Articles by Antonia Piñeiro

This week’s news compilation opens with two international commemorations, the International Day for Clean Energy and the International Day of Education, alongside a major archaeological discovery in Fano, Italy, where excavations have revealed a basilica described by Vitruvius, linking contemporary architectural discourse with deep historical continuity. Across this week’s broader architecture news landscape, a central theme emerges around the advancement of civic architecture conceived as open, publicly engaged infrastructure, with cultural and institutional projects increasingly designed to strengthen their relationship with the city and everyday urban life. At the same time, renewed global attention turns toward Africa, where large-scale transport infrastructure and the conservation of modernist landmarks reflect interests in the region and the reassessment of the continent’s architectural heritage. Complementing these narratives, this week’s highlights also include a new model for car-free urban districts, co-designed public landscapes grounded in indigenous knowledge, and a residential development responding to regional context, reflecting how architecture is negotiating public space, civic responsibility, and territorial identity across diverse geographies.

David Chipperfield Architects has released new images of the Ice Hockey Arena in Milan, one of the host sports venues for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. The project, currently in its testing phase, was commissioned to Arup and David Chipperfield Architects in 2021. The first images of the elliptical amphitheatre arena were released in 2022, ahead of the start of construction in 2023, which was scheduled for completion in 2025. The new sports and cultural events venue has a capacity of 16,000 spectators, 12,000 seated and 4,000 standing, and is a centrepiece of a broader urban redevelopment project originally designed by Foster + Partners for Milano Santa Giulia, a district in the south-east of Milan, just a few kilometres from the city centre and connected to the high-speed rail network and motorway.

David Chipperfield Architects has released new images of the Ice Hockey Arena in Milan, one of the host sports venues for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. The project, currently in its testing phase, was commissioned to Arup and David Chipperfield Architects in 2021. The first images of the elliptical amphitheatre arena were released in 2022, ahead of the start of construction in 2023, which was scheduled for completion in 2025. The new sports and cultural events venue has a capacity of 16,000 spectators, 12,000 seated and 4,000 standing, and is a centrepiece of a broader urban redevelopment project originally designed by Foster + Partners for Milano Santa Giulia, a district in the south-east of Milan, just a few kilometres from the city centre and connected to the high-speed rail network and motorway.

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 in 2021. The 123,500-square-foot museum will expand gallery space by 50 percent and introduce extensive free, publicly accessible areas conceived as an open invitation to the city.

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 the impacts associated with their production, deployment, and commercialization. In this context, architectural knowledge related to space, materiality, and habitation becomes relevant for supporting a transition toward energy systems that are sustainable over time. As stated by the United Nations, the science is clear: to limit climate change, reliance on fossil fuels must end, and buildings must be heated, lit, and electrified through clean, accessible, affordable, sustainable, and reliable power sources.

During a presentation to the press held at Paris City Hall on January 7, 2026, architect and Pritzker Prize laureate Renzo Piano released the first images of the transformation of Montparnasse’s emblematic shopping center and CIT Tower into a pedestrian-focused district in Paris, France. The project, commissioned to Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) in 2022 by the co-owners of the commercial complex, proposes both a visual and functional transformation of the 1970s low-rise retail development into a more traversable space characterized by transparency and openness. The design was developed in parallel with the redevelopment of the Montparnasse Tower, led by Nouvelle AOM, to reshape the broader tertiary complex into a contemporary Parisian block oriented toward public life, environmental performance, and everyday use. The project reopens the site to the city, reconnecting streets and restoring continuity between Montparnasse and its surrounding neighborhoods through new public spaces.

World Monuments Fund (WMF) is an independent organization dedicated to safeguarding significant places that enrich people’s lives and foster mutual understanding across cultures and communities. Since 2008, the World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize has been a biennial award recognizing outstanding achievements in the conservation of buildings emblematic of the modernist architectural movement. The prize honors individuals and organizations that revitalize modern built heritage through innovative and sensitive architectural interventions.

World Monuments Fund (WMF) is an independent organization dedicated to safeguarding significant places that enrich people’s lives and foster mutual understanding across cultures and communities. Since 2008, the World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize has been a biennial award recognizing outstanding achievements in the conservation of buildings emblematic of the modernist architectural movement. The prize honors individuals and organizations that revitalize modern built heritage through innovative and sensitive architectural interventions.

Zhu Pei is a Chinese architect born in 1962 in Beijing. He studied at Tsinghua University and UC Berkeley, and founded Studio Zhu Pei in 2005. The studio’s experimental work and research focus on contemporary architecture, art, and cultural projects. With an artistic and exploratory approach, it investigates the relationship between the roots that anchor architecture in specific natural and cultural contexts and the innovation that drives architecture as a form of artistic revolution. In his interview with Louisiana Channel, Zhu Pei describes architecture as an artistic discipline that, like poetry, relies on openness, imagination, and the creation of new experiences. He argues that great architecture goes beyond functional problem-solving by generating a sense of wonder through its ability to “invent” and “create some new thing, new experience,” positioning architectural practice as cultural and sensory exploration rather than purely technical production.

The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art will inaugurate, on January 22, 2026, the second exhibition in its Architecture Connecting series, focusing on the discipline’s relationship with science and research across a wide range of fields, including biology, neuroscience, and anthropology. The first exhibition in the series, Living Structures (2024–2025), featured ecoLogicStudio, Atelier LUMA, and Jenny Sabin Studio, highlighting their work at the intersection of algorithms and nature and their development of methods that re-evaluate sustainable architecture and climate considerations. This second exhibition, titled Memoryscapes, explores the memories, stories, and traditions informing the working methodologies of Xu Tiantian‘s DnA_Design and Architecture (Beijing) and ATTA – Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects (Paris).