, methodical process of ethnically cleansing Palestine of its native population. That, Amiry explains, is the reason why Riwaq was founded: to protect what remained of Palestines architecture.Riwaq began with very limited resources and as such opted to document cultural heritage. This became the Registry of Historic Buildings: a 13year project that includes histories, maps and photographs of approximately 420 villages in 16 districts across the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. As restoration work began to take shape at Riwaq, Amiry explains that residents of the villages were initially sceptical of rehabilitating the old structures; over the last few decades the historic centres of Palestinian villages had become symbols of poverty and the majority of their residents were impoverished and elderly. Project by project, Riwaq transformed the public perception of these historic sites, by demonstrating their potential and beauty.For Amiry, Riwaqs work is not simply to care for the building but for the villages communities too. The projects produce jobs, generate income and transform ruins into usable buildings that often become community or cultural centres. Riwaqs vision further expanded from tactical incisions into fullscale historic centre renovations, an effort that was named the 50 Village Rehabilitation Project. One such project was the rehabilitation of AlDhahiriya village in the Hebron Governorate, an incremental effort that began in 2004. The effort led to the rehabilitation of a girls school in the village centre in 2007 and by 2011 to a significant portion of the historic core of the village. Another example is the Birzeit revitalisation project, with the aim of integrating the historic centre of the village with its territorial context through planning, strategic physical interventions and cultural work. This too began as a tactical intervention with the rehabilitation of one building for the Rozana Association in 2003. It then led to a protective plan, infrastructural work and cultural initiatives such as the Birzeit Annual Heritage Week and the Riwaq Biennale.One of Riwaqs most recent efforts includes the restoration of historic village cores in Jerusalems hinterland. These villages historically connected to Jerusalem and reliant on the city economically, politically and culturally were severed from Jerusalem, and from each other, when Israel built the annexation wall in the early 2000s. Riwaq dubbed this initiative the Life Jacket Project; one of its most successful manifestations was the restoration of the historic centre of the village Kafr Aqab. The project includes buildings for various local services, arts organisations and storytelling initiatives that transform the historic core into an experiment in social resilience.Through Riwaq, Amiry envisioned an architectural practice that worked with Palestinian adaptability and multiplicity from the bottom up. It was an enactment of sumud, the Palestinian tradition of steadfast perseverance, through architecture. In many ways, this building practice was a natural continuation of Amirys academic work which, in its attention to neglected buildings and their historic intertwining with dynamics of kinship and gender, provided a roadmap for a new type of architectural practice in Palestine one that engages with its challenges and changing context, that cares for details and memory, that integrates liberatory and restitutive purposes into its programme, and that constructs the possibility of Palestinian return to land. Amiry demonstrated this via her own return, and then through her stubborn dedication to seeing potential, and beauty, where no one else dared to intervene.One of the most striking aspects of Amirys legacy is that it is full of unexpected twists and turns. In 2002, under thenPrime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel reoccupied the parts of the West Bank that had been given a short gasp for air following the Oslo Accords in 1993. This included Ramallah, where Amiry resides with her husband, the Palestinian sociologist Salim Tamari (they had met in 1991 just as Amiry had relocated to Palestine). The arbitrary and collective curfews imposed by the Israeli occupation meant that Amiry was forced to bring her 91yearold motherinlaw to live with her. Amirys fate was to continue spending time with her elders, except now she would tell the stories. She explains that the external occupation of Sharons army compounded by the occupation of my house led her to write her first autobiographical book Sharon and My MotherinLaw. The book was a tour de force: translated into 20 languages, it exposed the Israeli occupations cruelty and the absurdity of life in Ramallah at the time for the entire world to witness. Amiry continues to write, and is one of contemporary Palestines most globally recognised authors.Amirys legacy continues to lead the way for countless young practitioners who refuse to accept that certain worlds are destined for the bulldozer. In the summer of 2007, I was back in Palestine to volunteer with Riwaq on the restoration of an old stone farmhouse in the village of Taybeh. It was in Riwaqs office building in the heart of El Bireh that I first met Amiry. She taught us to approach architecture with curiosity and with an open heart, no matter in what state it presents itself. Every stone deserves to be cared for and every young Palestinian deserves the experience of building something, in Palestine, using our local materials and traditions. During that summer in Taybeh, I learnt to clean limestone and apply mortar to a stone facade, an experience that kickstarted my own scholarship in architecture and urbanism.Amirys ability to recognise potential in the destroyed architectures of occupied Palestine, and to find humour in moments of brutal violence, testifies to the ways in which, for her, architecture and storytelling are parallel conduits for the building of future worlds, namely a liberated Palestine. Amiry teaches young architects and urbanists, especially ones from destroyed worlds, to continue to envision the world they want to see, not the world in which they are forced to live.2025-03-05Reuben J Brown Share AR March 2025W AwardsBuy Now

Spains Concntrico 11 festival has named the winners of a trio of international contests for landmark architectural interventions in the city of LogrooThis year the festival held three separate open calls. The first dubbed Objects in the City sought proposals for temporary urban installations in Logroo and Bucharest.The second contest named Third Landscape sought proposals to transform marginal spaces within the urban environment while the third open call dubbed Picnic in the Vineyard sought ideas for a communal dining experience.The Objects in the City winners were Reciclar la Ecologa by Abad featuring Iker Abad Aguirre and Jon Abad Aguirre of Spain and Me Apunto! by Studio An-An featuring Zixuan Luo and Bella Wu of the USA.The two winning concepts will be constructed in small scale squares such as Plaza de la Inmaculada, Plaza Virgen de la Esperanza, or Plaza de Santa Ana in Logroo as well as in Calea Victoriei in Bucharest as part of the Romanian Design Week.The Third Landscape competition was won La Batalla del Jardinero Planetario by Borneo featuring Antonio De Paola, Flavio Mancuso and Antonio Seghini of Germany. The Picnic in the Vineyard contest was meanwhile won by Earth Cooking by JMBAD featuring Joseph Melka and Balthazar Auguste-Dormeuil of France.The winning teams will each receive a 2,500 top prize and see their concepts constructed out of Garnica plywood in time for the upcoming edition of the annual festival, which runs from 19 to 24 June 2025Logroo, in northern Spain, is a historic city overlooking the River Ebro and is the capital of the Rioja wine-producing province. The Logroo International Festival of Architecture and Design also known as Concntrico has delivered more than 70 pop-up installations and pavilions across the centre of the historic city since it was founded in 2015.In November, Concntrico revealed the four teams shortlisted in an international contest for a permanent new urban climate island installation in Felipe VI Park in Logroo.The winning 80,000 installation will be constructed around a lake in the city centre Felipe VI Park on a stretch of terracing featuring a hexagonal square.