Khudi Bari / Marina Tabassum. Image © Aga Khan Trust for Culture / City Syntax (F. M. Faruque Abdullah Shawon, H. M. Fozla Rabby Apurbo)
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https://www.archdaily.com/1037263/best-articles-of-2025-plural-practices-environmental-responses-and-an-architecture-of-care
Across recent years, architectural discourse has been shaped by the emergence of new voices, rediscovered territories, and a growing commitment to shared forms of knowledge. These concerns remain fully present in 2025 as ongoing debates that continue to gain density and nuance. Questions of who produces architecture, from which contexts, and under what conditions remain central, increasingly informed by practices that operate collectively, across disciplines, and beyond singular authorship.
This continuity is reflected in how architecture is understood less as a finished object and more as an ongoing process embedded in social, cultural, and environmental systems. Discussions around agency, participation, and knowledge production persist, alongside sustained attention to rural, peripheral, and historically marginalized contexts. Rather than privileging a single scale or geography, architecture is approached as a practice that moves between territories, acknowledging the unequal conditions that shape how spaces are designed, built, maintained, and inhabited.
Throughout the year, these discussions unfolded across a wide range of approaches. Articles explored architecture as a form of collective intelligence and cultural production, intersecting with art, performance, exhibitions, archives, and curatorial practices. Others examined how buildings and cities respond to climatic conditions, material constraints, and construction cultures, often drawing from vernacular knowledge, adaptive reuse, and experimental strategies of building and adaptation. At the same time, critical perspectives on heritage, modernism, and memory positioned architecture as a field deeply entangled with histories of extraction, colonialism, and institutional power.
Related Article ArchDaily’s Best Architectural Projects of 2025
Taken together, the articles selected here reflect an architectural field attentive to complexity rather than consensus, and to processes rather than prescriptions. They move across territories and disciplines, between material practices and conceptual frameworks, and between care, critique, and experimentation. As part of ArchDaily’s ongoing editorial commitment to fostering global dialogue and sharing knowledge across contexts, the following selection brings together the 35 best articles of 2025, written by our editorial team around the world.
Towards an Architecture of Many Intelligences: How Collective Knowledge Shapes the Built Environment
Meles Zenawi Memorial Park / Studio Other Spaces. Image © Studio Other SpacesFrom Design Fiction to Design Futures: The Changing Role of Architecture in Cultural Production
Drawing Studio / CRAB Studio. Image © Richard BryantThe City as a Laboratory of Processes: A Decade of Urban Experimentation with Concéntrico
Concéntrico Pavilion / sauermartins + Mauricio Méndez. Image © Josema CutillasLisbon Architecture Triennale 2025 Examines the Technosphere and Human Impact on Earth
Iwan Baan’s “Petroleum”, at FLUXES. Image © Romullo BarattoThe Intelligens Biennale Gathers the Data, but Fails to Synthesize It
A Robot’s Dream / Gramazio Kohler Research (ETH Zurich), MESH, Studio Armin Linke. Image © Andrea Avezzù, Courtesy of la Biennale di VeneziaChoreographing Space: Architecture and Dance as Interdisciplinary Practices
Dance House Helsinki / JKMM Architects + ILO architects. Image © Tuomas UusheimoBehind the Scenes, On Display: Self-Curated Journeys Through the Museum Archive
V&A East Storehouse / Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Image © Hufton + CrowAn Epic of Fire and Stone: The Story Behind the Intervention at the Benedictine Monastery of Catania, Sicily
Benedictine Monastery of Catania. Image © Lucas ReitzNothing Is Lost, Everything Transforms: The Reusable Future of the Biennials’ Structures
Image courtesy of La Biennale di VeneziaFrom Little Venice to Venice: The Narrative of Carlo Scarpa’s Venezuela Pavilion
Exterior of the Venezuela Pavilion / Carlo Scarpa. Image © Flickr user Jean-Pierre DalbéraArchitecture and Coloniality: Brazilian Modernism in Critical Perspective
Brasília. Image © Joana FrançaAdapting Modernism in Argentina: The Case of Grupo Austral and Los Eucaliptos Building
© Cortesia de Moderna Buenos AiresTegucigalpa’s Modernist Revolution: Metroplan and the Shift in the Urban Identity of 1970s Honduras
Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Image © josuef3r via ShutterstockBrutalism and Bureaucracy: An Architectural Language of Authority in the Postwar United States
Weaver Building. Image © Ty Cole for “Capital Brutalism” ExhibitionArchitectural Rebuilding as Cultural Memory: The Paradox of Ever-Fresh Heritage
West Kowloon bamboo theater in Hong Kong on Jan 18 2014. Image © TungCheung via ShutterstockHeritage in Syria: Independent Groups Documenting the Country’s Historic Architecture
Deir Ez-Zor Heritage Library team on site. Image Courtesy of Deir Ez-Zor Heritage LibraryQuiet Hope: Frank Gehry’s Maggie’s Centre Hong Kong
Maggie’s Centre Hong Kong. Image © Jonathan Yeung, courtesy of Open House Hong Kong & Design TrustReclaiming the Narrative: A New Generation of Museums in West Africa
Museum of Black Civilizations, Dakar. Image © Pierre Laborde via ShutterstockThe Cayala Paradox: How Are Private Districts Shaping Public Space Design in Guatemala?
Overview of Ciudad Cayala, with some buildings in construction. Image © Gianfranco Vivi via ShutterstockRooted in Tradition, Nature, and Community: Wellness and Healing Spaces from the North to the South Africa
Image © Sergey PesterevRhythms of the Soil: Architecture as Agroecology
New Artist Residency In Senegal / Toshiko Mori . Image © Iwan BaanKhudi Bari: Architecture for Climate Displacement
Khudi Bari / Marina Tabassum. Photo by Julien Lanoo. Image © Vitra (www.vitra.com)From Scaffolds to Structures: India’s Unfinished Journey with Bamboo
2023 Surajkund Craft Fair. Image © Suryan DangDesigning with Humidity: How Architecture Adapts to the World’s Dampest Climates
Tropical Shed / Laurent Troost Architectures. Image © Joana FrancaHeat-Resilient Design: How City Leaders Use Building Materials to Fight Urban Heat
Rasulbagh Children’s Park by Shatotto.. Image © Asif Salman, Isabelle Antunes, City Syntax, Shatotto teamArchitecture on Water: Adaptive and Ecological Approaches from Venice 2025
Coding Plants: An Artificial Reef and Living Kelp Archive. Courtesy of Terreform ONEBeyond Disaster Relief: The Evolution of Super Adobe into Permanent Structures in Hormuz, Iran
Charta square: Entrance area of the accommodation section. Image © Tahmineh MonzaviThinking Globally, Building Locally: Glocalization and the Ethical Use of Materials
Desi Training Center / Studio Anna Heringer. Image Courtesy of Studio Anna HeringerBuilt to Not Last: How Reversible Architecture Is Redefining the Way We Build
Aire Pavilion / P+S Estudio de Arquitectura, Spain. Image © Imagen Subliminal (Rocío Romero + Miguel de Guzmán) + Javier CallejasHow Can Transport Infrastructures Take on a New Lease of Life?
The Moving Kitchen Restaurant / JC Architecture. Image © Kuomin LeeBeyond Manufactured Landscapes: Quarries as Sites for Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Image © Edmund SumnerFrom Legal Constraint to Local Craft: Four Adaptive Projects by Messina Rivas in Cunha
Image © Federico CairoliBarriers to BIM: Why India’s Construction Culture Slows Technology Adoption
Mumbai, India. Image © Zoshua ColahFrom Extraction to Regeneration: Architecture’s Role in Rural Developments in Latin America
Centro de Desenvolvimento e Produção Rural La Panificadora / Natura Futura © JAG StudioMapping as Design: A Resource-Based Approach to Rural Design in the United States
Park at the Warsaw Uprising Mound in Poland by studios topoScape and Archigrest. Image Courtesy of The European Prize for Public Urban Space
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