Month: February 2026

House CR was born from the unlikely meeting between experience and the will to start over. The clients, a couple in their 80s, decided to build a new home. That alone inspired us.

Two weeks and over 85,000 nominations later, the finalists of this year’s Building of the Year Awards are in. The selection is much like the ArchDaily audience that chose it: diverse in geography, generous in ideas, and precise in intent. With projects from 46 countries, in a variety of typologies and scales, they present a beautiful snapshot of the current architectural moment.

Perched above the cliffs of Crimea, the Druzhba Thermal Sanatorium appears less as a building than as a landed spacecraft. Its circular forms, suspended decks, and spiraling ramps evoke a scene from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), where architecture and psychology merge into a single landscape. Built between 1978 and 1985 by Igor Vasilevsky, the complex was conceived as a thermal resort for workers of the oil industry, part of the Soviet Union’s extensive network of sanatoria dedicated to health and recreation.

As the architecture community looks ahead to the announcement of the 2026 Pritzker Architecture Prize, anticipation is once again building around who will be named this year’s laureate. While the official date has yet to be confirmed, the annual reveal traditionally takes place in early March, marking one of the most closely watched moments in the architectural calendar. Established in 1979 by the Hyatt Foundation, the Pritzker Architecture Prize is widely regarded as “the profession’s highest honor.” Each year, it recognizes a living architect, or architects, whose work demonstrates a consistent and significant contribution to humanity and the built environment. Over the decades, the award has reflected shifting priorities within the discipline, highlighting practices engaged with social equity, environmental responsibility, material experimentation, and cultural continuity.

Traditional Ukrainian vernacular architecture evolved through simple yet expressive solutions: thick whitewashed walls, thatched roofs, and regular plastering as an act of care and an aspiration toward order and beauty. In YOD Group’s contemporary interpretation of traditional Ukrainian Hata-Mazanka, this pursuit of light and cleanliness is translated into fully transparent glass façades, while the roof – deliberately oversized – becomes the project’s primary architectural gesture. Its sculptural form defines a strong, instantly recognisable silhouette, evoking both a traditional tall hat and an oversized mushroom rising from the landscape.

World Monuments Fund (WMF) is an independent organization dedicated to safeguarding treasured places around the world that enrich lives and foster mutual understanding across cultures and communities. On February 10, WMF announced a $7 million commitment to support 21 heritage preservation projects launching in 2026. These investments advance work at sites included on the 2025 World Monuments Watch, WMF’s nomination-based advocacy program, while also supporting new phases of conservation, planning, and training at additional heritage sites across five continents. The selected sites reflect a wide chronological and geographic range, from ancient cultural landscapes to modern architectural landmarks. The projects highlight the diversity of global heritage, spanning Mughal gardens and Ottoman religious complexes to modernist cinemas, industrial mining landscapes, Indigenous cultural routes, and sacred shrines, and point to the long-term cultural knowledge embedded in its preservation.

In the coastal and jungle regions of Costa Rica, high humidity and intense solar radiation dictate an architectural strategy centered on permeability rather than enclosure. Unlike the airtight envelopes required in cold climates to retain heat, Costa Rican architecture uses the building envelope as a climatic filter to maximize air exchange. The primary mechanism for managing these thermal gradients seems to be the oversized roof overhang. By extending the roof plane significantly beyond the floor plate, architects create a permanent buffer of deep shade that reduces solar gain and lowers the ambient temperature before air enters the structure. This strategy, combined with permeable or non-existent walls, allows for constant airflow. This is a critical technical requirement for humidity control and the prevention of material degradation through mold and rot.

This project is a hall set quietly within the forest of Karuizawa, a renowned summer retreat. The facility is the result of a project that has been cultivated collaboratively with the client and contractor over a period of approximately ten years.