Discover the most read stories on the AR’s website from the past year
In the past year, the AR has published thematic issues on Borders, Health, Circularity, Roads, the Forest and Extensions, as well as editions highlighting the exemplary work of shortlisted architects and projects in the AR New into Old, Emerging, House, and W Awards. Spanning continents and perspectives, each issue offers diverse voices and stories – but certain pieces connected with audiences around the world in remarkable numbers. Below is a list of the AR’s most read pieces of 2025. Happy reading!
1. Leading by Eixample: Barcelona, Spain, AR February 2025, Lluís Ortega and Julia Capomaggi
‘The city’s necessary urban transformation has become a political and electoral weapon’
2. Revisit: Laurie Baker Centre for Habitat Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, India by Laurie Baker, AR May 2025, Rajshree Rajmohan
‘To this day, Baker’s philosophy represents a vital rallying call to interrogate contemporary notions of modernity’
3. Sweeping statement: Extension to the Centro de Arte Moderna in Lisbon, Portugal by Kengo Kuma and Associates, AR February 2025, Edwin Heathcote
‘When designed to be globally seductive and transmitted via Zoom, architecture carries all the impersonality and alienation that implies’
The snaking plan of Baker’s canteen follows the landscape’s natural contours, resulting in a free‑flowing interior Credit: Prasanth Mohan/Running Studios for The Architectural Review
4. Out of the sewer: wastewater treatment plant in Arklow, Ireland by Clancy Moore Architects, AR April 2025, Eleanor Beaumont
‘One resident welled up as she noticed that the frothy scum that had habitually laced the edges of the river had disappeared’
5. Flatpack forest: IKEA’s particleboard economics, AR September 2025, Erin Putalik
‘The aggregate effects of these compounding practices of attention, repair and stewardship close cycles of consumption and disposal of everyday objects’
Most people in Arklow will experience the building from afar, as a monument on the shoreline: a public building that is largely inaccessible to the public. It is hoped that the local ecology will greatly benefit from the newly clean river and sea water
Credit: Camilla Crafa & Piera Bedin
6. Outside the box: Waldorf school campus in Nairobi, Kenya, by Urko Sánchez Architects, AR May 2025, Peter Muiruri
‘At the Karen campus, this was a labour of love for nurturing the future generation and a tribute to the rich architectural heritage of the African continent’
7. Niwa House in London, UK, by Takero Shimazaki Architects, AR Online, Walid Bhatt
‘The house is also rooted in the Japanese concept of ma – the art of the interval, in which empty spaces hold as much importance as the built’
8. Urban mine: Housing for people over 65 in Palma de Mallorca by H Arquitectes, AR May 2025, Eleanor Beaumont
‘This important work must be propagated and take root elsewhere, in less hostile climes’
The interior spaces pivot around two double-height courtyards, puncturing the building to reach the lower ground level and featuring 4m-tall cherry trees
Credit: Anton Gorlenko
9. Outrage: Donald Trump’s Arctic expansions, AR February 2025, Jan-Werner Müller
‘Greenland holds great potential for what the political theorist Tristan Hughes calls techno‑colonialism’
10. Reputations: Marcel Raymaekers (1933–), AR May 2025, James Westcott, Lionel Devlieger, Arne Vande Capelle, Stijn Colon and Aude-Line Dulière
‘Raymaekers’ houses are intelligent, instinctive assemblages of unpredictable material streams’
The TT slabs making up the floors of the existing building have been used for the stairs, giving the impression of having been lowered and slotted into supporting brackets with ease – in reality, it was a complex operation Credit: Hampus Berndtson
11. Material remix: Thoravej 29 in Copenhagen by Pihlmann Architects, AR May 2025, Morten Birk Jørgensen
‘Ventilation, electricity and sprinkler systems are all exposed – the result is seductively brutal’
12. Power house: solar power extension by Lütjens Padmanabhan, AR February 2025, Eleanor Beaumont
‘As we enter the second half of the 2020s, we must not be satisfied with carbon compromises’
13. Revisit: Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey by Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles, AR July/August 2025, Jennifer Hattam
‘The Hagia Sofia has been repurposed over the centuries, reflecting the politics, piety and power struggles of the times’
A notebook of one member of the team, Richard Gregory, documents the uncovering of a mosaic in the north tympanum Credit: Granger/Alamy
14. Portfolio: Ana María Gutiérrez, Organizmo, AR March 2025, Manon Mollard
‘The boundaries that Gutiérrez is pushing are institutional, disciplinary and political’
15. Unmaking rooms: beyond the box, AR December 2024/January 2025, Laura Bonell
‘A room, whatever its function, location or shape, is a space ultimately activated by its use’
16. Reputations: Anne Lacaton (1955–), AR March 2025, Justinien Tribillon
‘If you want an encapsulation of Lacaton and Vassal’s approach, it remains the Léon Aucoc square in Bordeaux. The design they submitted? Do nothing. Prune the trees, redo the gravel, clean more often. Voilà. The square, argued Lacaton and Vassal, is perfect as it is.’
The towers are bordered by a 100,000m2 public park called Biblioteca degli Alberi (library of trees); designed by Dutch firm Inside Outside, led by Petra Blaisse, it finally completed in 2018
Credit: Francesca Ferrari for The Architectural Review
17. Revisit: Bosco Verticale in Milan, Italy, by Boeri Studio, AR September 2025, Davide Tommaso Ferrando
‘In truth, if the ‘forest’ were removed from the proverbial ‘vertical forest’, what would remain is a banal residential complex with standard architectural features, albeit generous balconies’
18. A modern almshouse: Appleby Blue in London, UK, by Witherford Watson Mann, AR April 2025, Catherine Slessor
‘Appleby Blue is a retort to the all‑too‑prevalent notion that older people should be shunted to the urban and sociocultural margins’
19. Revisit: Le Fresnoy in Tourcoing, France, by Bernard Tschumi Architects, AR July/August 2025, Isabelle Regnier
‘This is an architecture that tosses you between eras like a funfair attraction’
20. A bug’s life: towards a probiotic architecture, AR April 2025, Beatriz Colomina
‘Bacteria are usually treated as an invisible enemy that needs to be exterminated. Instead, bacteria should be at the centre of design. We are nothing without all these foreigners. We live in them more than they live in us’
A tussle of walkways, railings, stairs and trusses makes up the strange landscape between the historical buildings and the new canopy. Some of these features are painted a bright azure, pops of colour that echo the red garden pavilions of Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette, completed a decade earlier
Credit: Fabrice Fouillet for The Architectural Review
Subscribe today to join the conversation and help support independent critical architectural writing. Digital subscriptions are available and all our content is available online, anywhere in the world
