Architecture : Research Guide

Dear Readers,

TiggColl has completed the interior architecture for Canvas Arthur House in Wembley, north west London, with a welcoming and liveable scheme that is rich in texture and materiality, creating a new benchmark for next-generation student housing. Canvas Arthur House is a beacon project within Greystar's pan-European portfolio, Canvas Student. The 770-bed purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) includes an array of high-quality amenities arranged across a standalone podium, offering a range of exemplary spaces for large social gatherings through to individual wellbeing.

A proposal is made for an architecture that intertwines with the garden, maximizing the perimeter of contact with the landscape and blurring the boundaries between the built environment and nature. In this location in Madrid, that relationship with the surroundings takes on a unique value. To achieve this, a compact volume is deliberately abandoned in favor of an ascending layout that evokes certain works by Alfaro. The project aims to resolve a dichotomy: to be both geometric and organic. Although its structure is precise, the inhabitant perceives it as something natural, almost as if it has randomly settled into the place.

Among the 2025 Aga Khan Award winners is AAU Anastas and their project, Wonder Cabinet in Palestine, whose central aim is to serve as a haven for culture and creativity and a bridge between design and production. Beyond this meaningful project, AAU Anastas—working from offices in Bethlehem, Palestine, and Paris, France—has built a broad portfolio since 2015. Notable works include Dar Al Majous, a restoration in Bethlehem that challenges the boundary between domestic and public realms; the Tulkarm Courthouse (2015), one of their first projects that redefined civicness and social gathering on a prominent corner site in Tulkarm; and The Flat Vault, a commercial intervention that adds a juxt..

A Place of Memory and Reconciliation Created by LightIn the tranquil village of Mangyeong, located three hours south of Seoul, a deeply meaningful commemorative space has been established. This memorial honors Pastor Kim Jong-han and the fifteen members of the Mangyeong Church who were martyred during the Korean War in 1950. The Mangyeong Church Martyrs Memorial is designed, not as a conventional monument, but as a powerful symbol of remembrance, renewal, and hope for a rural community grappling with depopulation and the erosion of its cultural identity.

The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe have announced the 40 shortlisted works for the 2026 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Awards, selected from a total of 410 nominations. The shortlist brings together projects from 18 countries and 36 cities, offering an overview of contemporary architectural production across Europe. Among the shortlisted works, France accounts for nine projects, followed by Spain with seven and Denmark with four, with the remaining projects distributed across a wide range of European contexts. The finalists will be announced in February 2026, with the winners revealed in April 2026, ahead of the EUmies Awards..

The House in Rörum is situated on a former apple orchard in southern Sweden, surrounded by traditional farm buildings that define the agricultural character of the site. The project is rooted in the area's cultural heritage and landscape, reinterpreting the classic barn typology through both form and materiality in order to establish continuity with its surroundings.

Situated on the streetside of Ivan Hill terrace, a Silver Lake ADU comprises two pods which appear to float above the hillside—a large, shimmering reflective ocean blue cube clad in ribbed tiles and its counterpart, a stepped greige volume with black rectilinear window frames. Consisting of staggered floorplates, the form responds to the site as it follows the hillside with short runs of stairs to connect each level of the two-storey ADU.

This week's news compilation brings together current discussions around public and collective space, cultural infrastructure, and long-term urban transformation across diverse geographic contexts. From shared management models redefining public space ownership in cities such as Paris and New York, to large-scale event-driven initiatives linked to Milano Cortina 2026 and the World Urban Forum in Baku, the selected projects and initiatives highlight how governance, culture, and infrastructure intersect in contemporary practice. These themes are further developed through a mix of strategic planning processes, including international test planning efforts in Northern Lviv, and built projects spa..

Long before architecture took the form of walls, roofs, or cities, it gathered people around fire. The simple fire pit was one of humanity's earliest spatial devices: a place for warmth, food, storytelling, and ritual. Around it, space took shape through proximity rather than enclosure, through shared presence rather than prescribed use. The fire organized bodies in a circle, fostered alliances, and turned survival into collective life. Today, this ancestral logic persists: architecture has the potential of bringing people together not by commanding how they gather, but by creating the conditions that make togetherness possible.

The home carries multiple identities as shelter, sanctuary, workplace, and stage for daily rituals. In recent years, its role has expanded in unprecedented ways. The pandemic, notably, coerced the home to act as a site of extraordinary adaptability to absorb functions once delegated to schools, offices, gyms, and studios. This transformation has shifted how we imagine domestic life, urging us to think of the home not simply as a backdrop for activity but as a dynamic framework for living, producing, and creating. Within this expanded understanding, artists find themselves asking a renewed question: how can the home allow the flexibility needed for creative practice?

Lotus Clubhouse was conceived as a living organism that breathes in harmony with the terrain and surrounding natural environment. Rather than standing as an isolated architectural object, the building appears to emerge from the ground itself, shaped by natural slopes, layers of vegetation, and its orientation toward the lake. From the earliest design stages, the project was defined as a continuous dialogue between architecture, landscape, and local context. As a result, the boundaries between built form and nature gradually dissolve, allowing the clubhouse to exist simultaneously as architecture and landscape, a place of shelter for people and an extended habitat for nature.

The Porcelain Source Museum is located on the former site of Longsheng Village in Deqing County, Zhejiang Province. To the north of the site are the remains of primitive porcelain kilns dating from the Shang through the Warring States periods, while a small river runs along the southern edge, spanned by the Wukang Shishe Bridge, originally constructed during the Yuan dynasty. Within the site, portions of the original village dwellings have been preserved, reconstructed, or adapted and incorporated into the museum's exhibition spaces, serving as thematic galleries or support facilities, thereby allowing elements of the site's historical fabric to be sustained. The main body of the museum is c..

Transforming a school in use into a long-term civic catalyst, the Paul Doumer project turns construction constraints into an opportunity to rethink how educational architecture can shape both learning and the city.

The project concerns the renovation and extension of a townhouse with a basement, two above-ground floors, and an attic. The existing enclosed rear extensions were structurally unsound and obstructed the relationship with the outdoor space, resulting in limited daylight on the rear of the ground floor. The client wished to improve daylight penetration and strengthen the connection with the garden.

On the southern edge of Vienna, a cluster of monumental terraces rises above the cityscape, their stepped balconies cascading with greenery and their rooftops crowned with swimming pools. This is the Wohnpark Alterlaa, one of the most ambitious social housing projects in postwar Europe. Designed by Austrian architect Harry Glück and built between 1973 and 1985, the complex was founded on a provocative principle: municipal housing should not only provide affordable shelter but also offer the pleasures and amenities usually reserved for the wealthy.

Tre på rad is a cabin developed with the ambition of uniting architectural quality, flexibility, and sustainability in a compact format. The starting point was a simple idea: to create a compact cabin with a focus on spatial, aesthetic, and environmental qualities.

Today, interdisciplinary learning and exchange are more important than ever in addressing increasingly complex environmental, social, and urban challenges.

The Waldorf School Nairobi, designed by Urko Sánchez Architects, has been selected among the 20 winning projects of the 2025 Holcim Foundation Awards, which recognize contributions to sustainable design and construction worldwide. Located within a forested site in Nairobi, the project was awarded in the Middle East and Africa region, acknowledging its sensitive response to site conditions, educational needs, and local culture. Developed in close dialogue with its surroundings and community, the school explores low-impact construction methods, the use of locally sourced materials, and participatory design processes.

The winery at Quinta de Adorigo was completed in 2024 and is part of a family wine tourism development that also includes a hotel, which is still under construction. This quinta is located in the Alto Douro Vinhateiro, Portugal's most prestigious wine-growing area, listed by UNESCO as a World Natural and Cultural Heritage Site since 2001. The exceptional beauty of the natural surroundings, the millennia-old human occupations and the centuries-old tradition of wine production motivated an architectural project that honors the landscape and local culture and presents innovative construction strategies and effective sustainability.