Best architecture projects of 2023

As the world is facing increasing risks of closure, fragmentation and exclusion, “to include” has been one of the challenge-words that this year has placed on the path of architecture, in its constant effort to interpret complex questions. The collective value of architectures, in this scenario, can be represented as powerfully by a public toilet as by CERN visitors’ center, by a sports facility conceived as an urban building as by the Serpentine Pavilion, or by various “friendly parasites” with the most diverse scales and materials possible.

We have selected the projects published in 2023 that, from Africa to Australia via Europe and China, have most clearly embodied this facet of contemporaneity for architecture.

Even a functional service architecture can be born out of experimentation and become a landmark. That is the case of the Amoeba public restroom project in Beijing. Designed by People’s Architecture Office, the architecture takes the shape of a small mono-material pavilion with sinuous shapes where the space becomes highly dynamic in a succession of concave and convex curves. Read more

The new MIF venue acknowledges Manchester’s industrial and creative past: its facades of concrete and corrugated metal stand out among the brick warehouses and new residential buildings with glass facades, offices, and television studios that make up the new St. John’s neighborhood. The building rises above Water Street, and the arches of the 19th-century railway line, now part of its foyer, open up to a much-needed portion of public space towards the River Irwell. Read more

“The Nightingale Village” is Australia’s first zero-emission residential development, located in Melbourne’s vibrant Brunswick suburb. The complex includes six buildings designed by various architects (Clare Cousins Architects; Kennedy Nolan; Hayball; Architecture; Breathe), characterized by different languages but with a common goal: offering affordable quality housing under the banner of environmental sustainability, social equity, and community connections. Read more

Studio Gang’s extension for the AMNH, the new five-story high Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, is a piece of architecture that seeks to repair our relationship to nature by restoring a sense of wonder towards it. A large skylight fills the main atrium with sunrays; visitors lift their heads and discover a series of cave like forms that lead to passageways, bridges, and classrooms. Read more

With concert halls, recording studios, restaurants, kiosks, and different types of ludic spaces, among which a club, Holzmarkt 25 is a vivid cultural site managed by local cooperatives. Overlooking the waters of the Spree, it was once a lumber port until the division of Germany. Abandoned place until the reunification, it became one of Berlin’s nightlife hotspots with the arrival of Bar25, one of the most famous clubs on the techno scene, made famous by the movie Berling Calling. Read more

The latest extension of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery strengthens the attractiveness of the cultural institution, offering the community a space for socializing and gathering. Read more

A new centre for artists in the capital of Uganda aims to draft a manifesto of faith in the future, based on values of radically local, sustainable and community-based architecture. Read more

At the Reggio School in Madrid, the Spanish architect explores the use of “living” materials through the design of a building-organism combining ecological and pedagogical roles. Read more

Paris-based firm NP2F designed a sports complex condensing into the different levels of a structural grid opening to transformation, with careful attention to the environment and to its role as an urban monument. Read more

The Đạo Mẫu Museum was born as a place to celebrate the cult of the Mother Goddesses, rooted in Vietnamese popular culture, an intangible cultural heritage for UNESCO.
The project, developed over approximately 5000 m2, brings together architecture and nature, where the former perimeters the vegetation in an almost sacral manner. Read more

In Bogotá, Alejandro Saldarriaga Rubio has built three “ephemeral” projects that can serve as solutions to the acute crisis of public space. Read more

Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, based in Shanghai and London, has designed the expansion of the Qujiang Museum of Fine Arts, in Xi’an, the capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi and on of the four ancient capitals of China. The need was to enrich the east entrance of the museum making it more attractive and iconic. To answer to this request Neri&Hu got inspired by the idea of a traditional earthenware lantern with a circular shape, able to draw the attention of visitors to the new cultural and commercial services offered by the museum, but also to serve as a source of urban lighting. Read more

Designed by Franco-Lebanese architect based in Paris Lina Ghotmeh, the pavilion is titled “À table”, a typical call of the Mediterranean countries to sit together at a table to chat while sharing the meal, and takes inspiration from the cultural heritage of Ghotmeh, made of fervent discussions around the table, on current events, politics, private life, dreams and future. The interior features a concentric table along the perimeter, which invites you to gather, sit, think, share ideas, worries, joys, dissatisfaction, responsibilities, traditions, histories and memories, celebrating the exchanges that allow you to create new relationships. Read more

 Milan’s Teatro alla Scala celebrates the inauguration of the new tower on Via Verdi, designed by Mario Botta in collaboration with Emilio Pizzi. The theater, designed by Giuseppe Piermarini (1778), was extended by two new buildings in 2004. A third will be added. Mario Botta shared details of the project with Domus, stating that he had already included the Via Verdi building in the 2004 reorganization plan for the theater. Therefore, “the project is a legacy of the past, an intuition that already included this component as the last reserve of the La Scala’s spaces”. Read more

The new building provides a welcoming place to accommodate the 150,000 visitor requests per year that have so far been turned down, and physically and metaphorically connects the laboratory to the world. Read more