ArchDaily.com

Active worldwide for more than 75 years, the Goethe-Institut commissioned a purpose-built space from concept to construction for the first time in its history. As one of its main hubs in West Africa, the choice of Kéré Architecture reflects Goethe-Institut Dakar's ambition to define what cultural exchange looks like in the 21st century.

The renovation of Villa Serena 204 began as a personal and professional mission to challenge Japan's "scrap-and-build" culture. Located in a historic modernist building designed by Junzo Sakakura, the project seeks to prove that aging architecture can gain value through thoughtful intervention. The core inspiration was the tension between the building's rigid 600mm structural grid and the fluid lifestyle of its occupants—an architect and a casting director. By embracing the "ambiguity" between work and life, the design breathes new life into a modernist relic, transforming it into a high-functioning home and studio.

Once a typical Pearl River Delta industrial town, Dali (Nanhai District) neglected human-centered public life amid rapid development. With the Qiandeng Lake axis extension, it transforms into a livable city, unlocking public space in dense fabric. The Yongping Warehouses project, in Yanbu Old Dragon 1432 Zone along Huadi River, revives obsolete riverside warehouses—once part of the Guangzhou-Foshan thoroughfare's trade heritage—into a vital waterfront public space.

This project is for a new office and residence for a construction company with a 50-year history in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture. The client owned two large warehouses near the site, both overflowing with unused timber—mostly surplus wood ordered in bulk by the previous generation, who had been a carpenter, along with reclaimed lumber collected during demolition. Although there were no clear plans for its use, the material had continued to accumulate year after year, too valuable to discard. Many construction companies and lumberyards across Japan hold similar stockpiles of timber lying dormant in warehouses.

With only 5.6 meters in width and 20 meters in length, the lot houses an architecture office and a multi-purpose hall. The spatial constraints imposed not only the compression of functions but also an articulation between constructive and architectural solutions based on the scale of intervention. The building, with its discreet facade and lack of expressive gestures, explicitly conveys the intention of creating an austere, silent, contemplative space; with the minimum necessary elements.

Limberlost Place, on Toronto's waterfront, is perhaps the world's first public tall timber building—a technical landmark that also elevates the art of architecture. Designed by Moriyama Teshima Architects in joint venture with Acton Ostry Architects, the project was selected via an international competition hosted by George Brown College for a building that would achieve the highest global standards for design, technology, and sustainability. George Brown set out to demonstrate its leadership in sustainability and climate-consciousness with a state-of-the-art building that would serve as a living laboratory for students and a showpiece for Canada's tall timber construction industry.

In 2016, we were invited—along with several international studios—to take part in a closed competition for a single-family house in one of Vilnius's suburban districts, organized by a private client. This is an area characterized by loose, traditional development, with houses and summer cottages nestled among trees and expansive recreational grounds. On the plot included in the competition, as well as in its surroundings, there were once wooden houses from the interwar period, which have not survived to the present day.

A perforated screen is often treated as an afterthought, something applied to soften light, to decorate a façade, or to add texture where a wall might otherwise feel flat. It is photographed as a surface, drawn as a pattern, and discussed as a craft. But in many buildings across the Indian subcontinent and the Islamic world, the screen was never an addition. It was the wall itself. Remove it, and the building does not simply change in appearance; it loses its ability to regulate heat, move air, and mediate between inside and outside.

Casa Luz is an architectural and interior design intervention in an existing home in the city of Oaxaca that reflects on how to inhabit from a local perspective without resorting to nostalgic or literal gestures. The proposal is built upon a sensitive reading of the context, where materiality, light, and craftsmanship become the primary means of expression.

The 2026 edition of the Sony World Photography Awards has announced its overall winners, recognizing contributions across the Professional, Open, Student, and Youth competitions. Now in its 19th year, the program continues to position itself as a key platform for both emerging and established practitioners, drawing over 430,000 submissions from more than 200 countries and territories. The program recognizes work across ten Professional categories, including Architecture & Design, alongside parallel Open, Student, and Youth competitions, and is accompanied by an annual exhibition at Somerset Hou