Architecture: Research Guide

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.

This project is the intervention of a traditional Antioquian house located in the southwest of the department, in a mountainous and warm climate territory.

Set on the edge of the Blaricum heathland, the Tafelberg office is conceived as a place where work takes place within the landscape rather than apart from it. The building withdraws into its surroundings, allowing nature to remain visually continuous while quietly shaping the architecture's form, materiality, and atmosphere.

The area around the Herzogpark in Munich has retained a certain originality, despite the obvious prosperity of its residents. In addition to expensive del­icatessen shops, there are also long-established tailors, bakers, and butch­ers. Our client was able to purchase a double plot in a residential street, di­rectly along the Herzogpark. It sits in a row of four to five-story residential buildings, most of which were built in the early 20th century. The task was to design an apartment building that reflected the unique location and met the highest living standards.

By operating with only five notes, the pentatonic scale establishes a stable and intuitive musical system in which structural clarity allows for variation without the risk of excessive dissonance. From this consolidated structure, which forms the basis of countless musical styles, especially popular music, the blues introduced a decisive inflection by incorporating additional notes into the scale. Without delving into excessive technicalities, these are subtle tonal deviations, small dissonances often associated with a more melancholic sound, known as blue notes. Played fleetingly rather than as emphatic accents, they briefly tension the system, adding expressiveness and depth while keeping ..

Background — The Noon Repose Pavilion is located on the bank of a rural river in Huizhou, a city in southern China, along the scenic route encircling Nankun Mountain and Luofu Mountain. Huizhou was once a place of exile for the Northern Song scholar Su Shi. During his years there, exile did not result in withdrawal from life, but rather intensified his attention to its everyday rhythms. In his writings, he identified what he called the "sixteen pleasures of life," one of which he described as "resting at noon on a simple rattan pillow." The pavilion takes its name from this phrase. It is not intended as a nostalgic reference, but as a way of anchoring contemporary experience to a different..

When developing an architectural project, there are multiple possible points of departure. Some architects begin with volume, gradually carving form in dialogue with its context. Others start from the longitudinal section, while some organize the project around the functional layout of the plan. There is no right or wrong method, but rather distinct approaches that reflect different ways of thinking about and making architecture. Since the widespread adoption of solar panels and photovoltaic energy, however, a recurring pattern has emerged: these systems are almost always introduced later in the process, framed as technical optimizations or responses to regulatory and energy-efficiency requi..

Ojo de Nila is a home shaped by the rhythms of the landscape in Bahía Ballena. Designed for a Swiss couple seeking a deeper connection to the environment, the house invites a lifestyle centered on living outdoors in comfort without air conditioning. Set on a secluded mountain with expansive ocean views and surrounded by abundant biodiversity, the home is completely open toward the Pacific so its inhabitants remain in constant dialogue with light, air, and the forest canopy.

More than just a school building, the Regenerative Futures Studio is a carbon-sequestering, solar-powered living ecosystem that filters pollution, fosters animal life, and generates almost zero waste. It provides a dynamic project-based learning environment for students to explore and address real-world problems with a regenerative focus.

The International Guest House is part of the comprehensive campus development of the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH). It is among the six core buildings defined in the master plan and was designed through a distinctive framework of international collaboration.

Designed by MVRDV in collaboration with Buro Happold, the new Lampegiet Theatre in Veenendaal, the Netherlands, is scheduled to replace the existing theatre building from 1988. Approved by the Veenendaal City Council in January 2026, the project is expected to begin construction in 2027 and reach completion in 2029. Conceived as a contemporary cultural venue that responds to both current performance requirements and the city's historical identity, the new theatre introduces a compact, multi-volume composition wrapped in a porous ceramic facade that allows the building to act as an illuminated urban landmark.

Architecture and interior design practice Templeton Ford has completed Clay Rise, a three-bedroom home in the bucolic village of West Hoathly, West Sussex. The house explores the relationship between local tradition and form through its tiered roofline and contextually driven material palette. Shortlisted for the prestigious 2025 Manser Medal, Clay Rise stands as Templeton Ford's debut project. Architect Andre Templeton Ford and stylist Jessica Templeton Ford launched the practice in 2025, following decades-long careers in leadership positions at award-winning international architecture offices and in creative direction, design, and the arts.

Pritzker Prize-winning architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron has released new images showing construction progress on the Memphis Art Museum, set to open in December 2026. Currently operating as the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, the institution is both the oldest and largest art museum in Tennessee, United States, with a collection of more than 10,000 works spanning from ancient to contemporary art. Commissioned in 2019, the project marks the museum's relocation to a new site in Downtown Memphis along the Mississippi River bluff. The first images of the new cultural campus, designed by Herzog & de Meuron with architect of record archimania and landscape design by OLIN, were released i..

Residential architecture remains one of the most active fields for unbuilt architectural exploration, offering a lens through which architects rethink how domestic space can respond to landscape, climate, and contemporary patterns of living. In this Unbuilt edition, submitted by the ArchDaily community, the selected proposals bring together a range of residential projects that engage with houses, villas, and retreats as sites of withdrawal, mediation, and everyday inhabitation. Rather than treating the home as a fixed or isolated object, these projects approach it as a spatial framework that negotiates exposure, privacy, and connection to place.

The new lookout point at Point Vue le Jambon in Vresse-sur-Semois is conceived as a discreet and respectful gesture within an exceptional landscape. Rather than asserting itself as an object, the project carefully embeds architecture into the terrain, allowing the site's natural qualities to remain central to the experience.

Most of the general qualities of a vernacular corner house were preserved.

In Latin America, encounters do not necessarily arise from grand architectural gestures or monumental urban plans. They emerge from the in-between, from intermediate spaces: the courtyard, the veranda, the sidewalk, the shared corridor. These areas, often considered residual or informal by the traditional architectural discipline, are precisely where everyday life builds bonds.

Located in a small village in the Riaza Mountains of Segovia, the dwelling is inserted into the remains of an old stable made of rough stone and rammed earth, whose roofs and interior partitions were in a severe state of ruin. After emptying the built volume, the project adopts the pre-existing envelope as a foundation and limit, renouncing the reproduction of the original total occupation to instead release a central space intended to articulate the new domestic life.

Archaeological excavations in Fano, Italy, have revealed the basilica described by Vitruvius in De Architectura, a finding of major architectural significance, as it represents the only structure that can be attributed with certainty to the Roman architect. Identified during redevelopment works in Piazza Andrea Costa, the discovery provides rare physical evidence of Vitruvian theory translated into built form and offers new insights into Roman architectural design, proportions, and construction practices. The announcement was made during a press conference at the Montanari Media Library, attended by representatives of local, regional, and national institutions, including Italy's Minister of ..

Bagchi Karunashraya, meaning "Abode of Compassion", is a hospice care facility located in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, dedicated to providing free and quality palliative care to terminally ill cancer patients. The center stands as a compassionate response to end-of-life care—deeply rooted in the philosophy, "Where there is no cure, there is care." It is a place where architecture, nature, and human dignity converge to create a healing environment.

January 26 marks the International Day for Clean Energy, an initiative aimed at raising awareness and mobilizing action for an inclusive transition from fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, to power generation systems with lower greenhouse gas emissions and fewer pollutants. The term "clean" signals a fundamental shift away from extractive, finite, and exhaustible energy sources toward systems based on renewable resources or on capturing energy embedded in natural processes. In a world grappling with climate change, clean energy plays an important role in reducing emissions and expanding access to reliable power. However, being labeled "clean" does not exempt these systems from ..

Architecture is increasingly asked to do less, not more. In environments shaped by constant movement, noise, and expectation, spaces that allow people to stay, pause, and be present have become both rarer and more necessary. Many public and semi-public places are designed to keep people moving, consuming, or reacting, leaving little room for lingering, observation, or simply being without a reason.

The project started with the following question from the client to the architect. "The society that surrounds us seems to be very mature; however, many buildings are being broken one after the other while their lifetime is still sufficient. Isn't that exactly what happened due to this loss of something?"

Nicolas Hugoo Architecture has completed 36 social housing units, LA Architectures a media library and 75 family flats, and the atelier Régis Roudil has completed a student residence hall with 75 flats in the Paul Bourget neighborhood of the 13th arrondissement in Paris. The operation to upgrade the Paul-Bourget neighborhood began in 2014, aiming to break the isolation of the site and ensure the lasting improvement of the cityscape for its inhabitants. Led by Elogie Siempand Semapa and designed by Urban Act, this ambitious urban renewal project achieved the creation of a new generation of flats on this 4-hectare site and restored the presence of greenery and biodiversity.

The project is located within a C-shaped extinct volcano that erupted approximately 150,000 years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period. It is one of 108 volcanoes in the Baiyinkulun Steppe & Volcano Area, situated about 380 kilometers north of Tian'anmen Square along the longitude line of E 116°23′28″ at latitude N 43°18′37″. Volcano-In lies on the southern edge of the Xilingol Steppe, with the Otindag Sandy Land to the south, Dali Lake to the east, the Yanshan Mountains and the Greater Khingan Range farther to the east, and the Baiyinkulun Relict Gull Nature Reserve to the west. The area is rich in natural resources and features a wild landscape comprising..

This architectural project represents a sanctuary of tranquility, an escape from everyday chaos, which forms the fundamental intention of the project owner to establish a long-term retreat for family members. A peaceful and undisturbed environment became the essential premise in the search for a site that could respond both to family living and to the potential for a complementary business. This vision ultimately gave rise to the café and future villa nestled within a lychee orchard, conceived as a place for rest, reflection, and quiet enjoyment.

The Ramenzoni House was conceived as a summer residence where architecture acts as a mediator between living spaces and the landscape. The project is based on the principle that the house should not impose itself on the surroundings, but rather reveal and enhance its natural qualities through pathways, framing, and contemplation spaces.

Old buildings always carry traces of time. Rather than erasing them, P·P·Bakery begins by accepting these traces as its premise. The project focuses on deciding what to add on top of what already exists—its structure, materials, and accumulated layers of use.

A Forest Where Luminous Green Forms Resonate and Reverberate – An office and retail space for an automotive enterprise. Envisioned as a landscape of creativity, the space was conceived to embody the company's signature hue of fresh green, an image of new vitality, and to serve as a catalyst for the spontaneous exchange of ideas among those who work within it.

Located to the south of Mexico City, a residential house was designed with the goal of hosting gatherings and events — providing a space for family interaction and recreation — with a swimming lane as the main axis of the project.