Future Fest 2025: Celebrating Architecture's New Era of Craft

Future Fest 2025: Celebrating Architecture's New Era of Craft

For over a decade, Architizer’s A+Awards have recognized exceptional architecture that drives the global profession forward. Now in its 14th season, the program returns to one of architecture’s most fundamental values: craft.

As the pace of digital change accelerates, architects are asking urgent questions about their role in an increasingly automated world. Today’s leading architects are reclaiming their position as makers and storytellers by recentering human ingenuity, material intelligence and the art of detailing — all while embracing technology in all its forms.

In this special Future Fest event, three acclaimed architects will briefly explore this theme through their latest projects before broadening out with a panel discussion on how the craft of architecture is being reimagined by contemporary practice.

Fernanda Canales, Fernanda Canales Arquitectura

Fernanda Canales Arquitectura harnesses architecture to restore dignity to communities through spaces that are deeply rooted in their social and cultural context. Fernanda, the founder of her Mexico City–based practice, will present Border Overlook and Market Plaza, a civic project at the U.S.–Mexico border that transforms highway infrastructure into a crafted public realm. The project not only establishes a new center for the town of Naco, but also acts as a visual bridge across the border wall to Bisbee, Arizona. By introducing lookout towers and rooftop terraces, the architecture also allows residents to see themselves from above for the first time.

Chris Hardy, MASS Design Group

MASS Design Group believes that design has the power to create transformational change, and their work over the last decade, predominantly in East Africa, has shown that it is possible to design for a flourishing people and planet. Chris, a Design Director at MASS, will speak to the mindset shift that is rooted in the firm’s work and implementation of those ideas in the firm’s largest built work to date, the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA). RICA is expected to be the first climate-positive university in the world, and Chris will dive deep into the challenges and opportunities of construction, focused on the provenance and impact of materials and the people who build with them.

Noah Yaffe, Steven Holl Architects

Steven Holl Architects has long been recognized for their distinct architecture, which creates poetic spatial experiences through rigorous attention to light and material. Noah, Partner at the New York office, will present Meander Housing, a residential complex in Helsinki whose undulating massing strategy maximizes daylight in a city defined by dramatic seasonal shifts while also opening apartments to sweeping views of the Baltic Sea. Detailed with locally sourced Finnish spruce and anchored by a geothermal heating and cooling system, Meander exemplifies how materially- and environmentally-minded design elevates collective housing.

We'll also be getting hyped up for Season 14 of Architizer's A+Awards program, which launches this October — register now to make sure your firm is a part of it this year!