From Saudi Arabia to Uzbekistan: AlMusalla Pavilion Reinstalled for the Inaugural Bukhara Biennial 2025

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In April 2024, the Diriyah Biennale Foundation announced the AlMusalla Prize, an international architecture competition focused on designing a musalla: a flexible space for prayer and reflection accessible to people of all faiths. The winning project, designed by EAST Architecture Studio in collaboration with artist Rayyane Tabet and engineering firm AKT II, is a modular structure built with materials derived from local date palm waste, including fronds and fibers, and inspired by regional weaving traditions. Installed in the Western Hajj Terminal of King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the musalla served for four months during the Islamic Arts Biennale as a space for prayer, welcoming both Muslim and non-Muslim visitors. Conceived to be dismantled and reassembled, the structure was recently relocated to Uzbekistan for the inaugural Bukhara Biennial 2025.

São Paulo Architecture Biennial Points to Possible Futures for a Planet in Crisis

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There are places in the world where temperatures already exceed fifty degrees, and others where water levels rise meters above expected levels. Meanwhile, in the heart of São Paulo, architects, researchers, artists, and communities come together to ask: how can we inhabit the Earth in times of extremes? This question drives the 14th International Architecture Biennial of São Paulo, held at the Oca in Ibirapuera Park, focusing on the theme Extremes: Architectures for a Hot World. More than an exhibition, it is a call to confront the climate crisis, social inequality, and the urgent need to reinvent ways of living.

Harbourside Canopy / B+P Architects

Site and Setting – The central structure of the project is the fishing market, a landscape pavilion composed of sheds, walls, berms, and trees. This open volume connects the fishing activity at the dock with the inland marketplace. The north-facing concrete wall, running parallel to the pier, anchors the structure while buffering against strong winds. Earth berms and windbreak forests further stabilize the environment and create a layered transition between interior and exterior. The city envisions this space as a direct-sale fishing market that combines fixed-net operations, retail fish stalls, and educational programs to celebrate and promote the region's fishing culture.

Jingyue Central Park / SHUISHI

Turning idle municipal land into ecological green lung. Jingyue Central Park, known as the "ecological green lung" of Jingyue High-tech Zone in Changchun City, covers a total area of 490,000㎡, including 59,000㎡building areas. The project is encircled by large residential quarters with a population of about 300,000, as well as business buildings, office buildings, and primary and secondary schools. It also sits close to nine universities, including Northeast Normal University, Jilin Jianzhu University and Jilin Agricultural University. Due to construction of the viaduct, river, and residential, commercial and office buildings in the neighboring areas, the project site was beset by piles of abandoned earth and construction waste, which blocked the connection between the north and south of the site, and turned it into an idle municipal land. In response to the needs of urban development, the project was launched. The park penetrates north and south and extends east and west, becoming a core node of the urban green space system connecting citizens, the city and nature. Through the design and implementation of a series of green valley, water body, activity space and space under the viaduct, the site transforms from an idle municipal land to an urban green lung.   

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