By Flint Jurgens

The past year has seen the opening of the world’s second-tallest skyscraper, the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral and the announcement of countless futuristic urban mega-projects. Yet, the architecture world has, increasingly, recognized the value of altogether humbler pursuits.

In March, the industry’s most prestigious accolade, the Pritzker Prize, was unexpectedly awarded to Japanese housing pioneer Riken Yamamoto, while a small school in suburban Australia was later named the best new building at the World Architecture Festival.

So, while 2025 will, as ever, be one that celebrates grand infrastructure projects and feats of engineering, smaller-scale designs — and those with genuine environmental credentials — may also find themselves in the global spotlight. From innovative timber buildings to one of Asia’s largest new airports, here are 11 projects opening in the next 12 months.

New Sydney Fish Market, Sydney

The world’s third largest fish market is getting even bigger.

More than eight years after the New South Wales government announced the relocation of Sydney’s historic fish market — which dates to the 1870s but has been on its current site since 1966 — the gleaming new four-floor building is opening on an adjacent 3.6-hectare site.

Designed by 3XN Architects and Australian firm BVN (which promises visitors a “multi-sensory fish market experience”), the reimagined facility balances tourist infrastructure with the functional realities of a working wholesale market. Logistics and operations are hidden away in the basement, while the upper floors contain a market hall for visitors and an auction hall where restaurateurs and retailers bid on fresh catches as they arrive via pontoons.

The project will also help rejuvenate an industrial part of the harbor with shops, restaurants, a promenade and an urban park, while the distinctive undulating roof is topped with 350 triangular solar panels.

Grand Ring, Osaka

From April to October, Japan’s second city Osaka plans to welcome an estimated 28 million visitors to Expo 2025, which will see around 40 countries build custom pavilions on site. The centerpiece, however, is the venue itself: The Grand Ring, a continuous circular wooden structure, more than 1.2 miles in circumference, that will take visitors around the vast site. Expo venues can serve as an expression of their host’s design ethos. When Osaka first hosted the Expo, in 1970, it erected a huge space-frame roof by the most celebrated avant-garde Japanese architects of the time. So, in an age where timber buildings offer an alternative to carbon-intensive concrete, it seems fitting that the Grand Ring’s creator Sou Fujimoto is presenting a distinctly Japanese take on the global trend.

Using local cedar and cypress wood (as well as Scottish pine), the architect’s vision combines modern construction methods with the wooden joints traditionally used in Japanese temples and shrines. At almost 646,000 square feet, it will be among the world’s largest wooden buildings. Although intended to be temporary, there is ongoing debate about whether — or how — the structure might be preserved.

Life and Mind Building, Oxford

The UK’s University of Oxford may be closely associated with grand gothic architecture, but it also operates in an ever-evolving portfolio of contemporary properties scattered through the city. The latest of them, a new 270,000-square-foot life sciences building, concludes the largest construction project ever undertaken in the institution’s centuries-long history.

The design principles of the Life and Mind Building reflect an academic one: that uniting the departments of experimental psychology and biology under one roof will encourage greater collaboration and engagement between them. Inside, flexible lab spaces accommodate the needs of the different disciplines while a public plaza offers the chance of more casual interactions.

Despite plenty of modern touches, the American architecture practice behind the project, NBBJ, nods to the university’s architectural heritage through stone facades and projected buttresses that produce what it calls a “a timeless but recognizable appearance.”

Canadian School, Cholula

Organic architecture is often celebrated for blending (or even disappearing completely) into the landscape, leaving as little trace on the surroundings as possible. There’s perhaps no better example among this year’s new openings than architecture firm Sordo Madaleno’s Canadian School in Cholula, Mexico.

The serene campus looks to the region’s topography for inspiration — namely a nearby pre-Hispanic pyramid and the Popocatépetl volcano, which serves as a dramatic backdrop. The school is arranged around seven circular structures that take the form of overlapping hills, their terraced surfaces providing green spaces for students to explore.

Mexican architect Fernando Sordo Madaleno, grandson of the firm’s late founder Juan Sordo Madaleno, said in a statement that as well as blending with the environment, “the building itself becomes part of the playground.”

Techo International Airport, Phnom Penh

Cambodia is replacing its capital Phnom Penh’s international airport with one capable of handling six times as many visitors. Part of the country’s ambitious bid to boost tourism numbers and become a regional aviation hub, the new Techo International Airport’s initial capacity of 13 million annual passengers will eventually rise to 30 million.

The terminal building, located 12 miles south of the city center, will be one of Southeast Asia’s largest. Plans to generate energy through an onsite solar farm also put it among the world’s greenest, according to architects Foster + Partners.

With a form inspired by traditional Cambodian design, the terminal’s main roof is supported by a series of structural timber “trees” (real trees will also rise through a large central void). Digital renderings show the structure’s gridded steel shell filtering daylight and illuminating an interior bursting with tropical greenery, while passengers will reach their gates via two airfoil-shaped wings.

South Station redevelopment, Boston

A major expansion of Boston’s South Station, the busiest ground transport hub in New England, is wrapping up this year. Upon completion, the redevelopment project will have increased the terminal’s bus capacity by 50%, while its rail capacity will be unaffected.

Architecturally speaking, the challenge facing American firm Pelli Clarke & Partners was not only to reimagine the hub’s concourse and erect a soaring 51-story skyscraper above it, but to respect the original Classical Revival station building. Listed under the US National Register of Historic Places, it has stood there since 1899.

The resulting contrast — between gleaming glass and weathered stone — was always going to be stark. But the tower’s soft, sculptural form seeks to complement its historic counterpart. The expanded, arched concourse meanwhile offers visitors a more grandiose arrival into the city.

Goethe-Institut, Dakar

The first ever African winner of the Pritzker Prize, an award dubbed the “Nobel of architecture,” Francis Kéré is using his global profile to transform the built environment in his home continent.

The Burkinabè architect is a longstanding champion of “vernacular” design, which looks to traditional building materials and construction techniques. And his vision for the new Senegalese branch of Goethe-Institut, the German cultural exchange center, is a case in point.

The 18,300-square-foot building’s gentle curves were designed to mirror the outline of the surrounding canopies. It was constructed primarily from locally sourced bricks, which are made from compacted earth and arranged in lattice formations to encourage natural ventilation.

Speaking to CNN in 2022, Kéré explained the importance of local materials, saying: “The more… you use, the better you can promote the local economy and (build) local knowledge, which also makes people proud.”

Urban Glen, Hangzhou

More than a decade after the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing opened to become, arguably, China’s best-known contemporary building, its co-designer Ole Scheeren continues to leave his footprint on the county. The German architect’s firm, Büro Ole Scheeren, currently has major projects underway in various Chinese cities, from Shenzhen to Nanjing.

Among the most striking among is Urban Glen, a pair of dramatically stepped towers containing nearly 900,000 square feet of office, hotel and leisure space in the eastern city of Hangzhou. Like the hills surrounding Hangzhou on three sides, the two volumes — one of which houses a Rosewood Hotel — appear to cascade into a manmade valley of roof terraces, shops and public art.

Riyadh Metro, Riyadh

The 2020s have seen Saudi Arabia announce a slew of mega-scale — and often bombastic — architectural ventures, from a new city arranged in a line to a cube-shaped skyscraper that will become one of the world’s largest built structures. But plans to bequeath the capital city Riyadh with a much-needed metro system date back more than a decade.

Comprising six lines, the vast network is set to transform how the city operates, with a daily capacity of 3.6 million passengers. Above ground, its metro stations are becoming visual spectacles, with Zaha Hadid Architects and German firm Gerber Architekten among the high-profile foreign firms invited to design some of the 85 stations.

While the project was inaugurated in November, and many of the lines went into operation last month, the project won’t be completed until the new year. Perhaps the most notable station yet to open is celebrated Norwegian firm Snøhetta’s Qasr Al Hokm — its striking stainless-steel canopy providing shade and channeling natural light into the cavernous interior.

Skypark Business Center, Luxembourg

Europe continues to push the boundaries of wooden construction, with France now requiring all new public buildings to include at least 50% timber. Neighboring Luxembourg, meanwhile, is soon set to welcome one of the continent’s largest hybrid wooden buildings to date: the Skypark Business Center.

Set across more than 844,000 square feet of floor space, it was built using over 542,000 cubic feet of timber — enough to fill up six Olympic-size pools — while the copper facade is made from 80% recycled metal.

With its softly rounded edges, the structure’s unique shape can be understood as two alternating, zig-zagging strips that snake across one another along the site. Their various intersections create a series of courtyards and roof spaces, with the building’s occupants never more than 50 meters (164 feet) from a green terrace, according to architects BIG.

The building, the first phase of which completes February, largely comprises office space, in addition to shops and a hotel. But ground-level courtyards will be open to passersby — and plane enthusiasts, who can enjoy views of the adjacent Luxembourg Airport.

Danjiang Bridge, Taipei

For almost nine years, the late Zaha Hadid’s firm has continued her legacy, producing dozens of new designs channeling the ethos and identity of an architect dubbed “Queen of the Curve.” But the Danjiang Bridge, in Taiwan, was announced in 2015 — the year before Hadid’s death — meaning it will be among the last projects to be realized that she personally oversaw.

The 3,018-foot-long structure will connect four major highways over the mouth of the Tamsui River, which flows through Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. It features a surprisingly slender profile, with the entire structure supported by just a single concrete mast (which the firm’s project description says “minimizes” the bridge’s “visual impact” on its surroundings). Nonetheless, it will become the world’s longest single-mast asymmetrical cable-stayed bridge when it opens later this year.

It is a sign of the architect’s unique aesthetic that, even with just one mast to play with, its rounded edges and gently warped form is still, somehow, signature Hadid.

By Jason Mannet

Inside a giant sphere, the engineers pored over their equipment. Before them stood a silvery metal contraption swathed in colourful wires – a box that they hope will one day make oxygen on the moon.

Once the team vacated the sphere, the experiment began. The box-like machine was now ingesting small quantities of a dusty regolith – a mixture of dust and sharp grit with a chemical composition mimicking real lunar soil.

Soon, that regolith was gloop. A layer of it heated to temperatures above 1,650C. And, with the addition of some reactants, oxygen-containing molecules began to bubble out.

“We’ve tested everything we can on Earth now,” says Brant White, a program manager at Sierra Space, a private company. “The next step is going to the moon.”

Sierra Space’s experiment unfolded at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in the summer of 2024. It is far from the only such technology that researchers are working on, as they develop systems that could supply astronauts living on a future lunar base.

Those astronauts will need oxygen to breathe but also to make rocket fuel for spacecraft that might launch from the moon and head to destinations further afield – including Mars.

Lunar base inhabitants might also require metal and they could even harvest this from the dusty grey debris that litters the lunar surface.

Much depends on whether we can build reactors able to extract such resources effectively or not.

“It could save billions of dollars from mission costs,” says Mr White as he explains that the alternative – bringing lots of oxygen and spare metal to the moon from Earth – would be arduous and expensive.

Luckily, the lunar regolith is full of metal oxides. But while the science of extracting oxygen from metal oxides, for example, is well understood on Earth, doing this on the moon is much harder. Not least because of the conditions.

The huge spherical chamber that hosted Sierra Space’s tests in July and August this year induced a vacuum and also simulated lunar temperatures and pressures.

The company says it has had to improve how the machine works over time so that it can better cope with the extremely jagged, abrasive texture of the regolith itself. “It gets everywhere, wears out all sorts of mechanisms,” says Mr White.

And the one, crucial, thing that you can’t test on Earth or even in orbit around our planet, is lunar gravity – which is roughly one sixth that of the Earth. It might not be until 2028 or later that Sierra Space can test its system on the moon, using real regolith in low gravity conditions.

The moon’s gravity could be a real problem for some oxygen-extracting technologies unless engineers design for it, says Paul Burke at Johns Hopkins University.

In April, he and colleagues published a paper detailing the results of computer simulations that showed how a different oxygen-extracting process might be hindered by the moon’s relatively feeble gravitational pull. The process under investigation here was molten regolith electrolysis, which involves using electricity to split lunar minerals containing oxygen, in order to extract the oxygen directly.

The problem is that such technology works by forming bubbles of oxygen on the surface of electrodes deep within the molten regolith itself. “It is the consistency of, say, honey. It is very, very viscous,” says Dr Burke.

“Those bubbles aren’t going to rise as fast – and may actually be delayed from detaching from the electrodes.”

There could be ways around this. One could be to vibrate the oxygen-making machine device, which might jiggle the bubbles free.

And extra-smooth electrodes might make it easier for the oxygen bubbles to detach. Dr Burke and his colleagues are now working on ideas like this.

Sierra Space’s technology, a carbothermal process, is different. In their case, when oxygen-containing bubbles form in the regolith, they do so freely, rather than on the surface of an electrode. It means there is less chance of them getting stuck, says Mr White.

Stressing the value of oxygen for future lunar expeditions, Dr Burke estimates that, per day, an astronaut would require the amount of oxygen contained in roughly two or three kilograms of regolith, depending on that astronaut’s fitness and activity levels.

However, a lunar base’s life support systems would likely recycle oxygen breathed out by astronauts. If so, it wouldn’t be necessary to process quite as much regolith just to keep the lunar residents alive.

The real use case for oxygen-extracting technologies, adds Dr Burke, is in providing the oxidiser for rocket fuels, which could enable ambitious space exploration. Obviously the more resources that can be made on the moon the better.

Sierra Space’s system does require the addition of some carbon, though the firm says it can recycle most of this after each oxygen-producing cycle.

Along with colleagues, Palak Patel, a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came up with an experimental molten regolith electrolysis system, for extracting oxygen and metal from the lunar soil.

“We’re really looking at it from the standpoint of, ‘Let’s try to minimise the number of resupply missions’,” she says.

When designing their system, Ms Patel and her colleagues addressed the problem described by Dr Burke: that low gravity could impede the detachment of oxygen bubbles that form on electrodes. To counter this, they used a “sonicator”, which blasts the bubbles with sound waves in order to dislodge them.

Ms Patel says that future resource-extracting machines on the moon could derive iron, titanium or lithium from regolith, for example. These materials might help lunar-dwelling astronauts make 3D-printed spare parts for their moon base or replacement components for damaged spacecraft.

The usefulness of lunar regolith does not stop there. Ms Patel notes that, in separate experiments, she has melted simulated regolith into a tough, dark, glass-like material.

She and colleagues worked out how to turn this substance into strong, hollow bricks, which could be useful for building structures on the moon – an imposing black monolith, say. Why not?