A new year has begun, and with it, a new edition of the ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards. For 17 years, we have handed over the reins to you, our readers, to choose the best architectural projects of the year, and you have consistently delivered. With a brand new set of over 3,000 projects from around the globe, it is now time to get lost in our projects library and start making your selection.
From a tiny library in rural Myanmar, awarded in the first ever edition of the Building of the Year in 2009, to an innovative waste-to-energy plant in 2025, the winners of the Awards have always been surprising, inspiring and, most importantly, a reflection of the current architectural landscape. Anyone can register for a free ArchDaily account and vote, and we invite you to delve into the catalog of projects published in 2025—all of which are eligible to participate under one or more of the 15 available categories—to choose your favorites.
https://www.archdaily.com/1037980/the-archdaily-2026-building-of-the-year-awardsDaniela Porto
Salone del Mobile.Milano has announced the framework for its 64th edition, scheduled to take place from April 21 to 26, 2026, at Fiera Milano, Rho. The upcoming edition will bring together more than 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries across over 169,000 square meters of exhibition space, highlighting the fair's continued scale and international reach. Beyond its quantitative dimension, the 2026 Salone positions itself as an evolving cultural and economic infrastructure, increasingly structured around long-term strategies rather than isolated events. The program reflects a growing emphasis on accessibility, curatorial depth, and cross-sector dialogue, pointing at the Salone's role not only as a marketplace for the industry but also as a platform where architectural thinking, industrial production, and global dynamics intersect within a single, coordinated framework.
Nearly one week before the start of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, the organizing committee has released official information on the event's Cultural Olympiad: an arts and culture programme accompanying the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The programme is recognized by the IOC as one of the three pillars of the Olympic Movement, alongside sport and education. Conceived as a widespread platform involving territories, institutions, and communities across Italy, the Cultural Olympiad aims to highlight the Italian Alps and Milan's cultural heritage while promoting Olympic values through art, history, and participation beyond the official sports venues.
This article is part of our new Opinion section, a format for argument-driven essays on critical questions shaping our field.
Traditionally, a museum visit is a calendared occasion with a clearly scripted sequence. Arrival is ceremonially marked—by grand stairs or thresholds, by ticketing and information desks, by an audio guide and a concise institutional preface about mission and history. That deliberate "special occasion" quality extends from how museums were long conceived: deliberately exceptional, tightly curated, and organized around a specific narrative arc. In this model, the museum assumes an authoritative voice—its knowledge deep, vetted, and to be respected rather than contested—while architecture and choreography reinforce a rather singular way of entering, learning, and remembering.
Museums are undergoing a structural reorientation—from fixed, authoritative narratives to porous spatial ecologies that redistribute agency, visibility, and encounter. Previous institutions experimenting with open formats—most notably V&A East Storehouse and Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen—anchor a renewed argument for museum journeys as exploratory rather than purely instrumental through showcasing their well-treasured archive. As society shifts toward open-source modes of knowledge—inviting multiple readings, revisions, and rediscoveries—the spaces that house collections are likewise evolving. Galleries, archives, and back-of-house become visible; process takes its place alongside product; and the visit is reimagined as a porous circuit that diversifies how culture and art are encountered. In this context, András Szántó's *Imagining the Future Museum* articulates a timely provocation: museums perhaps should start to learn to shapeshift—handing greater "agency" to visitors, releasing them from heavy curatorial intermediation so that they become active participants rather than passive recipients. Museums, in other words, are no longer bound to a single authoritative script—a plural ecology of typologies is now emerging.
The OBEL Foundation has announced "Systems' Hack" as the focus of its 2026 cycle, setting the conceptual framework that will guide the foundation's activities and the selection of the next OBEL Award. Founded in 2019, OBEL recognises architecture's potential to act as a tangible agent of positive social and ecological change, supporting approaches that expand how the built environment is defined and shaped. The 2026 theme calls on architecture to critically engage with the systems that underpin contemporary society, including infrastructure, energy, food, water, education, and information, and to examine how these interconnected networks might be reconfigured in response to accelerating global challenges.
Montparnasse Commercial Centre and CIT Tower redevelopment project, 2026. Image Courtesy of RPBW
This week's news compilation opens with two international commemorations, the International Day for Clean Energy and the International Day of Education, alongside a major archaeological discovery in Fano, Italy, where excavations have revealed a basilica described by Vitruvius, linking contemporary architectural discourse with deep historical continuity. Across this week's broader architecture news landscape, a central theme emerges around the advancement of civic architecture conceived as open, publicly engaged infrastructure, with cultural and institutional projects increasingly designed to strengthen their relationship with the city and everyday urban life. At the same time, renewed global attention turns toward Africa, where large-scale transport infrastructure and the conservation of modernist landmarks reflect interests in the region and the reassessment of the continent's architectural heritage. Complementing these narratives, this week's highlights also include a new model for car-free urban districts, co-designed public landscapes grounded in indigenous knowledge, and a residential development responding to regional context, reflecting how architecture is negotiating public space, civic responsibility, and territorial identity across diverse geographies.
