Affordable housing in Ibiza leads this week’s architecture news, because Stefano Boeri Architetti has won a competition to build Sa Casa, a development of roughly 190 below-market-rate rental apartments. The project spreads across four volumes and combines prefabricated construction with shared spaces and passive environmental strategies. It answers a familiar pressure on Mediterranean islands, where housing costs push residents out of the places they call home.
The design uses cross-laminated timber, known as CLT, which is engineered wood strong enough to carry building loads. Boeri’s team paired that structure with adaptable housing layouts, native vegetation, and photovoltaic panels that turn sunlight into electricity. The result is meant to keep rents low while cutting the energy the buildings need to run.
Sa Casa. Image © Stefano Boeri Architetti
A second European project takes affordability in a different direction, because MAD has revealed plans to convert an old warehouse rather than build new. In Rotterdam, the firm will transform a 1923 Art Deco warehouse into Danshuis, a 9,500-square-meter dance center scheduled for 2030. The building keeps its historic shell while gaining new purpose, which is a practical way to save both material and memory.
Danshuis will hold 14 dance studios alongside performance, exhibition, educational, and communal spaces. The center reaches toward the River Maas and connects with MAD’s adjacent Fenix Museum of Migration, so the two buildings work together along the water. Reuse of this kind reduces waste while giving a working district a new cultural anchor.
These questions of cost and reuse also shape two major biennials happening this season. The Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2026 carries the theme “How Much?” and studies the costs of architecture beyond construction budgets. Those hidden costs include labor, resources, environmental impact, maintenance, and long-term social consequences that rarely appear on a balance sheet.
TAB 2026 Main Curatorial Exhibition. Image © Martin Siplane
The biennale stages its main exhibition inside Linnahall, a largely unused building whose future remains unresolved. That setting makes the theme tangible, because visitors walk through the very kind of structure the show asks them to reconsider. The venue becomes an argument about value rather than a neutral backdrop.
In Buenos Aires, the International Architecture Biennial marks its 40th anniversary under the theme “HABITAR”, which means Inhabit. The event brings around 100 architecture firms, 15 exhibitions, and 50 conferences to venues across the city. Its program explores the relationships between people, architecture, cities, territories, and communities, with 2026 Pritzker Prize winner Smiljan Radić among its international guests.
Ben-Avid by Atelier Aveta. Featured in the Biennial’s Central exhibition. Image Courtesy of Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires
Away from the biennials, Qatar Museums has announced a permanent structure that turns painting into a building. The Doha Pavilion: Gerhard Richter is a site-specific pavilion designed by the artist Gerhard Richter with Selldorf Architects. It sits within the Museum of Islamic Art’s park in Doha, where its hexagonal, six-sided form gives the artwork an architectural home.
Inside, the pavilion will house three large-scale Strip paintings, two floor-to-ceiling Mirrors, and a central Strip Tower. The outdoor stone sculpture Brunnen, meaning Well, stands alongside them. Its six exterior walls carry digitally generated patterns drawn from Richter’s 2011 Patterns artist’s book, which translates his study of repetition and perception into stone and surface.
Architectural model of Doha Pavilion Gerhard Richter. Image Courtesy of Selldorf Architects
The pavilion is scheduled to open on November 20, 2026, ahead of the inaugural Rubaiya Qatar quadrennial. That timing ties the building to a new recurring art event, so the structure arrives as part of a larger cultural program rather than a single opening.
In London, SOM is marking the 40th anniversary of its London office with an exhibition about how buildings will be made. “Change: 40 Years of SOM London” runs from September 12 to 19 at Marylebone Hall during London Design Festival 2026. The show traces the practice’s work across architecture, engineering, planning, sustainability, and interior design while asking how technology and materials may shape future design.
Change: 40 Years of SOM London. Image Courtesy of SOM
A central installation makes that question physical, because SOM’s architecture and structural engineering teams built it from about 2,000 reclaimed wooden bricks made from scaffolding boards. The bricks are assembled without mortar or mechanical connections, so the structure holds together through geometry alone. Untrained participants guided by VR goggles built it, which tests whether ordinary people can help construct buildings.
The week’s final story honors a careful piece of restoration in Belgium. noAarchitecten’s restoration and extension of Het Steen in Antwerp has received the Grand Prix of the Erich Mendelsohn Award 2026, becoming the first Belgian project to reach the award’s highest distinction. Jurors chose it from more than 500 entries across 41 countries for joining the historic castle and a contemporary extension into a coherent whole.
Het Steen Antwerp – Visitor Center and Tourist Reception / noAarchitecten. Image © Kim Zwarts
The design replaces a 1950s addition with a new volume that strengthens the building’s presence along the Scheldt river. Its brick façades shift from dark to light to echo the tones and patina of the historic masonry, which lets old and new read as one. The complex now holds a visitor center, exhibition and reception spaces, a publicly accessible roof terrace, and a viewpoint tower.
Ben-Avid by Atelier Aveta. Featured in the Biennial’s Central exhibition. Image Courtesy of Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires
Taken together, these projects show architects working the same problem from many sides, because affordable housing in Ibiza, warehouse reuse in Rotterdam, and castle restoration in Antwerp all ask how buildings serve people over time. Two biennials frame the debate while a Doha pavilion and a London exhibition test what building can still become.
Ben-Avid by Atelier Aveta. Featured in the Biennial’s Central exhibition. Image Courtesy of Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires
The near-term calendar gives readers clear dates to watch across these projects and events.
- Sa Casa, Ibiza: roughly 190 below-market-rate rental apartments across four volumes by Stefano Boeri Architetti
- Danshuis, Rotterdam: 9,500-square-meter dance center with 14 studios by MAD, planned for 2030
- Doha Pavilion: Gerhard Richter with Selldorf Architects, opening November 20, 2026
- Change: 40 Years of SOM London: Marylebone Hall, September 12 to 19
- Het Steen, Antwerp: Grand Prix of the Erich Mendelsohn Award 2026 to noAarchitecten
Ben-Avid by Atelier Aveta. Featured in the Biennial’s Central exhibition. Image Courtesy of Bienal Internacional de Arquitectura de Buenos Aires
The Doha Pavilion opens next on November 20, 2026, ahead of the inaugural Rubaiya Qatar quadrennial, which sets the first firm date on this shared calendar.
Nora is an architect and editor with a degree from Pratt Institute. She bridges design practice and architectural criticism, documenting contemporary urban transformations through compelling visual narratives.