Ghibli and Disneyworld comparison. Image via J-LIGHTS / Koichiro Itamura and Theme Park Tourist on wikipedia with license CC BY 2.0
When it comes to designing for a child's imagination, the architectural landscape presents two different philosophies. Disneyland and Studio Ghibli, both masters of imaginative storytelling, represent this core division. Their approaches, far from being accidental, reflect different views on how children experience and engage with space. One provides a spectacle of constructed fantasy, while the other offers a landscape for potential magic. These two models present architects with a fundamental choice for tackling these sorts of projects: to design spaces that cater to children's innate need for sensory and personal discovery, or to create a fantasy that appeals to their growing ability to understand narratives and more complex spaces.
Historically, the concept of childhood as we know it today simply didn't exist and, until the Middle Ages, children were viewed as miniature adults. According to historian Philippe Ariès, it was only from the 17th century onward that childhood began to be understood as a distinct stage of development, requiring specific care, education, and protection. However, this evolving recognition has not been consistently reflected in the design and organization of urban space.
August 12, designated by the United Nations as International Youth Day since 1998, was conceived as an occasion to bring youth issues to the forefront of the international agenda and to celebrate the contributions of young people to today's global society. Each year, the observance focuses on a specific theme. In 2025, it is "Local Youth Actions for the SDGs and Beyond," emphasizing the role of youth in transforming global ambitions into community-driven realities. The aim is to highlight how young people help implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) within local contexts and bridge the gap between policy and practice. In this spirit, we present three educational programs, in Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States, that empower youth to deepen their understanding of the built environment and envision a more sustainable, people-friendly urban future.
Amid questions, reflections, and debates, the work of Clorindo Testa embodies an innate connection between artistic and architectural experimentation, reflected in many of his built projects, sketches, models, and plans. From the Mariano Moreno National Library to the former Bank of London building in Buenos Aires, his production is of such scope, diversity, and complexity that it constitutes a major source of study, one that also includes unbuilt projects that deserve visibility and recognition on a global scale. In his final years of professional activity, two unbuilt projects of religious architecture highlight Testa’s work not only as an architect but also as a visual artist.
The use of primary colors, pure forms, and concrete represent some of the most distinctive characteristics of Clorindo Testa’s architecture, which is inseparable from his visual art. Reflecting on themes such as living in large cities or the conditions of life in urban spaces, the powerful expressiveness and plasticity of his works, together with the character of the line, his typical color palette, and the frequent presence of the human figure, reveal the importance and meaning he attributed to scales, uses, and perceptions as an architect who never settled for the first idea.
Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced Maura Marinelli, co-founder of franzosomarinelli, as the winner of the 2025 Wheelwright Prize. The annual $100,000 grant supports emerging architects in pursuing investigative research that addresses contemporary architectural challenges with a global perspective. Marinelli's winning proposal, "Topographies of Resistance: Architecture and the Survival of Cultures," explores how architecture can sustain and revitalizerural, mountainous regions that confront climate change, infrastructure limitations, and cultural erosion. His research aims to develop design strategies that promote autonomy, sustainability, and local identity by comparing contexts in the Alps, Andes, and Himalayas. Through fieldwork and analysis, the project seeks to propose architectural approaches that empower communities and challenge urban-centric perspectives.
The French pavilion exhibition, entitled "Vivre avec / Living with," was developed by the agency Jakob+Macfarlane, formed by architects Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane, in collaboration with Martin Duplantier Architects and Eric Daniel Lacombe EDL. France's project for the 2025 Venice Biennale was selected through a two-phase competition, involving an initial pre-selection of five teams from forty-five applicants, followed by a detailed project presentation. The winning proposal focuses on architecture's capacity to address global challenges such as climate change, conflict, and instability, utilizing a combination of natural, human, and artificial intelligence.
From the interior design of sports facilities to wellness spaces, contemporary architecture continues to experiment with incorporating different uses, installations, and materialities that make it possible to reach broader audiences, generate new spatial experiences, and enhance the simultaneous development of various activities. While each sport requires its own type of architecture, such as climbing training, for example, architecture and design professionals are striving to create atmospheres where exercise becomes more than just a physical experience, but also a psychological one, connecting mind and body through a state of physical renewal, relaxation, and sociability.
Nestled amongst the plethora of grandiose and carefully crafted national pavilions in the Giardini della Biennale in the Italian city of Venice is one pavilion by the city's perhaps most well-known modern architect. Sited between the pavilions of Russia and Switzerland is the VenezuelaPavilion, by architect Carlo Scarpa. In many ways, the structure typifies the design approach of its architect but has its idiosyncrasies. Built for Europe's most important biennial art exhibition, it is a member of a cohort of Modernist pavilions that came after the earlier, more classicist pavilions. This is its story.
A good design should be adapted to the user's needs, and participatory design aims to reduce the distance between architects and those for whom the project is made. In this sense, projects for children that welcome them as central actors in the design process demonstrate how the potential of active listening and co-designing is reflected in spaces adapted to a smaller scale and to an audience in a phase of intense learning.
Whether they are kindergartens, schools, community centers, or public spaces, participatory projects with children show how the design process can be an enriching exchange for both sides. On the one hand, children can learn about materials, scales, decision-making, and develop spatial awareness. On the other hand, the architects responsible for making the desires and needs of the young users concrete can learn to exercise sensitivity and imagination and recognize a different worldview focused on discovery. All of this is possible through listening and open dialogue between different age groups.
The Colombia Pavilion at the Expo Osaka 2025 adopts the theme "ICE CUBE," inspired by the scene in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude where a young boy encounters ice for the first time. Translating this literary reference into built form, the pavilion presents a facade of translucent cubes set at varying angles, creating a sense of movement and articulation. Designed by MORF Inc., with Karim Chahal as Project Director and Ko Oono as Principal Architect, the exterior is composed of semi-transparent polycarbonate panels integrated with color-controlled lighting, allowing the facade to transform in appearance throughout the day and night.
The Belgian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 presents a prototype that integrates landscape architecture into architectural interiors. Designed by Bas Smets in collaboration with Stefano Mancuso, the exhibition transforms the pavilion into a microclimate modeled after the understory of a subtropical forest, creating an indoor jungle that actively regulates temperature and humidity. The curatorial concept, supported by the Flanders Architecture Institute and its director, Dennis Pohl, promotes landscape thinking as an active design force rather than exterior decoration. In this video interview from Venice, Bas Smets and Dennis Pohl explain to ArchDaily editors how the project positions architecture as a platform for climate resilience and proposes a shift in design paradigms, from static images to evolving, living processes.
This curated selection of projects from the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale explores regeneration as a deliberate, intelligent process rooted in the specific conditions of a place. For decades, the Biennale has been a testing ground for architecture's most urgent ideas, allowing designers, researchers, and institutions to present visions that address evolving environmental, cultural, and social challenges. This year's projects reveal how regeneration, whether of an entire coastal city, a disused industrial site, or a neglected public space, requires more than replacing the old with the new. It calls for a precise reading of existing contexts, the preservation of embedded knowledge, and the careful integration of contemporary needs.
The eight selected works show that regeneration can emerge from multiple starting points: reactivating heritage through adaptive reuse, restoring ecological systems as part of urban planning, developing open and modular strategies for social housing renewal, or layering technological innovation onto historically rooted practices. While the scale of intervention varies, each project demonstrates a sensitivity to what is already there and existing, be it material resources, urban patterns, or cultural memory, and a willingness to work with these assets as catalysts for transformation. Together, they suggest that regeneration must start somewhere, and that its success lies in balancing innovation with the intelligence of what already exists.
The 2025 edition of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism has announced the 24 designers commissioned to create the Walls of Public Life, a collective installation that explores how the exteriors of buildings can become more expressive, engaging, and emotionally resonant. Each contributor will produce a 2.4 by 4.8-meter building fragment, offering a reimagining of the architectural wall not as a backdrop, but as an active participant in public life. Installed along the north side of Songhyeon Green Plaza in central Seoul, the walls will form part of a larger urban intervention that includes the Humanise Wall, a four-storey, 90-meter-long installation to the south of the park.
To recover, revitalize, convert—these actions have become increasingly present in contemporary cities, where architecture takes on the role of stitching together the overlapping layers of time that make up the urban fabric. Faced with this task, architects have explored a range of design strategies. Among them, one material in particular has stood out for how frequently—and effectively—it appears in interventions on historic buildings and contexts: corten steel. With its rusted surface, rich in texture and tone, it seems to offer a compelling answer to the challenging question of how to insert the new into the old. But what makes this material so recurrent in these situations? Is it simply its durability and versatility, or is there something deeper in its visual and symbolic presence?
Foster + Partners has revealed designs for a retail plaza located on the northern bank of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, Türkiye. The project forms part of the larger Tersane master plan, which proposes to redevelop 1.6 kilometers of previously underutilized waterfront. The master plan integrates a mix of retail, residential, hospitality, cultural buildings, and landscaped public spaces, aiming to enhance access along the shoreline. The plaza sits within close proximity to several of Istanbul's historiclandmarks, drawing on the area's maritime and industrial heritage. The design's scale and material choices reflect this context, seeking to align with the site's historic layers while introducing a contemporary retail environment.
Returning for his second interview with ArchDaily, Sir Peter Cook sat with Editor in Chief, Christele Harrouk, at the World Architecture Festival 2025. While the first conversation focused on his advice for young architects, this one followed his presentation during WAF on the forthcoming book, Archigram Ten, an editorial project reviving the spirit of the original magazine with founding members and contemporary designers. Building on those themes, he reflects on artificial intelligence, the impact of COVID-19 on his own practice, and current architectural pedagogies.
Contemporary Mexican market architecture frequently draws inspiration from its pre-Hispanic precedents. The Tlatelolco Market in ancient Tenochtitlan, for example, featured a large, stone-paved open square with designated "streets", which were divided into sections for specific goods, serving as a significant gathering point for social and economic exchange. Similarly, the tradition of the Tianguis, an ephemeral market typology within the broader Mesoamerican tradition, also arranged stalls in aisles within a public plaza, reflecting organizational principles seen in Tlatelolco. These historical models established a base for the tradition of marketplaces in Mexico and the countries in Central America, where they merge public space and structured layouts for commerce. Today, even though many of Mexico's commercial spaces, notably Mexico City's Central de Abasto and other markets such as the Jamaica, Merced, and San Juan Markets, have taken on a stationary approach to serving their communities, tianguis maintain their foothold in Mexican society.
