Cities can either take from the land or give back to it. At the south end of the Burrard Bridge in Vancouver's Kitsilano, 11 new towers are being built on land that was returned, not sold. This is Sen̓ákw: 10.5 acres of reserve land, once part of an 84-acre parcel, located where False Creek meets English Bay. Unlike other tower projects, Sen̓ákw creates a public park that stretches underneath them.

Canada covers a vast area, with coastlines, cities, and hundreds of remote and Indigenous communities spread across almost ten million square kilometres. Many of these places depend on planes and helicopters for groceries, medicine, and medical visits. Soon, new autonomous vehicles and drone-based aircraft will help connect these communities. But for them to work, they need places to land.

The subway was not intended to accommodate housing; for a five-day exhibition opening on September 24th, seven Toronto studios are proposing new ideas for what kinds of facilities a TTC subway station could have above the tracks—for example, a daycare on the roof or a screen of moving light.

There are currently 4 live experiments taking place across Canada, in Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, all of which are examining the extent to which a street can be made over so that it belongs to people rather than to vehicles.

Across the country, a housing crisis, a warming climate, and a strained construction workforce are pulling in the same direction — toward the forest next door. Engineered wood, once treated as an architectural showpiece reserved for university residences and demonstration halls, is now being asked to do something far bigger. It is being asked to become the ordinary backbone of how Canada builds.

While many projects begin on already prepared land, Jabal Deem began with the mountain itself. Sitting about 850 metres above sea level in Kalba, it might not seem ideal for farming, a summit spot, or a market stall, given its steep slopes. Yet Jabal Deem has managed to become all three by turning the mountain’s slope, height, and exposure into advantages instead of challenges.

Daylight falls straight down through slanted glass and lands on concrete the colour of wet stone. Toronto waited over a decade for this. Above and below Eglinton Avenue, a new kind of civic architecture now runs the length of the city: glass volumes, precast concrete envelopes, strands of orange marking the way.

For decades, the eastern edge of 17th Avenue has felt like an unfinished sentence — a stretch of the city's most beloved pedestrian corridor that trails off before it reaches its full potential. Broadway on 17th steps into that gap. Rather than adding another residential tower to the skyline, the project reworks a long-underused site into a dense, walkable destination that mends the street's rhythm and gives Calgary's Mission district a proper gateway.

How a global shift away from demolition is reshaping the way cities grow. A grain silo becomes a gallery. A naval yard becomes a waterfront neighbourhood. A century-old car dealership becomes a design studio's own front door. Across the world, a quiet revolution is underway inside the walls that already exist.

Twenty-five kilometres off the coast of Saudi Arabia, reachable only by boat or seaplane, a cluster of luminous orbs hovers above a lagoon so clear it seems to disappear. This is Sheybarah Island, home to mangroves, desert dunes, nesting turtles, and some of the most untouched coral reefs left on the planet. It is also home to Shebara, a 73-key resort that may be one of the most ambitious hospitality experiments of the decade.