Four Projects Redefine Architecture's Role in a Changing Climate

A Decade of Global Design Thinking

The question isn't whether architecture can respond to climate change. At World Archi Design, we've been tracking this shift for years: the real challenge lies in how buildings perform that response without sacrificing the qualities that make spaces genuinely liveable. The RIBA International Prize, now in its tenth year, has consistently spotlighted work that refuses to treat sustainability and spatial generosity as opposing forces. This year's shortlist, announced in September 2026, narrows the field to four projects that each propose a different answer to that challenge.

The finalists span two countries and three building typologies. Two are located in Bangladesh, both tackling urban and industrial contexts with vastly different programmes; the other two occupy Belgium, each engaging with existing heritage fabric. What connects them, according to RIBA, is a shared commitment: design that improves daily life whilst confronting a changing climate. The winner will be revealed on 15 October 2026, alongside the recipient of the RIBA International Emerging Architect award.

Transforming Waste into Campus

WOHA's BRAC University in Dhaka takes on one of the most challenging site conditions imaginable: a former landfill. The project transforms derelict ground into a vertical campus that accommodates 20,000 students across thirteen storeys. Rather than treating height as a liability in a hot, humid climate, the design leverages it. Passive cooling strategies and natural cross-ventilation run through the building's section, whilst extensive landscaping softens hard surfaces and provides shaded outdoor space.

The scheme's significance lies not in novelty but in execution. Landfill remediation is a well-documented process; turning that remediated land into a place where people spend hours each day requires a different kind of rigour. WOHA has long championed biophilic design in tropical contexts, from Parkroyal on Pickering in Singapore to Kampung Admiralty. Here, the studio applies that vocabulary to an educational brief, proving that infrastructure for learning need not default to sealed, air-conditioned boxes. The building's massing breaks down scale through terracing and planted setbacks, creating microclimates that allow outdoor occupation even during Dhaka's punishing summers.

A Factory That Centres Wellbeing

Nakshabid Architects' Green Field Factory in Rangpur, Bangladesh, reconsiders what industrial architecture might be. Textile manufacturing typically prioritises efficiency over environment, producing vast, low-slung sheds with minimal fenestration and mechanical ventilation. This project inverts that logic. The seven-storey structure takes formal and spatial cues from rural Bengali homesteads, organising workspace around courtyards and verandahs that encourage natural airflow and daylight penetration.

The choice to reference vernacular typologies isn't nostalgic. Traditional Bengali domestic architecture evolved over centuries to manage heat and monsoon rains through orientation, material choice, and spatial sequence. By adapting those principles to an industrial programme, Nakshabid Architects demonstrates that cultural continuity and contemporary function can coexist. The factory becomes a workplace, certainly, but also a community hub and wellbeing space, challenging the assumption that manufacturing facilities must be alienating environments.

This approach has precedents. In the 1990s, Nicholas Grimshaw's Igus Factory in Cologne integrated workspace with landscaped grounds and social amenities, though it remained firmly within a high-tech aesthetic. The Green Field Factory, by contrast, roots its language in local building traditions, making the argument that sustainability isn't solely a matter of mechanical systems but also of cultural legibility and worker dignity.

Modernist Revival in Brussels

Caruso St John Architects and Bovenbouw Architectuur, working with DDS+, have undertaken the adaptive reuse of Royale Belge, a modernist headquarters designed by René Stapels and Pierre Dufau in the 1960s. Located in Watermael-Boitsfort, a leafy district of south-east Brussels, the original building served the insurance company Royale Belge. Its clean lines and rational plan exemplified the optimism of post-war corporate architecture. Decades later, the structure required intervention to meet contemporary standards for energy performance, accessibility, and programme flexibility.

The design team's approach is one of careful augmentation rather than wholesale transformation. Existing concrete frames remain legible; new insertions are articulated as distinct layers. This strategy aligns with Caruso St John's broader practice, which has long been interested in how new work can coexist with, rather than erase, historical fabric. Their Tate Britain millennial project in London and the renovation of the Kunstmuseum Basel extension both demonstrate a similar sensibility: respect for what exists, clarity about what is new.

Royale Belge also raises questions about how we value 20th-century heritage. Modernist buildings from the 1960s and 1970s often lack the legal protections afforded to older structures, yet they represent a critical chapter in architectural history. By demonstrating that these buildings can be adapted to 21st-century needs, the project makes a case for preservation through use, not just through designation.

A Contemporary Art Space Within Historic Walls

Francesca Torzo Architetto's Z33 in Hasselt, Belgium, sits within the city's historic Beguinage, a walled enclave of brick buildings that once functioned as an almshouse. The Beguinage typology, common across the Low Countries, consists of modest dwellings arranged around a communal garden. These ensembles were built to house beguines, lay religious women who lived in semi-monastic communities. Today, many Beguinages have been repurposed, but few house contemporary art institutions.

Torzo's new building occupies the heart of the complex, providing dedicated exhibition space, design programming, and public gathering areas. The intervention is material-forward: local brick, traditional craftsmanship, and restrained detailing create a structure that feels both of its place and unmistakably contemporary. The tectonic language echoes the Beguinage's existing buildings without mimicking them, establishing continuity through proportion and material rather than ornament.

This kind of adaptive reuse demands a different skill set than new-build design. The architect must negotiate between conservation imperatives, programmatic requirements, and the spatial logic of the existing ensemble. Torzo's Z33 succeeds because it treats the Beguinage not as a backdrop but as a collaborator, allowing the old and new to inform each other. The result is a project that enriches the historic enclave whilst giving contemporary art a setting that doesn't compete for attention.

What the Shortlist Reveals

Taken together, these four projects sketch a portrait of where global architecture stands in 2026. Two engage with heritage, two with greenfield or remediated sites. Two are in South Asia, two in Western Europe. All four demonstrate that environmental performance and spatial quality are not trade-offs but interdependent goals. The RIBA International Prize has, over its ten-year history, elevated work that resists easy categorisation, favouring buildings that are locally specific yet internationally resonant.

Neil Gillespie, chair of the RIBA Awards group, described the shortlist as representing "buildings that are rigorously designed, deeply considered, and genuinely meaningful to the people and places they serve." That phrasing is telling. The emphasis falls not on formal innovation or technological novelty but on rigour, consideration, and meaning. These are qualities that emerge from process as much as from outcome, from sustained engagement with site, client, and community.

The winner will be announced in October 2026, a month that also sees the RIBA Stirling Prize, now in its 30th year, recognising the best new building in the United Kingdom. Together, these awards mark a moment of reflection on what architecture has achieved and where it might go next. If the shortlist is any indication, the future lies not in singular gestures but in buildings that negotiate complexity with grace, embedding environmental intelligence within structures that people genuinely want to inhabit.