AquaPraça Floating Plaza / Carlo Ratti Associati + Höweler + Yoon Architecture

AquaPraça, the floating cultural plaza designed by CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Höweler + Yoon, becomes one of the landmarks of the UN Climate Change Conference COP30 in Belém, Brazil. Following its unveiling in Venice in September during the Biennale Architettura 2025 in partnership with Italy's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Italy's Ministry of Environment and Energy Security, and COP30 Presidency, AquaPraça now serves as an integral part of the Italian Pavilion at COP30, the UN Climate Change Conference. AquaPraça was made possible through a unique international coalition, including the Italian Agency for Development and Cooperation, CIHEAM Bari, and the World Bank Group's Connect4Climate program, and with the support of BF International – Member of BF S.p.A. Group (as AquaPraça COP30 Naming Partner), Bloomberg Philanthropies, Costa Crociere, ENEL, and Gruppo Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane. AquaPraça was constructed by an Italian leading advanced steel construction Company, Cimolai. After COP30, Aquapraca will be donated by Italy to Brazil to become a community space for promoting social engagement on climate, cultural strategy, and creative industries in partnership with the State of Parà of Brazil.

Phare Ylliam Lighthouse / BUREAU

Few programmes offer such strong and evocative poetic substance as a lighthouse. The lighthouse is a place and an object that inspires reverie, the imagination of distant places, but also of return, of a landmark, a symbol of safety after stormy voyages. The lighthouse is the very embodiment of what it carries, of why it exists: to carry and bring light.

Quiet Hope: Frank Gehry’s Maggie’s Centre Hong Kong

Earlier this month, news of Frank Gehry's passing prompted an outpouring of tributes to the architect behind flamboyant museums, concert halls, and sinuous residential complexes. Rather than revisit that well-charted terrain, it is worth pausing on a more contemplative work in his oeuvre: Maggie's Cancer Caring Centre in Hong Kong. Quiet, optimistic, and calibrated for everyday resilience, the building reflects multiple registers of Gehry's intent: a commitment to positivity and survival—and, more personally, an architect's own reckoning with loss and end-of-life care.

Laoyuting Pavilion / Atelier Deshaus

Laoyuting Pavilion is one of the invited projects of the 2024 Dianchi Art Season: "Home and Future". It is located on the southern side of the Water-Forest Art Zone in the Laoyu River Wetland Park at Dianchi Lake. After its completion, it first served as the entrance to the Dianchi Art Festival, and after the festival, the pavilion was permanently preserved as a spatial hint for entering the wetland park, as well as a resting place for visitors. This wetland, filled with groves of bald cypress along the edge of Dianchi Lake, is in fact part of the city's water-purification infrastructure—the final stage of natural filtration before water enters the lake. It is home to many small fish, and city dwellers often come here during leisure time to catch fish, hence the name Laoyu River Wetland. As a pavilion where people rest while fishing, it naturally came to be known as the Laoyuting Pavilion.

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