Architecture Article

A Place of Memory and Reconciliation Created by Light
In 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 Days in May.

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.

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 spanning education, culture, and temporary architecture, from a new dental teaching facility in Blantyre, Malawi, to restored and newly opened cultural venues in the United States and Taiwan, and adaptive reuse interventions showcased at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The international examples outline an architectural landscape shaped by reuse, public engagement, and the evolving role of design in responding to social, cultural, and institutional frameworks.

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.

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.