• architects: TYPE S
• Location: Seocho District, Seoul, South Korea
• Project Year: 2026
• Photographs: NAMSEUNGROK
• Area: 432.0 m2

• architects: Thiago Bandeira
• architects: facury
• architects: guaja.cc
• Location: Palhano, Brasil
• Project Year: 2023
• Photographs: José Henrique Paiva
• Area: 686.0 m2

• architects: AFF architekten
• Location: Berlin, Germany
• Project Year: 2023
• Photographs: Tjark Spille
• Area: 1012.0 m2

• architects: studio bauform
• Location: Homburg, Germany
• Project Year: 2025
• Photographs: Markus Vogt
• Area: 35.0 m2

Modernism is often encountered through built form, photographed facades, canonical plans, concrete manifestos. For most people, its first encounter was far more immediate. It was a chair in an office, a shelf in a living room, a compact unit that reorganized how one sat, stored, or slept. Long before modern architecture could be widely commissioned, it was furniture that entered everyday space, carrying with it a new logic of living. Modernism's promise of transforming life was often delivered through these smaller, repeatable objects.

To understand this shift, furniture has to be read as a condensed form of architecture rather than decoration. Early twentieth-century designers treated it precisely this way. Le Corbusier described furniture as équipement de l'habitation (equipment of living), placing it within the operational system of the building rather than outside it. Similarly, the Bauhaus approached chairs and tables as industrial prototypes, embedding principles of standardization, efficiency, and mass production into their design. As architectural historian Beatriz Colomina has argued, modern architecture did not circulate only through buildings, but through media and objects that translated its ideas into everyday life. Furniture became architecture in miniature: portable, reproducible, and capable of reorganizing space without reconstructing it.

• architects: Roland Baldi Architects
• Location: Nova Ponente, Italy
• Project Year: 2026
• Photographs: Oskar Da Riz
• Area: 435.0 m2

• architects: Atelier Wen'Arch
• Location: Huizhou, China
• Project Year: 2025
• Photographs: Hao Chen
• Area: 221.0 m2

• architects: Obra Arquitetos
• Location: Jundiaí, Brasil
• Project Year: 2026
• Photographs: Nelson Kon
• Area: 623.0 m2

• architects: Nommo Arquitetos
• Location: Florianópolis, Brasil
• Project Year: 2025
• Photographs: João Vitor Sarturi
• Area: 437.0 m2

• architects: Trahan Architects
• Location: Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
• Project Year: 2025
• Photographs: Timothy Hursley
• Area: 4625.0 ft2

• architects: ARCHcoop Architectural Studio
• Location: Rind, Armenia
• Project Year: 2024
• Photographs: Sona Manukyan & Ani Avagyan
• Area: 797.0 m2

High-rise architecture continues to serve as a primary tool for accommodating density in rapidly evolving urban environments. Traditionally defined by efficiency and repetition, the tower is increasingly being reexamined as a more complex spatial and organizational system. Across different geographies, architects are testing how vertical structures can move beyond singular functions to incorporate layered programs, environmental strategies, and new forms of occupation.

The following selection brings together unbuilt projects submitted by the ArchDaily community, highlighting a range of approaches to the contemporary tower. From mixed-use developments and residential high-rises to speculative ecological proposals, these works reflect an ongoing shift in how vertical architecture is conceived. These towers engage with broader questions of privacy, coexistence, adaptability, and urban integration.

• architects: Driss Kettani
• Location: Casablanca, Morocco
• Project Year: 2024
• Photographs: Doublespace Photography
• Area: 370.0 m2

Learning something new is, biologically, a transformation of the brain. With each experience, neural connections are reorganized, creating and strengthening synapses. Far more than simply accumulating information, learning is about reconfiguring internal structures, a process that can reshape individuals and societies alike. The environment in which this takes place can cultivate curiosity, adaptability, and emotional resilience, thus supporting our next generation of leaders, or suppress those qualities, leading to withdrawal and isolation.

With the rise of modern schooling during the Industrial Revolution, a standardized model emerged, defined by rows of desks, simultaneous instruction, and visual supervision. Often compared to a factory system, this model still persists in many places despite profound technological shifts. These rigid environments remain even as modern learning demands experimentation and adaptability.

Hudson Valley Shakespeare has opened the Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center in Garrison, New York, marking the completion of a six-year project that establishes the company's first permanent home. The new campus, designed by Studio Gang in collaboration with Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, expands the organization's long-standing open-air performance model into a permanent cultural and educational facility integrated within the Hudson Valley landscape. Construction began in September 2024 following several years of planning and fundraising.

• architects: SCOB
• Location: Lloret de Mar, Spain
• Project Year: 2025
• Photographs: Judith Casas
• Area: 5500.0 m2

On May 13, 2026, Parks Canada, the federal agency responsible for protecting and managing Canada's natural and cultural heritage, announced the winning design for a reimagined visitor centre and community space in Banff National Park. The competition was organized in partnership with the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) as part of the 200-Block Banff Avenue Redevelopment Project. The proposal by Paul Raff Studio and Kengo Kuma & Associates was selected from a shortlist of five pre-qualified teams that also included EVOQ + Ryder, KPMB Architects, Revery Architecture, and Stantec Architecture. An independent jury assembled by the RAIC selected the design for its approach to landscape, sustainability principles, and its balance between conservation, heritage, Indigenous perspectives, and visitor experience, among other considerations.

Based in Mexico City, Estudio Ome, founded by Susana Rojas Saviñón and Hortense Blanchard, is an architectural and landscape practice working across forests, volcanic terrains, urban fragments, and former industrial sites. Winner of the ArchDaily 2025 Next Practices Awards, the studio develops projects through sustained observation of ecological and territorial conditions, where design decisions arise directly from the behavior of soil, water, vegetation, and ground.

Each project begins with repeated encounters. The terrain is first approached through walking and prolonged observation, letting drainage patterns, erosion, and seasonal shifts become legible before any formal measurement occurs. These visits form the basis for interpreting both visible and subterranean layers—hydrology and historical transformations that continue to exert force on the surface.