In this issue: the Test of Time Awards finalists, Lahdelma & Mahlamäki’s Lost Shtetl Museum, Ian Volner on Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, Marcus Lee of LEEP Architects in Reinventing Practice, The Drift in Suffolk, Axo Architects’ Benedictine Monastery at Kylemore Abbey, Materials Library with BakerBrown, and Farid Esmaeil’s Dubai in My Kind of Town – and much more.
Future Build: How Construction Can Heal Our Planet
Environmentalist and engineer Will Arnold launches the first public-facing non-fiction book on regenerative design at Regenerative Design 2026.
Yukta Chegu wins 2026 Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship
University of Bath student Yukta Chegu has won the 2026 RIBA Norman Foster Travelling Scholarship for research exploring what global construction can learn from India’s informal material salvage economies.
Help the client: beyond business as usual
Beau Lotto of Hummingbird Learning Lab, Piers Taylor of Invisible Studio and Julia Barfield of Marks Barfield Architects are hosting an interactive brainstorm at Regenerative Design 2026, exploring how to help clients get radical projects off the ground and challenge the conventions that hinder collaborative, regenerative design.
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My Kind of Town: Farid Esmaeil
For X Architects founding partner Farid Esmaeil, Dubai is an extraordinary laboratory with a climate that demands a careful approach to materiality and passive design and a confidence that invites you to test ideas, challenge conventions and imagine architecture in new ways.
Watch the People’s Emergency Briefing at Regenerative Design 2026
Architecture Today and UK Architects Declare are hosting a screening of The People's Emergency Briefing on the evening of Wednesday 28th October at the Building Centre in central London as part of Regenerative Design 2026.
Regenerative Design takes to Radio 4
RIBA President Elect Jay Morton, Architecture Today Editor Isabel Allen and author and historian Barnabas Calder discuss housing and regenerative design with Tom Heap and Helen Czerski on Radio 4's Rare Earth.
Visit the Bears at Wildheart at Regenerative Design 2026
Real-time real-size live footage of two bears rescued from captivity and re-housed at the Wildheart Animal Sanctuary will be on display at the Regenerative Design 2026 throughout October, celebrating an on-going collaboration between Wildheart and the RAI.
Don’t miss the Reinventing Practice exhibition at Regenerative Design 2026
An exhibition of photographic portraits and interviews focusing on members of the Regenerative Architecture Index offers an insight into practices and organisations working to accelerate the transition to regenerative design.
The death of the architectural ego
Laura Baron, Head of Sustainability at Purcell, calls for architects to set aside ego and embrace their role as custodians, working collaboratively to preserve, adapt and enrich the places and communities entrusted to their care.
Neil Thomas announced as keynote speaker at Regenerative Design 2026
The founder of the world's most innovative structural engineering firm Neil Thomas of Atelier One will share his research and thinking about the lessons trees can teach us about structural design at an evening talk on Wednesday 21st October.
Michael Pawlyn announced as keynote speaker at Regenerative Design 2026
The founder of Exploration Architecture, co-founder of UK Architects Declare and globally recognised thought leader on regenerative design will set out his thinking on pathways for a regenerative future at an evening event on Wednesday 14th October.
Timothy Soar explains the ambition – and the significance – of Regenerative Design 2026
Photographer Timothy Soar is giving a talk on the relationship between the way we document architecture and the transition to regenerative design on the morning of Tuesday October 6th at Regenerative Design 2026. Here he explains why he's getting involved.
Exploration Architecture appoints nature and future generations to its board
A new governance initiative by Exploration Architecture gives nature and future generations a formal voice in the practice's decision-making, extending a movement that is reshaping how organisations define corporate responsibility.
RD26: Why Regenerative Design? Why this conversation matters now
The future of the built environment demands more than sustainability. For years, those in the built environment have focused on reducing harm by lowering carbon, improving energy performance and cutting waste. Those ambitions remain vital, but today's environmental and social challenges demand something more.
The life of the City
Peter Smith, Architect at Collective Architecture, considers how architects and planners can create cities that give children greater freedom to explore, play and make use of the spaces around them.
School of Specification – Zinc as a building envelope
Jonathan Lowy, Operational Marketing Manager at VM Building Solutions, has produced a School of Specification module exploring the use of zinc in roofing and façade applications. Here, he discusses the material’s performance and aesthetic qualities, as well as key specification considerations.
Enzo Favro
For Enzo Favro, regenerative design is about looking beyond a building's immediate impact to the legacy it leaves behind. The Director of In Opera Group explains why natural stone, terrazzo and a long-term approach to material value are central to creating places that last.
Reflections: Bait ur Rouf Mosque
John Pardey explores Marina Tabassum's Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka, a modest brick building where primary geometry, natural ventilation and shifting patterns of light create a profound place of worship and community.
Still standing: Sagrada Família, Barcelona, 1882-2026
Under the ninth generation of architectural leadership Antoni Gaudí’s Gothic masterpiece was finally inaugurated by Pope Leo XIV in June. So why does the world’s best-known construction project still seem curiously incomplete?
School of Specification – Forensic fire safety
Sam Morley, Senior Associate at Hawkins, has produced a School of Specification module exploring forensic fire safety. Here, he discusses how fire investigations reveal building defects and the lessons architects can learn from them.
Regenerative Design 2026: Moving from ambition to action
Regenerative Design 2026 brings the built environment together to turn ambition into action at The Building Centre in London from 1–30 October.
Marcus Lee
Marcus Lee of LEEP Architects talks to AT about materials investigation, experimentation, designing for change and an 'agri-industrial' ethos that celebrates the raw aesthetic of agricultural infrastructure.
Safe doesn’t have to mean the same
Janie Mullaney of Equitone argues that greater transparency, earlier collaboration and better procurement can deliver social housing that is both safe and architecturally distinctive.
Glasgow School of Art to abandon full restoration of Mackintosh Building
The Glasgow School of Art is expected to replace Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s fire-damaged masterpiece with a contemporary building behind retained sections of its historic façade.
2026 RIBA Stirling Prize shortlist
Projects by Sergison Bates, Bennetts Associates, Mary Duggan Architects with RUFF Architects, Renzo Piano Building Workshop with Adamson Associates, Haworth Tompkins, and Witherford Watson Mann Architects are in the running for this year’s Stirling Prize for the UK’s best new building.
Tall buildings: balancing performance, safety and wellbeing
Watch the AT webinar, in partnership with Knauf UK, exploring how tall buildings can balance fire safety, acoustic and thermal comfort, environmental performance, regulatory compliance and resident wellbeing.
Per Kirkeby: making mystery and magic out of ordinary brick
Publisher Torsten Bløndal and architecture professor Thomas Bo Jensen have joined forces to produce a compendium of the paintings, sculptures and buildings of Danish artist, poet, sculptor and film maker Per Kirkeby. John Pardey enjoys a lyrical tour through an eclectic portfolio rooted in love for the humble brick.