As at the end of each year, we look back to see what stories and themes have characterised the world of architecture: and once again, we have chosen to insist on the collective value of architecture, on its capacity to expand the collective dimension of the city, in its even less expected forms – such as that of a bridge, a civil and functional infrastructure par excellence, which in Bordeaux has instead become a social platform.
We insist on a dimension that expands in public buildings, opening culture to the community, in museums, libraries and schools, but also in buildings where people work and live, rebalancing their relationship with the city or nature around them.

Then, in a year in which there has been increasing news from the cities about overtourism and the dizzying transformations of living, we must instead keep an eye out for signs that – quite unexpectedly – have come from major events such as the Paris Olympics, which have focused on weaving a relationship with the existing city, recovering and renewing it, leaving a built legacy – as with the Athletes’ Village – that will be integrated into its habitat. And to projects that seek a new relationship with the landscape, be it water or plants, physical or cultural, to be discovered thruogh soul or senses.

From China to France via Rwanda, Japan and Berlin, all the projects we have selected, from those published in 2024, tell us about architecture as a shared value.

A new bridge has the potential to convey all the metaphors of connectivity, togetherness, and possibilities for new communities. Tempting in these times of entrenchment and separation: left and right banks have long been kept apart in Bordeaux, the Garonne an imagined obstacle to the joining of both sides to constitute a metropolis. The new Simone Veil bridge inaugurated by the city of Bordeaux this summer has been more than ten years in the making, and is celebrated as the eight of the city’s possible crossing points, which first was made possible in 1821 thanks to the Pont de Pierre. The Simone Veil bridge sits right at the juncture of three political communities: Bordeaux, Floirac and Begles, its completion effectively connecting them for the first time. Read more

The first step in the transformation of the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) in Turin – in full celebration of its 200th anniversary – curated by OMA's David Gianotten and Andreas Karavanas in collaboration with Andrea Tabocchini Architecture, is finally up and running. Replacing the “black box” layout conceived in 2006 by Dante Ferretti for the Winter Olympics, the new Galleria dei Re (Gallery of the Kings) rearranges the monumental statues of ancient Thebes according to a whole new idea of experience: evoking the historical context is the crucial point, together with the freedom for visitors to organise their own museum experience, and a visual continuity of spaces that aims to make the new Egizio a public space, a complex of “urban rooms” in communication with each other and above all with the city. Read more

Japanese architect Junya Ishigami, founder of the Junya Ishigami + Associates studio, has unveiled the Zaishui Art Museum, located in China, on an artificial lake at the entrance of a newly developing district in Rizhao, Shandong Province. The museum extends longitudinally for one kilometer, almost covering the entire diameter of the lake, and will have an area of 20,000 square meters. Read more

Snøhetta – in collaboration with local studio ECADI – has completed the Beijing City Library in China, a glass-lined building featuring at his inside towering tree-like columns that recall the Frank Lloyd Wright’s ones in Johnson Wax Administration Building, in Racine, Wisconsin. Located in Beijing’s Tongzhou district, according to the studio, the project aims to offer a new vision for this typology, inspired by the outside and the landscape, influencing visitors’ movements, attention, and postures. https://www.domusweb.it/en/news/gallery/2024/02/29/snhetta-has-completed-the-beijing-city-library.html

Busogo School project by Active Social Architecture began in 2016 and is currently in its fourth phase of construction. Located in Musanze, Rwanda, it has views of the country’s famous Volcanoes National Park, the natural habitat of endangered mountain gorillas, bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The school offers a space of play and learning that the community did not have access to previously. Since 2011, Rwanda has expanded its Early Childhood Development programmes, which the Busogo School offers, signalling an important shift in education policy. Read more

Kengo Kuma and Associates (KKAA) has completed the Kibi Kogen N Square in Kibichuo, a local creative space developed around a co-working facility and a café. The city is located on the central plateau of Okayama Prefecture in Japan, an area where the country’s largest production of glulam is concentrated. This is the reason why cross-laminated timber was used in both the structure and the interior of this 585-square-metre project. Read more

In Berlin, in the dense city centre built fabric where the request for affordable housing gets increasingly pressing, Max Hacke e Leonhard Clemens have created a settlement prototype that investigates the theme of minimal and residual space as a resource, rather than a limit, for sustainable and quality urban development. Read more

In Leiria, the artist-architect worked with his Bureau des Mésarchitectures on form and sculpture as responses to the complexity of the context, between expressive materials and a redefined idea of home. By transforming a small house from early 20th century and adding a generous extension that provides seven flats with different sizes – from one to four rooms – Bureau des Mésarchitectures has recently completed a residential building in Leiria. The project offers multiple layers of interpretation, finding a natural interpretative key in the dialectic between the two parts.  Read more