Porto's architectural legacy has long been shaped by the weight of history and the clarity of form. From the work of Álvaro Siza to the dense network of studios emerging from the city's schools, Porto offers a unique blend of continuity and reinvention. Here, architecture is not only a matter of design but often one of endurance — of working within constraints, of drawing with precision, and of navigating a built environment marked by permanence and resistance to spectacle.
Yet within this persistent context, a new generation of architects has been reshaping the field with quiet determination. Often formed in shared spaces, these practices balance autonomy with collaboration and meticulous detailing with broader urban concerns. Their studios tend to reflect this ethos: modest in scale, defined by adaptive reuse, and rooted in the material reality of the city. In these workspaces, architecture unfolds as a process — sometimes speculative, sometimes grounded — but always reflective of a practice that is deeply local and increasingly global.
Now in its 18th edition, the Sony World Photography Awards serve as a global platform for both established and emerging artists, offering an annual glimpse into contemporary photography. This free-to-enter competition provides exposure across 10 categories, including Architecture, Landscape, Travel, and Street Photography. Each category awards a winner, features a shortlist of selected works, and culminates in the title of Open Photographer of the Year. For the 2025 Open competition, participants were invited to submit their strongest single images from 2024, with a focus on capturing and distilling a singular moment while evoking a broader narrative.
Photographer Paul Clemence captured a striking photo series of the Bioparque Pantanal, also known as the Pantanal Aquarium, a recently completed architectural project in Campo Grande, Brazil, designed by the late architect Ruy Ohtake. Located within the Parque das Nações Indígenas, one of the largest urban parks in the country, the structure serves as a centerpiece for cultural, scientific, and ecological exploration in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Clemence's photography highlights the interplay between the aquarium's architectural design and its surrounding environment, providing a visual documentation of the project's form, materials, and spatial organization.
In the south of France, a 40-minute drive east of Montpellier, lies the otherworldly resort town of La Grande Motte. Named after a nearby sand dune, the city is characterized by futuristic, pyramid-shaped apartment blocks in various relief forms, adorned with diverse vegetation including pines, planes, olives, poplars, and cypresses. Artists Charly Broyez and Laurent Kronental describe this unique character as "a fairy-tale vision of a land emerging from the uncharted territories of our psyche, loaded with memories, images, sounds, colors, history." Through their meticulous images, they reveal the city's distinctive architecture.
Beyond just a visual record, architectural photography is a powerful medium that holds the ability to reveal and explore architectural spaces from unique perspectives. Through the lens of a skilled photographer, architecture showcases its interplay of lights and shadows, the tectonics of its structural elements, the careful detailing of joined materials, and the larger narratives of cultural heritage. On World Photography Day 2024, we celebrate this unique art form by highlighting the work of 25 distinguished photographers who have captured architecture in its most evocative forms.
Among the featured photo series, Paul Clemence explores the minimalist precision of Swiss museums, Iwan Baan offers a visual narrative of Prague, while Simone Bossi highlights the contrast between man-made structures and their natural surroundings. Additionally, Marc Goodwin continues his series on architecture studios from around the world, providing a glimpse into the profession’s creative spaces. Erieta Attali’s work transports viewers to ancient ruins to explore historical juxtapositions and cultural landscapes.
To create this collection, Marc Goodwin collaborated with Italian architect, publisher, teacher, and curator Alessandro Martinelli, who is based in Taipei. He selected the participants with the help of Mr. Chung-Hsiung Wang, the curator of the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018. The series will continue to develop with the creation of scale models for each studio, which will be exhibited alongside the photographs in the Taiwan Pavilion of the Venice Biennale.
Starting on June 30th, 2024, Edmund Sumner presents the “Traces” exhibition, a solo show at Rodic Davidson Architects in London featuring architectural photography that explores cultural identity and historical significance across diverse landscapes. The show offers a profound exploration of architecture and design across diverse landscapes, including Europe, India, and Mexico, presenting a compelling intersection between photography and the built environment. Additionally, the photographer is expected to release his fifth book with Thames & Hudson in 2025.
With the 2024 Olympic Games opening ceremony fast approaching, Paris has captured global attention. In addition to the venues being prepared for the Olympics, the city offers a wide range of architectural projects that showcase its efforts to improve the urban environment and promote a greener and more inclusive city. Among these, the new Clichy Batignolles Eco-District in the 17th arrondissement of Paris is a 54-hectare development that set out to transform the former SNCF rail yard into a new neighborhood. The initiative features contributions from internationally recognized architects including MAD Architects, Architect Périphériques, and RPBW, among others. Read on to discover the urban development through the lens of architecture photographer Paul Clemence.
Renowned French architect Jean Nouvel has unveiled his design for Samsung’s pop-up store on the iconic Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris, France. The store aims to represent the company’s role as a Worldwide Olympic Partner, offering visitors a space where they can engage with the newest mobile technologies and Olympic-related activities. The first images by architectural photographer Jad Sylla highlight Jean Nouvel’s design of the immersive retail space.
The photographs reveal snippets of everyday life in these studios. While not all of the buildings were designed by their occupying architecture studios, each office has added a personal touch to their space, aligning them with their internal culture and traditions. One such example is Tato Architects, for whom the kitchen has become an important gathering space, as they take turns preparing lunch for each other and eating together is a significant part of their office story.
The Sony World Photography Awards 2024 has announced its category winners and shortlist, showcasing the best single images from around the world captured during the last year. With over 395,000 submissions from 220 countries and territories, the competition aims to highlight established and emerging photographers from around the world. The Open Competition is divided into 10 category sections, covering a diverse range of themes, from Architecture and Landscape to Portraiture, Lifestyle, and Wildlife photography.
For the Architecture category, ArchDaily collaborator Ana Skobe has been declared the winner with a photograph titled “Falling Out of Time.” Bathed in the soft hues of evening light, a sleek geometric structure rises from the coastal landscape, its clean lines contrasting with the natural elements surrounding it. Positioned at the base of the lighthouse, a solitary figure gives a sense of scale to the composition, as it contemplates the vastness of the ocean.
Showcasing millennia of Egyptian history and culture, the Grand Egyptian Museum is a monumental project in Cairo, Egypt, designed by the Irish firm Heneghan Peng Architects. Home to over 100,000 artifacts spanning Egypt’s storied past, the museum is on the brink of opening its doors to the public after multiple setbacks. Recent updates offer glimpses of the structure’s progress, with photographs captured by Egyptian photographer Farida Bustani providing sneak peeks of the architectural landmark.
Spanning continents and cultures, architecture-focused events serve as platforms for the gathering of diverse groups of professionals to share innovations and embark on dialogues regarding some of the most pressing matters faced by our profession. Embodying the spirit of collaboration, highlighting local cultures and practices, and fostering open debates, this year’s list of events covers a diverse range of biennales, forums, city-wide celebrations, international fairs, and awards.
Doha, the capital of Qatar, is the residence of more than 90% of the country's population, which amounts to about 1.7 million people, with over 80% being professional expatriates. In its historical past, Doha was primarily a fishing and pearl diving town, characterized by numerous traditional individual houses until the mid-1960s. Modernizing the city occurred mainly during the 1970s, although its pace slowed in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, Qatar has recently emerged as one of the world's fastest-growing economies, lending significant geostrategic importance to Doha.
The country's development vision revolves around reducing dependence on natural resources and embracing a knowledge-based economy encompassing international universities, high-tech industries, IT services, and advanced producer services. Much of the coastline, including the corniche, has been artificially constructed. Several notable areas contribute significantly to the evolving character of the city. The city’s contemporary architecture has been captured through the lens of photographer Pygmalion Karatzas.
Paul Clemence has released images of the Amaris mixed-use development in Washington D.C., one of the latest works completed by renowned Uruguayan American architect, Rafael Viñoly. The photographic series reveals a distinctively shaped curvilinear building opening towards public spaces along the Potomac River. The volume is created to accommodate residential units with generous views toward the surrounding landscape, marking the terminus point to a row of new buildings in The Wharf development.
The heritage of Mexico City is extremely rich and diverse due to a long history that overlays like layers above the urban fabric since pre-Hispanic times. Currently, it is one of the largest cities in the world, and its heritage is reflected in its architecture, museums, historical sites, cultural traditions, protected sites, gastronomy, and much more. This chronology has been evidenced through various historical records. However, contemporary recording is essential in moments where we are writing history immediately with different digital tools.
Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and Greek photographer Erieta Attali have been working together for over twenty years. Their joint work is characterized by a shared aesthetic understanding of architecture, space, and visual perception. In both Kuma’s buildings and Attali’s photographs, interior and exterior spaces merge and dissolve into one another. Both are united by the idea that spatial experience is fleeting, shaped by the rhythm of the day and the seasons, making built space a medium that expands into the landscape and encourages people to question their notion of spatial boundaries.
