This issue focuses on large-scale buildings that shape chunks of city, or count as mini-cities themselves. From Birmingham’s tallest building to one of Europe’s most complex healthcare projects to the transformation of London’s historic Olympia, the projects featured among these pages are, as the coverline puts it, unmissable.

The issue contains three building studies. In The Octagon, a 49-storey residential tower, Howells has designed what is claimed to be the world’s first pure octagonal high-rise residential tower. BDP and O’Connell Mahon Architects’ vast children’s hospital in Dublin brings together 39 paediatric specialities under one roof, with an oval pavilion plan, extensive planted terraces and 14 courtyards spread across a 5ha site. At Olympia London, Heatherwick Studio and SPPARC have transformed the exhibition halls into a cultural destination including a 3,800-capacity live music venue.

There are two opinion pieces. Gessica Salerno asks what protection exists for individual principal designers under the Building Safety Act, highlighting the unresolved questions around investigation costs, evidence retention and long-term liability. Russell Curtis argues that there are far too many architects in the UK and calls for restricted entry to the profession to arrest declining salaries and fees.

In Blueprints for Change, Tara Gbolade explores what the Igbo people of West Africa can teach us about building new towns, drawing on a compound housing model to demonstrate how the UK’s proposed new developments could better foster community and connection with nature.

In Culture, Matthew Bovingdon-Downe reviews the film Backrooms, in which an out-of-work architect stumbles on a secret labyrinthine world that mirrors his own mental breakdown. David Grandorge’s photograph of the Seagram Building questions whether Mies van der Rohe’s revered edifice should still command admiration in an era of embodied and operational carbon reduction.

The issue also presents the 32 RIBA National Award winners for 2026, and the full shortlist for the AJ Retrofit & Reuse Awards 2026. Rounding out the issue are a competitions compilation, sketches by Shaun Jenkins of J2 Capital UK, and letters on Andy Burnham’s vision for a high street ‘renaissance’.