Covering a broad array of subjects, this week's headline stories have reflected the wide scope of architecture's practice: its potential to respond to the climate crisis, the construction and renovation of cultural infrastructure around the world, and events that promote contemporary disciplinary reflection. This does not preclude questions about the contradiction between the technical and creative skills demanded by the discipline and the role it has come to occupy in today's market. Alongside these reflections, this week we feature projects that reinforce architecture's cultural significance in preserving knowledge, hosting collective entertainment, and supporting new forms of living: a comic book museum in Taiwan, a membership club for families in London, and the renovation of a landmark stadium in Riyadh.
Australian artist, director, and BAFTA-nominated producer Liam Young creates imaginary worlds as a way of thinking through the futures we fear, desire, and are already making. As a creator and designer of atmospheres, he proposes speculative landscapes reflecting the possibilities of a world to come, whether ideal or truthfully unsettling. In his worldbuilding practice across the film, television, and video game industries, fiction becomes a tool for navigating the environmental urgencies of the present. He is considered a "futurist" working across design strategies, technological scenarios, and collective imaginations, grounded in his academic research yet reaching a wider audience in exhibitions such as "In Other Worlds" at the Barbican Centre in London and "Age of Nature" at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen. In February 2026, he was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner for Louisiana Channel, where he shares his visions of our future: from architecture consolidating as a boutique industry to the need for a new kind of planetary punk at the scale of the climate crisis.
Global Design Forum Istanbul concluded its inaugural edition between May 13 and 16, 2026, bringing together architects, designers, urbanists, and cultural practitioners through a city-wide programme of installations, talks, screenings, and public events. Presented by London Design Festival in collaboration with People Places Ideas, the forum was developed and curated by Artistic Director Melek Zeynep Bulut and Forum Content Advisor Beatrice Galilee. Organized around the theme "Worlds in Contact," the programme featured contributions from figures including Lina Ghotmeh, Marina Tabassum, Liam Young, Tom Dixon, Lesley Lokko, Ma Yansong, Andrew Waugh, and Olaf Grawer, positioning Istanbul as a platform for interdisciplinary discussions on design and the built environment.
In Other Worlds Film still from Planet City (2021) by Liam Young. Image Courtesy of Liam Young
The Barbican Centre has announced In Other Worlds, a major immersive exhibition by speculative architect, filmmaker, and artist Liam Young, opening from May 21 through September 6, 2026. Occupying three distinct locations within the Barbican complex, the Silk Street Entrance, The Curve gallery, and Car Park 5, the exhibition will transform the Brutalist cultural landmark into a sequence of cinematic environments examining architecture, infrastructure, climate futures, and planetary urbanism. Developed in collaboration with writers, scientists, filmmakers, musicians, and performers, the project brings together large-scale projections, LED installations, sound environments, graphic narratives, costumes, and speculative artifacts to explore how fiction and spatial storytelling can shape conversations around environmental and technological change.
The Biennale promises to be a dynamic platform uniting over 750 participants from diverse backgrounds, including architects, engineers, mathematicians, climate scientists, and artists. Such a broad coalition of over 280 projects underlines the Exhibition's focus on inclusivity and interdisciplinary collaboration, an essential aspect for adaptation. The selection process proposed a bottom-up, open call approach through the Space for Ideas initiative, which ran between May and June 2024. It encouraged participation from global teams, from Pritzker Prize winners and Nobel laureates to emerging architects and scientists.
Facebook Data Centre. Image Courtesy of Liam Young
Data centers, automated assembly lines, telecommunications facilities, and warehouses represent a very utilitarian aspect of the built environment, and yet they compose a particular kind of infrastructure within contemporary society, one that is fundamental to the development of everyday life. Rarely discussed within the profession, these new typologies have more recently penetrated the architectural discourse, raising questions about the architectural significance and design potential of the spaces sustaining the mechanics of today's world.
Liam Young is a speculative architect, product designer, and director who operates in the spaces between design, fiction, and futures. Young specializes in designing environments for the film and television industry, harboring the belief that creating imaginary worlds grants us the ability to connect emotionally to the ideas and challenges of our future.
Following the centuries of colonization, globalization, and never-ending economic extraction and expansionism, humans have remade the world from the scale of the cell to the tectonic plate. Young suggests in a TED Talk, “What if we radically reversed this planetary sprawl? What if we, as humans, reached a global consensus to retreat from our vast network of cities and entangled supply chains into one hyper-dense metropolis housing the entirety of the earth’s population?"
The human scale spans both physical dimensions and sensory perception. Designers create spaces and objects like steps, doorways and chairs that are closely aligned to human measurement and how we see the world. But as we look beyond the human scale, new ideas and typologies emerge that help us rethink how we conceptualize architecture and build for the future.
Liam Young, The Zero Waste Weavers of Planet City, 2021. Photo by Driely S
This year's Shanghai Biennale, themed Bodies of Water, examines the interconnectivity and interdependency of people, climates, ecosystems and technologies, exploring the idea of collectivity in the light of accelerating climate change and the current global pandemic. The 13th edition of the oldest biennial in China features works by 64 participating artists exploring the intricate web of interferences and connections in the contemporary world.
Simple in form but complex in substance, “What is Architecture?” remains an existential question for a lot of architecture students and young professionals. In an attempt to define this ever-changing interrogation and expose the different visions out there, the interview series: WIA – What is architecture? asks four, straightforward, questions to world-leading architectural designers and thinkers. Seeking to uncover their opinion on what architecture is and what it can do, these short videos reveal responses to “What is architecture? What can architecture do? What is your architectural position? and What is your design method?”.
As the forces shaping our built environment have shifted, engaging technology, networks, and complex systems, architects need to envision more than the physical space but produce narratives on how to best operate within this new societal landscape. In this context, speculative architecture seems to have never been more critical; therefore this article takes a closer look at the mediums that currently question the existing conditions of the built environment and explore new architectural possibilities.
In order to inspire our audience, generate critical debates, and develop ideas, ArchDaily has been continuously questioning architects about the future of architecture. To define emerging trends that will shape the upcoming cities, examining “What will be the future of architecture?” became an essential inquiry. More relevant during these ever-changing moments, discover 10 interviews from ArchDaily’s archived YouTube playlists that will highlight diverse visions from 10 different pioneers of the architecture field.
Videos
Peter Eisenman, Patrik Schumacher, and Alisa Andrasek among the speakers that participated at Digital Futures. Image Courtesy of Digital Futures
Like most functions in recent months, this year’s Digital FUTURES, which is held annually since 2011 at Tongji University in Shanghai, had to move online due to the pandemic. The organizers took this as an opportunity to give the event a global dimension, turning the festival into what they rightfully call the most significant worldwide event for architectural education ever staged, with a 24/7 display of workshops, lectures and panel discussions involving some of the most prominent architects and educators. Here is an overview of the festival, together with a selection of lectures from Digital FUTURES World.
Liam Young was once described by the BBC as "the man designing our futures". The Australian-born architect and director has carved a vibrant path through architectural discourse, standing at the intersection of design, technology, and media. A self-described "speculative architect", Young is the co-founder of thinktank Tomorrow's Thoughts Today, using vivid imagery and films to spark conversations about the future of the built environment, and the relationships between humans and machines, bits and atoms, artificial and natural. He also co-runs the Unknown Fields Division, a nomadic research studio that travels the world in search of landscapes that speak to his focus on global flows of materials, technologies, and ideas.
https://www.archdaily.com/936912/interview-liam-young-on-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-in-architectureNiall Patrick Walsh
What happens when the sensor-imbued city acquires the ability to see – almost as if it had eyes? Ahead of the 2019 Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB), titled "Urban Interactions," ArchDaily is working with the curators of the "Eyes of the City" section at the Biennial to stimulate a discussion on how new technologies – and Artificial Intelligence in particular – might impact architecture and urban life. Hereyou can read the “Eyes of the City” curatorial statement by Carlo Ratti, the Politecnico di Torino and SCUT. If you are interested in taking part in the exhibition at UABB 2019, submit your proposal to the “Eyes of the City” Open Call by May 31st, 2019: www.eyesofthecity.net
https://www.archdaily.com/917723/seoul-city-machine-liam-young-for-the-shenzhen-biennale-uabb-2019Liam Young
‘Global Architectural Political Events’ are a series of public debates organised by Alejandro Zaera-Polo & Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal that continue the investigation about the political re-engagement of the discipline, as analysed in the essay ‘Well into the 21st Century’ and the ‘Global Architectural Compass’.
.jpg?1605822515 "Surface Ex-Tension by Jonathan Craig, Luis Arjona, Marco Nieto & Philip Elmore. Image Courtesy of Arch Out Loud. Image Courtesy of Arch Out Loud")
