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.
The cover of AT344 the Lost Shtetl Museum, Šeduva, Lithuania, by Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects. (Photograph by Aiste Rakauskaite)
Inside the July-August 2026 issue of Architecture Today:
- Test of time awards: the finalists
Announcing the projects that have made the finals of Architecture Today’s Test of Time Awards 2026 - Lost Shtetl Museum (cover)
Designed by Finnish architects Lahdelma & Mahlamäki, the Lost Shtetl Museum tells the story of Jewish life in Šeduva, Lithuania, before the Holocaust. Julian de Metz examines the building’s relationship to its highly charged physical and cultural context, and asks to what extent architecture can — or should — seek to shape collective memory and conscience - Forensic fire safety
Sam Morley of Hawkins explains how fire investigations reveal building defects and outlines the lessons architects can learn from them
- Still standing
Almost a century-and-a-half after Antoni Gaudí took over as its lead architect in 1883, Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia was finally inaugurated by Pope Leo XIV in June. Ian Volner asks why the world’s best-known construction project still seems curiously incomplete - Reinventing practice
Marcus Lee of LEEP Architects muses on agri-industrial architecture, resisting the urge to prettify the countryside and designing for constant change - The Drift
Marcus Lee and Corinna Dean have converted a Hopper-esque cluster of farm buildings in the Suffolk countryside into a maker space and home. Yuki Sumner pays a visit
- Benedictine Monastery (above)
Axo Architects has designed a Benedictine monastery, education and retreat centre at Kylemore Abbey on the edge of Pollacappul Lough in Connemara, County Galway. Cormac Murray visits the first female monastery to be built in Ireland for over 400 years - Zinc as a building envelope
Jonathan Lowy of VM Building Solutions summarises the key performance and aesthetic considerations when specifying zinc for roofing and façades
- Materials library
Duncan Baker-Brown, Tom Cuthbert, and Hannah Foreman discuss BakerBrown’s circular approach to materiality, from urban mining and harvest mapping to designing buildings as future material stores - Ask the expert
Darren Brennan, Specification Director at Siderise, answers readers’ questions on passive fire protection under the Building Safety Act - My Kind of Town:
Farid Esmaeil’s Dubai, United Arab Emirates
