Architecture

A new breed of luxury has landed on the Red Sea, mirrored pods floating above coral reefs, reflecting sky and sea like something not entirely of this Earth. Energy powered by solar powers, drinking water pulled from the sea using desalination. 

What the Star Home demonstrates is something bigger: that health can be built into infrastructure. Instead of relying only on healthcare systems, communities can reduce disease at the source—through smarter design.

When the region settles after the American war with Iran, and it will, American and European travelers will come back. Not just for spectacle or headline projects, but for places that feel real. Places that haven’t been engineered to impress and which get into your soul. We predict that visitors to Saudi Arabia will want to see places like Rijal Alma.When the region settles after the American war with Iran, and it will, American and European travelers will come back. Not just for spectacle or headline projects, but for places that feel real. Places that haven’t been engineered to impress and which get into your soul. We predict that visitors to Saudi Arabia will want to see places like Rijal Alma.

16,000 boxes of archaeological finds are stored in the Valkhof Museum at Nijmegen, the Netherlands. They contain a wealth of Roman artifacts left undisturbed...

A Documented Response to the Article “The Aga Khan Is Greenwashing Their Awards” and a Reflection on the Relationship Between Development, Tourism, and the...

Kinder Rain reinterprets this vernacular architecture through a series of pyramidal classroom volumes, clustered together like houses in a tiny town.

Neom, a bombastic collection of futuristic cities and resorts, has flopped as Saudi oil prices roll back reality. The Saudi plan of hosting the 2029 Asian games to be held at Trojena, a ski report in the desert, has been cancelled. 

Balsam Madi is an architect and systems thinker whose work bridges culture, sustainability, and design intelligence across the Middle East and Europe.

Researchers develop a brick made largely from recycled Dead Sea salt—offering a potential alternative to carbon-intensive cement.

The failure of The Line is not a failure of imagination. It is a failure of restraint by western architects and planners who go along with the charade. Who is holding these firms accountable? This is actually a reasonable kind of project for the UN to take on and challenge. 

Critics of a new set of luxury towers including Israeli-Greek architect Elias Mesinas, warn that the scale of the towers, loss of public green space, and creeping luxury-led gentrification risk undermining Jerusalem’s historic skyline, community fabric, and long-standing planning principles — raising a fundamental question: not whether Jerusalem should densify, but how it can do so responsibly while preserving what makes the city unique.

Unconfirmed photos are circulating on the internet that a Gazan family has started to rebuild their home using mud bricks. And just a few days ago we reported on a Saudi Arabian designer and his plans for using mud bricks as a solution to the refugee crisis. 

The proposed medical centre, described by Emek HaMaayanot Regional Council head Itamar Matiash as “a centre for cancer treatment, so that people from Jordan or further away could come and receive treatment,” would become the flagship of a wider cluster of medical, academic and innovation-based services planned for the Israeli half of the zone.

If you’ve seen “binishell homes” popping up across architecture feeds this year, you’re not imagining it. The iconic inflatable concrete house—originally invented in the 1960s by architect Dante Bini—is suddenly back in global headlines. And there’s one big reason: climate resilience. And hey, Robert Downey Junior lives in one. 

Rather than treating displacement as a temporary emergency, this project is reframed as a human condition requiring stability, community, and dignity. By combining vernacular wisdom with adaptable modular planning, the project offers a model for refugee housing that is scalable, low-carbon, and deeply respectful of local identity. For Somalia’s displaced families, a mud-brick home may be the most modern solution of all.