Lei Wa Lakom Library is the second realized project within the Parallel Gives program, led by Architect Mai Al Busairi- Kuwait, demonstrating how modest, socially driven architecture can create enduring cultural and educational impact through climate-responsive and context-aware design.
The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe have announced the seven finalist projects for the 2026 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Awards, supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme. The selection follows the announcement of 410 nominated works in November and a shortlist of 40 projects revealed in early January. Of the seven finalists, five have been selected in the Architecture category and two in the Emerging category. According to the jury chaired by Smiljan Radić, the finalist projects are exemplary contributions to the future of European architecture, demonstrating how the discipline can respond simultaneously to specific local conditions and broader social, cultural, and environmental challenges. The selected works range from interventions in former industrial sites, small villages, and peripheral urban areas to carefully calibrated projects within larger cities. Across these varied contexts, the projects show how architecture can transform overlooked or ordinary settings into inclusive, high-quality spaces for living, learning, and social exchange.
The project transforms a 19th-century farmhouse typical of the region, which brings together dwelling and agricultural functions beneath a single roof. Deprived of its farming use and located outside the building zone, this exceptionally large volume has become difficult to maintain given the limited habitable floor area permitted. In this context, the client’s mixed housing/permaculture program represents a rare opportunity for a coherent requalification of the whole.
This week’s architecture news brings together a series of announcements that reflect how the discipline is engaging with larger structural and institutional frameworks. The OBEL Foundation’s introduction of Systems’ Hack as the theme for its 2026 cycle foregrounds architecture’s relationship to the systems that organize contemporary life, from infrastructure to resource flows. At the scale of the design industry, Salone del Mobile.Milano’s outline of its 2026 framework, including OMA’s involvement in the Salone Contract master plan, signals an evolving understanding of major fairs as long-term cultural and economic infrastructures rather than standalone events. Running alongside these agenda-setting developments, the final days of nominations for the 2026 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards underscore the role of collective evaluation and public participation in shaping contemporary architectural discourse.
Cities around the world share a common goal: to become healthier and greener, supported by civic infrastructure that restores ecosystems and strengthens public life. The question is how to reach this. Global climate targets, local building codes, and municipal standards increasingly guide designers and planners toward better choices. Still, many cities struggle to translate these frameworks into everyday, street-level comfort and long-term ecological protection. What happens if the city is no longer treated as a traditional city, but as a national park?
Cornered against a protected forest, on a gentle slope that overlooks a lush botanical garden, there is a bold infrastructure, a mute monument, almost without memory, function and scale. The building is meant to host culinary activities; from intimate, informal dines to large social events. Supported by a generous specialized kitchen totally buried underground, the building challenges the archetype of an open plan.
named itaca, the layout consists of a square inscribed within a circle, and the design includes four main walls with a central opening on each side.
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Mugok is not a place that invites escape from everyday life through temporary retreat. Rather, it is an architecture that guides one to recover a renewed attitude within the everyday. Here, architecture does not dominate the subject—the user, the human—but instead settles quietly as a background for being. Space is constructed through a language of restraint rather than display, and it is precisely this restraint that gives rise to a profound inner resonance. Within this quietude, the user regains their center and re-establishes a relationship with the world.
Chongqing is a city shaped by the continuous interplay between mountains and water. Its complex topography overlaps with a dense infrastructural network, where elevated roads, steep terrain, and waterfronts together form a highly charged urban landscape. Located at the convergence of these conditions, the Luxi Lake Café is conceived as a small architectural insertion that responds to the relationships between urban infrastructure, natural geography, and everyday public life through a light and restrained spatial intervention.
This renovation transforms a former residence into a restaurant while preserving traces of its residential use accumulated over time. In the renovation of existing architecture, the act of design is always situated between the past and the future. Unlike new construction, such projects already contain an accumulation of time, requiring the designer to engage in dialogue with the memory of the space. Beyond physical information such as changes in form, materials, and spatial configuration, carefully reading the traces of everyday life once lived there holds significant meaning when envisioning a new spatial reality.
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