Significant parts of the 143-year-old Limoges Town Hall in France have been destroyed in an arson attack, as protests broke out across the country over the weekend.

On 17th October, Limoges Town Hall was set on fire. Videos taken by people on the ground show its slate roofs ablaze and its central bell tower collapsing.

Officials have not yet confirmed the state of the town hall and whether the rest of the building is at risk of collapse, according to the BBC.

Designed by French architect Charles-Alfred Leclerc, the neo-Renaissance Limoges Town Hall was built in 1883 and was listed as a historical monument in 1975.

An estimated 550,000 people in France took to the streets over the weekend to protest the rising cost of living and poor school conditions.

Some demonstrations turned to violence and disorder, with hundreds of shops being looted and destroyed. Around 2,400 people have been arrested.

In addition to Limoges Town Hall, other buildings in France were set on fire in arson attacks, including a tourist office in Lyon.

The mayor of Limoges has demanded a "Notre-Dame plan" to restore the town hall. A huge fire broke out at the iconic Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, which saw the Gothic landmark's 90-metre-high spire and parts of the roof collapse.

After five years of reconstruction work, the cathedral reopened in 2024 with restored interiors and the spire rebuilt as a replica of the 1859 version lost to the fire.

A rug factory in Rangpur, Bangladesh, designed by Dhaka-based studio Nakshabid Architects to dismantle workplace hierarchies, has won the RIBA International Prize for 2026.

Named Green Field Factory, the project is the fifth winner of the biennial award, presented by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to the world's best new building outside the UK.

Nakshabid Architects was praised by the RIBA jury for designing a factory that incorporates passive design principles and prioritises the wellbeing of its 5,000 employees.

"Green Field Factory redefines manufacturing architecture in South Asia and beyond," said RIBA president Chris Williamson.

"By putting people, wellbeing and their everyday experiences at its core and actively supporting its female workforce, it proves that thoughtful design can dismantle traditional hierarchies to create profound social and environmental change."

It was announced as the RIBA International Prize winner at the Stirling Prize ceremony in London last night. This year's prestigious Stirling Prize was given to Mary Duggan Architects and Ruff Architects for the Lion Green Road housing development in London.

Commissioned by rug manufacturer Karupannya Rangpur Limited, Green Field Factory is a seven-storey building surrounded by fields and small settlements.

Nakshabid Architects based the design on the traditional Bengali home, incorporating natural ventilation and biophilic design principles.

Courtyards, verandas, gardens and a monumental green facade were designed to let natural light and airflow into the building, minimising the need for mechanical systems.

Green Field Factory has one main entrance with two grand staircases for all workers, intended to challenge hierarchies in the workplace. This responds to other factories in the area that have separate entrances for factory workers and people in management roles.

Shared spaces in the factory provide areas for workers to take breaks and socialise. Other areas are designated to support workers' families and the wider community during the day and outside of working hours, including a rooftop daycare centre, on-site medical practice, grocery shop and prayer room.

A connection to nature is provided through low-maintenance planting throughout, which also supports insects and birds, while artwork and sculptures celebrate the role of women in the workplace, family and community.

"The project demonstrates the dissolution of architecture as a topological space, with a single-pointed focus on dismantling civilisational oppression and hierarchy, for woman and man alike," said grand jury chair Bijoy Jain.

"Through the simple gesture of two grand stairs as an equanimous shared portal, it transforms a space and symbol once reserved exclusively for the king of the region, as landlord and ruling class, and for the colonial power that pervaded the length and breadth of the country," he continued.

"The architect and owner shared how the women and men working in the factory would bring their families with pride to show them where they worked, and the women empowered in their self-reliance to take life and familial decisions on their own."

The RIBA International Prize is awarded biennially to a building that "demonstrates visionary, innovative thinking, and design excellence whilst making a distinct contribution for its users and within its physical context".

Green Field Factory was selected ahead of BRAC University in Bangladesh by WOHA, Z33 art museum in Belgium by Francesca Torzo Architetto and the renovation of Royale Belge in Belgium by Caruso St John Architects, Bovenbouw Architectuur and DDS+.

Alongside the International Prize, RIBA awarded this year's International Emerging Architect Award to Maker Architecten for its YIMBY residential project in Kortrijk, Belgium.

The project revamped 18 plots across a 1920's garden city neighbourhood, utilising reclaimed materials for new facades and creating communal green space.

In 2024, Peris + Toral Arquitectes won the RIBA International Prize for an "inclusive and sustainable" social housing project in Barcelona.

The top photo is by Mud Canvas.

The Lion Green Road housing in south London, designed by local studios Mary Duggan Architects with Ruff Architects, has won this year's RIBA Stirling Prize for the UK's best new building.

Located in Coulsdon, the high-density development commissioned by Croydon Council provides 157 homes across five blocks, which are stitched together by a series of shared green spaces.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) named the project as winner of the prestigious prize at a ceremony in London this evening.

It is the fourth housing scheme to win the prize since its inception 30 years ago, following Accordia in Cambridge in 2008, Goldsmith Street in Norwich in 2019 and Appleby Blue Almshouse in London in 2025.

The jury hailed Mary Duggan Architects and Ruff Architects for "addressing the pressing need for national housing" and providing environmentally considerate homes with ample access to light, nature and community.

"More than a housing development, the scheme has created a welcoming and inclusive place where people can connect with one another, and with nature," read the citation.

Lion Green Road comprises five blocks with a mix of private and socially rented homes. They are staggered across its steeply sloped site – a topographically challenging plot previously used as a car park.

The blocks have faceted, star-shaped plans, which are rotated to offer unique views across the landscape and ensure each home is dual-aspect, maximising natural light.

A trio of complementary brick types clad the buildings, helping to visually unify them while giving each its own unique aesthetic.

Shared outdoor spaces that weave through the blocks enhance this unification, giving residents opportunities to meet and engage with each other.

RIBA president Chris Williamson said the scheme demonstrates how high-density housing "can be achieved without compromising the quality of the places we create".

"Through a consistent specification, with subtle variation in height and orientation, it offers housing at scale without uniformity," he reflected.

"The architects have created a new kind of garden neighbourhood that balances privacy and generous views with a strong connection to nature – it's a living landscape," Williamson continued.

"This is thoughtful, resourceful architecture that proves that even the most challenging of sites can be transformed into truly distinctive places for people to call home."

The RIBA Stirling Prize has been awarded annually to the UK's best new building since 1996. Lion Green Road was chosen from a six-strong shortlist, revealed in July.

It was announced as this year's winner at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate this evening, where RIBA also revealed the recipients of its five Special Awards.

This included the RIBA Neave Brown Award for Housing, which was won by Satish Jassal Architects for Rowan Court, a cluster of brick-clad social housing blocks in Seven Sisters.

Collaborators Samuel Chisholm Studio and Takero Shimazaki took home the RIBA Reinvention Award for Oru Sutton, a co-working space in an old department store, while Tonkin Liu Architects won the RIBA Client of the Year Award in recognition of the York Minster Centre of Excellence.

Finally, the RIBA Conservation Award was given to Architectural Thread for The Buttermarket, an arts-focused community hub in Cornwall, which also won the RIBA Stephen Lawrence Prize for emerging architectural talent.

Previous winners of the Stirling Prize include London's Elizabeth Line in 2024, The New Library at Magdalene College in 2022 and a seaside pier in Hastings in 2017.

Last year's award, which was won by the "hopeful and imaginative" Appleby Blue Almshouse social housing, sparked concerns about London bias, with four of the six shortlisted buildings located in the capital city.

Earlier this year, the shortlist for the 2026 Stirling Prize was a topic of conversation in our Dezeen Weekly podcast, with our journalists pondering if architecture has become too boring.

Architecture studio OMA has broken ground on the Frank Liu Jr Academy for Music and Arts charter school in Houston, a pre-K through eighth-grade institution housed in a former coffee plant.

The three-storey Frank Liu Jr Academy for Music and Arts (FLAMA) building will be organised around Montessori learning principles, according to the team, and will integrate instrument forms into spaces, such as a curved stair that "recalls the form of a French horn".

Located along the Buffalo Bayou East corridor in Houston's second ward, FLAMA will be housed within the city's historic 1930s JA Folger & Co coffee plant, a 250,000-square-foot complex that contains multiple warehouse buildings.

"Like fine-tuning an instrument, our design recalibrates the existing industrial structure into an open, connected, and expressive environment for learning," said OMA partner Jason Long.

"FLAMA will be a new learning environment that builds on the character of the existing building while giving it a new life for the community."

According to the studio, learning spaces will ascend in age from the bottom to top floors. Each floor will contain two central spaces for gathering, with classrooms, practice rooms, and academic programs organised around them to create "neighbourhoods" of learning.

Beyond the expansive main stair, the form of instruments will also be integrated into spaces such as the double-height cafetorium, which will feature a large circular opening informed by the round body of a banjo.

An F-shaped opening will also connect two library commons, calling to the forte symbol and the f-hole of a string instrument.

Montirossi's principles of "prioritising openness, independence, and collective learning" shaped much of the design strategy, according to the team, and the renderings show expansive, colourful spaces throughout, including a roof terrace with an enormous yellow roof.

According to local reports, commercial, retail and apartment buildings are also slated to be located at the former coffee plant, which is being developed by local firm Lovett Commercial.

FLAMA is expected to open in 2027 and will be an open-enrollment, tuition-free public charter school.

OMA recently completed an affordable housing development in San Francisco, while OMA co-founder Elia Zenghelis passed away aged 89 earlier this month.

Previously, Lovett Commercial and OMA worked together on POST Houston.

Architect Donald Insall, founder of Donald Insall Associates and known for his conservation and renovation work, including on Windsor Castle, has died at the age of 100.

Insall, whose death was announced in a statement from his studio, was best known for his work in conservation, which he saw as different to preservation.

"Preservation he said is 'what you do for marmalade'," Donald Insall Associates said in a statement. "In the case of buildings, this means keeping them in their original state for posterity."

Instead, Insall, whom his studio described as a "pioneering conservationist", aimed to conserve buildings for their continued use.

"Conservation means working with old buildings, streets and towns in ways that allow them to live on usefully and delightfully for new uses when and where appropriate and for future generations," his studio said.

Born in Bristol on 7 February 1926, Insall founded his studio, Donald Insall Associates, in 1958 and served as its chairman until 1998.

The many projects that Insall worked on include the 18th-century baroque Wotton House, Buckinghamshire, which was saved from demolition in 1957, the renovation of William Morris's Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire and the conservation of the historic city centre in Chester.

After a fire devastated Windsor Castle, the royal residence in Berkshire, in 1992, Insall led the teams that restored the building.

His book Living Buildings, first printed in 2008, was reprinted in 2018 with a foreword by King Charles (then Prince of Wales) in 2018.

In it, the King stated that Insall had been "deeply involved, not just as a tireless practitioner, but in mentoring and inspiring others" in the realm of heritage and architectural conservation.

Insall started his architectural studies in 1942 at the Royal West of England Academy School of Architecture and then studied civic design at the Royal Academy Schools and later at the School of Planning in London.

After his studies, he worked for London practice Phillimore and Jenkins, which restored and designed country houses.

In 1958, he founded his own studio together with Peter Locke. Among the projects it worked on was a study of Chester, which involved visiting more than four hundred buildings in the city and led to the creation of conservation officers by local councils across England.

Insall is also known for his role in creating the English Heritage charity, for which he was a founding commissioner.

The architect believed that to get the best results when it came to conserving historic buildings, it was important was to "try to make friends" with them.

"I think that as a result of our experience over the years", he said, "we have developed a method that we feel is a wise one. We always try to make friends with the building itself, but also with its current users, so that both their respective needs can be met."

"We prepare a life story of the building, and from there we assess the building's positive aspects," Insall continued. "We also take a look at its less successful features and see how these can be helped. However, the important thing is to take a positive approach to the project."

Recent projects by his studio include the renovation of a Grade II-listed Oxford college library and the renovation of the "deconstructed" Hardwick Old Hall ruin.

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