Every once in a while, it doesn’t hurt to get a little bit ahead of ourselves. Each January, Azure‘s editorial team compiles our top picks for the year’s most anticipated architecture projects. And sometimes, our excitement to celebrate paradigm-setting design overtakes the more prosaic realities of construction schedules. To wit, a few of our picks from last January — like the striking Sydney Fish Market and the Grand Egyptian museum — are actually set to be completed this year. But that hardly tampers our enthusiasm. In 2025, we’ve picked out 15 standout architecture projects that will shape design global discourse and local public life in the year to come — and then some:
- Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay, Ontario, by Patkau Architects and Brook McIlroy
- Asiat Darse Bridge, Vilvoorde, Belgium, by Counterspace
- Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois, Basel, Switzerland, by Herzog & De Meuron
- Benin National Assembly, Porto-Novo, Benin, by Kéré Architecture
- Fondation Cartier, Paris, France, by Jean Nouvel
- The Grand Ring, Osaka, Japan, by Sou Fujimoto
- Maggie’s Centre, Northampton, UK, by Stephen Marshall Architects
- Kvarter 7 of “Wood City,” Stockholm, Sweden, by White Arkiteker
- Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE, by Frank Gehry
- Warehouse Park and Pavilion, Edmonton, Canada, by gh3*
- Wadden Sea World Heritage Centre Phase 3, Germany, by Dorte Mandrup
- New Museum Extension, New York City, USA, by OMA
- Techo International Airport, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, by Foster & Partners
- David Rubenstein Treehouse, Boston, USA, by Studio Gang
- University of Toronto Scarborough Indigenous House, Toronto, Canada, by Formline Architecture with LGA Architectural Partners
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Thunder Bay Art Gallery, Thunder Bay, Ontario, by Patkau Architects and Brook McIlroy

While the Thunder Bay Art Gallery has more than 1,600 works in its permanent collection (with a particular focus on Northern Ontario and Indigenous art), its current home lacks the space to do this collection justice. Thankfully, a design by Patkau Architects and Brook McIlroy is set to expand the arts hub to a new 3,484-square-metre waterfront facility that greatly expands exhibition space while also providing ample room for event space and a café.

Joining the Prince Arthur’s Landing waterfront park that repurposes the city’s old industrial marina, the new gallery will enjoy a spectacular view across Lake Superior to Thunder Bay’s famous Sleeping Giant rock formation, known as Nanabijou in Ojibway legend. Brook McIlroy’s Indigenous Design Studio led the project’s Indigenous consultation; architect Ryan Gorrie found inspiration in another notable Ojibway tale: the Turtle Narrative, which describes how a turtle came to carry the Earth on its back after a massive flood. Based on this lore, the design team has modelled the new building after a turtle emerging from the water.
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Asiat Darse Bridge, Vilvoorde, Belgium, by Counterspace

Summayya Vally’s design for the Asiat-Darse pedestrian bridge in Vilvoorde evokes the contributions made by migrants to Belgium. More specifically, it pays homage to Paul Panda Farnana: The first migrant labourer to arrive from Congo, he went on to become a prominent horticulturist. And it takes the shape of a grouping of dugout canoes endemic to the African nation he left behind. “When they are aligned, they become places for people to trade and gather,” Vally, who runs the Johannesburg/London-based studio Counterspace, explained to Azure. “That’s how the bridge became a series of connected boat forms, each planted with species that Farnana researched.” The 35-metre span, which is being built in collaboration with the engineers at AKT II, centres the importance of immigrants to a thriving culture with imagination and meaning.
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Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois, Basel, Switzerland, by Herzog & De Meuron

Late last year, Herzog & de Meuron offered an early preview of its ongoing reimagining of one of Europe’s oldest hotels: Basel’s Les Trois Rois. Dubbed The Council, the first space to be unveiled is a cigar lounge (complete with two fireplaces) that balances sumptuous red velvet with architectural severity. Ceramic tiles designed by Jacques Herzog himself (and handcrafted by ceramicist Esther Lattner and the fabrication team at Kunstbetrieb) run along the back wall of a triple-height space illuminated by charming custom “Red Riding Hood” lamps manufactured by Artemide. In other words, this promises to be a project where an architecture firm at the top of its game is applying the ultimate attention to detail and leveraging the full extent of its network of creative collaborators. No wonder Les Trois Rois promises the end result will be “a place where effortless elegance touches all the senses.”
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Benin National Assembly, Porto-Novo, Benin, by Kéré Architecture

Few civic institutions are as symbolically charged as a house of parliament. In Benin, the new National Assembly replaces a colonial-era building with one rooted in West African cultural traditions. Designed by 2022 Pritzker Prize winner Diébédo Francis Kéré, the building is envisioned as an expression of the country’s “democratic values and identity.” Inspired by the local custom of “palaver,” where community members gather under the shade of an eponymous majestic tree to resolve conflicts and make collective decisions, the striking form translates civic spirit into an institutional setting — one that seems to emerge from the soil from a broad trunk, culminating in a majestically cantilevered crown. While a sinuous assembly hall sits at the heart of the complex, the building is framed by generous public spaces, inviting citizens to join together under the democratic shade of a great tree.

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Fondation Cartier, Paris, France, by Jean Nouvel

Back in 1994, the Fondation Cartier moved into a glass building surrounded by trees — a configuration that led architect Jean Nouvel to dub the museum “the phantom in the park.” Now, just over 30 years later (and some 40 years after the foundation was first established in 1984), the contemporary art gallery is gearing up for a move into a Hausmannian landmark located across from the Louvre. Nouvel is back for round two; this time, his design calls for a radically open architectural reimagining, one that installs five new platforms within the historic shell to deliver 8,500 square metres of public space. Some areas will soar to 11 metres high, while others will stretch out into wide-open expanses — all to ensure ultimate flexibility when it comes to experimental, multidisciplinary exhibitions. Walkways will traverse the revamped arts hub, offering great views of both the new interior architecture and the Parisian life playing out on the other side of the building’s bay windows.
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The Grand Ring, Osaka, Japan, by Sou Fujimoto

Designed by architect Sou Fujimoto as the centrepiece for Expo 2025 Osaka, the nearly finished Grand Ring is a stunning showcase of Nuki, a traditional Japanese architectural joinery method, common in shrines and temples, that punctures horizontal beams through vertical boards with minimal hardware. Built from hefty pillars of Japanese cedar, cypress (hinoki) and glulam, the closed-loop pavilion boasts a two-kilometre circumference and 675-metre diameter (externally). At its highest point, it soars up to 20 metres tall, making it one of the world’s largest timber structures.

Located on the artificial island of Yumeshima, the Grand Ring was envisioned by Fujimoto as a symbol of unity, one that merges our human-made urban environment with the natural world. Its sloped, planted roof protects visitors from the elements, while its elevated pedestrian “sky walk” with panoramic views of the surroundings immerses them fully in nature.
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Maggie’s Centre, Northampton, UK, by Stephen Marshall Architects

When conceiving the Maggie’s Centre in Northampton, U.K., Islington-based Stephen Marshall Architects worked with the concept of a “floating umbrella” to inform the building’s unique profile. Made from panels of white perforated metal, the intriguing roof will gracefully extend beyond and dip in front of the fully glazed external walls to create a subtle tracery and give the two-level cancer care facility the allusion of being an intimate single-storey structure.

The light-filled interiors, by designer Tricia Guild, will provide a calm and beautiful setting, while landscape architect Arne Maynard’s traditional English gardens will offer a secondary space for events as well as a spot for quiet contemplation. Slated for completion at the end of the year, the purpose-built support centre on the Northampton General Hospital campus will be named after legendary 1960s race car driver Diana Russell.
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Kvarter 7 of “Wood City,” Stockholm, Sweden, by White Arkiteker

Only a few kilometres east of central Stockholm, in the Sickla district, the inaugural phase of the massive and much-anticipated “Wood City” community is officially underway. Led by local firm White Arkiteker with developer Atrium Ljungberg, Kvarter 7 — featuring three residential buildings and 80 apartments — pushes the envelope on sustainable urban living in a major way: it will be completely car-free. Add that to the fact that when completed, Wood City is expected to be the largest urban wooden construction project in the world, and you’ve got a project that’s captured our undivided attention.
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Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE, by Frank Gehry

In 1997, the opening of the Guggenheim Bilbao sparked a new architectural era, arguably making its designer, Frank Gehry, the most famous architect in the world. In the decade (or two) to come, the so-called “Bilbao Effect” projects would define much of architectural culture, as cities the world over envisioned a path to global cultural prominence paved with architectural landmarks. The results ranged from the magnificent to the decidedly mixed. Nearly three decades later, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a 30,000-square-metre complex and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s largest facility to date, promises to be another landmark.
Yet, as Gehry biographer and longtime collaborator Jean-Louis Cohen told Azure in 2021, “The Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi, now under construction, has nothing to do with the Guggenheim in Bilbao.” Even so, the swooping, deconstructivist design is signature Gehry — and the broader comparisons are hard to avoid: Will it serve as a bookend to an era or the spark for another wave of cultural grandeur?
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Warehouse Park and Pavilion, Edmonton, Canada, by gh3*

With this bold park pavilion, gh3* continues its transformative lineage of infrastructure projects in Edmonton. Central to the building’s design, the firm explains, “is the name of the ward in which it resides, O-day’min, gifted by a local Elder meaning Strawberry, or “heart” berry in Anishinaabe.” With its multi-vault canopy and vibrant red hue, the 270-square-metre pavilion, which houses universal washrooms and other public amenities, gives marvellous form to this symbolism. Like a warm embrace, its cantilevered roof protrudes in exuberant folly fashion just above the pavilion’s glass-enclosed seating area and extends to shade an outdoor slice of the park (which gh3* designed in tandem with Montreal landscape firm CCxA.)

“The pavilion aims to be iconic for Edmontonians – it will have an identity that is unique and cannot exist elsewhere,” the firm says. “It will proudly assert Edmonton’s unique place in the world.” We have no doubt about it.
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Wadden Sea World Heritage Centre Phase 3, Germany, by Dorte Mandrup

Bridging Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, the largest tidal flats system in the world, Wadden Sea, will take much more than a village to preserve. Luckily, the Wadden Sea World Heritage Partnership is a robust international organization – with multiple tide-promoting projects under way across the three nations that govern the intertidal zone – which will soon operate out of a new headquarters. This striking building in Wilhelmshaven provides an elegant space for managerial teams. And the design preserves both natural forms and human history: Anchoring the project is an on-site World War II bunker, which supports the offices cantilevered above it, the entire building wrapped in glass.
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New Museum Extension, New York City, USA, by OMA

There is no understating the impact that SANAA’s New Museum had on the Bowery, the formerly gritty New York neighbourhood, when the elegant stack of staggered boxes went up in 2007. Any addition would therefore have to honour yet complement the original. OMA seems to have struck the right balance. In its first public building in New York City, the firm has created a seven-storey, 5,575-square-metre extension that doubles the Museum’s exhibition space and improves its circulation. The jagged form’s dramatically folded façade, angled fenestration and sloped roof make the addition its own attraction – a quirky neighbour to SANAA’s structure, which, while more minimal in form, will continue to tower above.
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Techo International Airport, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, by Foster & Partners

With a phenomenally expressive grid-shell roof and a warm, welcoming materials palette, the Techo International Airport by Foster & Partners just outside Phnom Penh is well on its way to becoming a “new showpiece of Cambodian architectural heritage in a contemporary fashion.” Comprising a central head house and mirror-image aerofoil-shaped terminals, the sprawling infrastructure takes a human-scaled approach with minimal level changes and a high degree of transparency.

Towering tree-like pillars culminate in that sculpted lightweight (and modular) steel roof canopy, which features an underside with perforated soffits to filter sunlight with an almost magical effect, while lush greenery and mature trees will fill the terminals with nature. Combining cutting-edge technology and local craftsmanship, the airport – which aspires to be one of the world’s greenest – responds appropriately to the tropical climate and will be powered almost entirely by an onsite photovoltaic farm. Light-filled and approachable, it will serve as a stunning new gateway to both the city and the country.
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David Rubenstein Treehouse, Boston, USA, by Studio Gang

Picture a conference centre. Odds are, bland institutional settings and windowless rooms come to mind. But at Harvard University’s upcoming David Rubenstein Treehouse, Studio Gang has updated a staid typology with an inviting, multi-use 5,100-square-metre space – an elegant mass timber construction that prioritizes natural light, championing both green design and civic gathering. In the main atrium, Canopy Hall, a distinct cross-bracing frame opens onto the street, elegantly dissolving the boundary between indoor environments, the surrounding city, and the natural world beyond.

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University of Toronto Scarborough Indigenous House, Toronto, Canada, by Formline Architecture with LGA Architectural Partners

“The building will rise out of the earth intimately integrated with the landscape,” says Alfred Waugh, a leading Canadian architect and a citizen of the Fond du Lac Denesuline Nation of Saskatchewan. Waugh’s firm led the design of the 1,000-square-metre Indigenous House in collaboration with Toronto’s LGA Architectural Partners, and he describes it as a living thing. Comprising social spaces for Indigenous staff, students and community members, as well as research areas, the striking design features a curved glulam diagrid, with the laminated timber structure evoking the domed Wigwam dwellings once common across much of Turtle Island. It promises to be a beacon on the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus.

Looking for more design inspiration? Check out our favourite interiors, products, public spaces, homes and architecture projects of 2024.
15 Projects that Will Shape Architecture in 2025
From Belgium to Benin, these standout designs are poised to shape design discourse and public life around the world.