In the morning, children learn math in the primary school, and in the afternoon, piano lessons in the music school. And in the evening, members of the town band meet to make music together. The new education campus in Oberwart is a lively place for the entire town.

Designed during the pandemic, this project emerges as a critical reflection on contemporary commercial spaces and their ability to adapt to new models of living, working, and consuming. Rather than being an immediate response to the health emergency, the proposal stems from a deeper question: how should architecture respond to a reality demanding long-term flexibility, efficiency, and urban responsibility?

The Calming Abode is a 10,000 sq ft private residence in Surat, conceived as an inward-looking sanctuary shaped by sculpted volumes, material restraint, and spatial calm. The primary challenge was addressing the inherently generous scale of the house while ensuring the interiors remained grounded, composed, and deeply inhabitable rather than overtly grand.

The complex consists of a 24-class junior high school, a 30-class primary school, and a 24-class kindergarten, arranged sequentially from south to north, with integrated basements. The three principal architects in charge of the design engaged in an interesting “design dialogue,” balancing division of labor and collaboration. Given their close relationship, the junior high and primary schools agreed on a coordinated master plan. Both structures adopt a “sandwich”-like layout. First, the dimensions of the connecting body at critical junctions are strictly controlled. Then, each is free to develop its own expression. The junior high and primary school buildings are divided longitudinally into three functional spaces. Arranged from west to east are auxiliary teaching space, main teaching space, and extracurricular interest space.

A revitalized canning factory in a coastal Portuguese city, a memorial park in Ethiopia, a small-town Brazilian home, a wooden pavilion evoking Bahrain’s heritage, and 11 other visionary projects comprise the winners of the 2026 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards. Chosen over three weeks of public voting, the winners are representative of the current architectural landscape, reflecting a diversity of approaches, materialities and aesthetics, while also showcasing common threads across cultures.

In some languages, the very word for building refers to its immovability. The discipline of engineering related to buildings is referred to as statics. Thus, architecture is closely related to the fixed and the immobile. And yet, for millions of nomadic people around the world, shelters must be of a light and distinctly movable structure, while home is the vast landscape in which they reside. Such lifestyles, which carry centuries of traditions, are constantly under threat from the pull factors of sedentary life in towns and cities. In Tunisia, one project acknowledges the risk of heritage loss and attempts to improve conditions for nomadic herders.

The project transforms a former neighborhood restaurant in Watermael-Boitsfort (Brussels, BE) into a set of adaptable dwellings, rooted in the heritage value of the existing building. In an uncertain ecological and economic context, reprogramming such a building for a single, fixed use appears increasingly inadequate. The project therefore rejects a deterministic approach in favor of a restrained, legible, and forward-looking architectural strategy.

The project involves the restoration of a castle, designated as a Cultural Heritage Site, located in the Chera-Sot de Chera Natural Park, Valencia. This 12th-century structure, from the Almohad period, fell into ruin over successive historical periods and was definitively abandoned at the beginning of the 19th century.

Visits to the site sparked the desire to build a house that would blend into the landscape. We found large rocks on the land, which is protected by dense vegetation, that protruded from the steep slope of the southern portion. There’s also a lake nearby, accessible via a short trail through the woods.

This house is built on a site along a bank in Toyama City overlooking the Tateyama mountain range.