Nightingale’s Nurse Cap – Located in the Shonai region of Yamagata Prefecture, Tsuruoka is a city where the heritage of the Shonai Domain remains deeply woven into the cultural fabric. The new campus for Tsuruoka City Shonai Nursing School was conceived under the theme of a nursing school grounded in Tsuruoka’s history and culture, dedicated to cultivating professionals who will sustain regional healthcare. Sitting quietly within a culturally vibrant corner of the city, the building features distinctive white shades inspired by Florence Nightingale’s nurse cap. These shades serve a dual purpose: they are functional devices to control solar heat gain and symbolic gestures to the community, expressing a commitment to the future of local medical care.

Located along the southern coastline of Sjællands Odde, Denmark, this sharply defined holiday house is carefully designed to respond to its landscape, the contours of the site. With a clear focus on functional spatial organization, the project establishes strong connections between interior spaces and the surrounding outdoor areas and terraces, enabling a seamless flow between inside and out.

This high-fashion menswear store is located in the historic center of Sofia, occupying an existing 1920s building formerly used for textile sales. The display window is uncommonly recessed, transparent, and delicate, respecting the existing facade.

The starting point of the project was the demand to create a space entirely dedicated to ceramics education in São Paulo. Instead of adapting an existing workshop, the clients sought a warehouse that could be transformed from the beginning into a school — with spacious studios filled with shelves, tanks, wheels, boards, and tables that would allow for different activities to occur simultaneously, in addition to appropriate infrastructure and good accessibility.

The Dalmia-Gopichand Badminton Academy, or The Shuttle, is a testament to the potential of architecture to create opportunities for sports in the built environment. This, in turn, fosters the spirit of sportsmanship and community, thereby demonstrating how architecture can amplify the cultural and economic significance of sports. This project is imagined to exemplify the role of architecture in shaping a city’s identity and aspirations.

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.

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.

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

Mankind Studios is a compact mixed-use building located in a dense urban neighborhood in Bandung, Indonesia. The project occupies a narrow site within a lively hangout district shaped by the city’s strong youth culture and creative economy. Bandung’s high altitude and mountainous surroundings provide a cooler climate than most Indonesian cities, a condition that directly informs the building’s spatial and environmental strategies.

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.