April's Top 5 Architecture and Design Reads

Stay informed and inspired with the "METROPOLIS Must-Reads" newsletter, bringing you the most impactful and essential articles from the month. In this edition: meet the METROPOLIS Future100, discover the energy plant setting a new standard for circular infrastructure in Shenzhen, learn how Loeb Fellow Alberto Kritzler is leading a regenerative design movement in Mexico, and more.

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#1 Presenting the 2025 METROPOLIS Future100

METROPOLIS honors the top graduating architecture and interior design students in the U.S. and Canada through its Future100 program, sponsored this year by Formica Group North America , Keilhauer , OFS , and Sherwin-Williams . The class of 2025 features 100 exceptional young designers whose portfolios showcase a deep commitment to impactful design. Through rigorous research, innovative methodologies, and material exploration, they tackle issues of community, culture, inclusivity, and sustainability with empathy and maturity—earning their place as rising stars in the industry. 

#2 Alberto Kritzler is at the Forefront of Regenerative Design in Mexico

Alberto Kritzler is a Mexican developer focused on adaptive reuse, urban density, and living systems. He co-founded REURBANO , a platform in Mexico City that revitalizes buildings, reactivates street life, and reimagines urban living. In the countryside, he founded Reserva el Peñón, a regenerative community protecting a rainforest through collective action and rainwater autonomy. His latest venture, La Laguna, transformed a 90-year-old textile factory into a design-driven co-production hub. A Loeb Fellow at Harvard University and MBA graduate from Stanford University , Kritzler also serves on the boards of a historic ceramics manufacturer and a B-Corp coffee producer. METROPOLIS spoke with Kritzler about his fellowship and Mexico’s water crisis.

#3 This Arkansas Institute Brings a Holistic Vision to Health-Care Design

On a wooded rise just southeast of the sinuous Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, a new 85,000-square-foot building is set to open in May: the Heartland Whole Health Institute . The vision of philanthropist Alice Walton (Walmart heir and founder of both Heartland and the Alice L. Walton Foundation, which operates the 134-acre Crystal Bridges campus) the structure, designed by Fayetteville-based Marlon Blackwell Architects , is part office, part retreat, part conference center, information resource, and wellness center. All these pieces are dedicated to Heartland’s mission to challenge the conventions of a siloed, reactive healthcare system by encouraging a more proactive, holistic approach to health-care design. “Preventive health, not just sick care,” as Walton puts it. 

#4 Study Architects Designs a Water-Saving Desert Retreat in Arizona

Concerns over dwindling resources are mounting in arid locales like Tucson, where residents who rely on well water can no longer depend on accessing new sources. In collaboration with their client, Daniel Yoder and Joe DiNapoli of San Francisco–based firm STUDY Architects are confronting this dilemma with a design for a one-bedroom desert getaway. With wells becoming less viable, the designers consider simpler solutions for their client, imagining a contemporary design to supply the house with rainwater for ancillary needs.

#5 The Shenzhen Energy Ring Sets a New Standard for Circular Infrastructure

When one thinks of a recycling facility or energy plant, they most likely picture nondescript building blocks and unsightly smoke stacks unceremoniously strewn along the fringes of a major city or taking up substantial space within its center. As was evident in the complex that preceded the Perkins&Will -designed Shenzhen Energy Ring—a brand new waste-to-energy plant challenging tradition—industrial architecture tends to favor cookie-cutter efficiency over the more nuanced implementation of idiosyncratic site-responsivity and adaptability. But why not ensure that such a facility integrates into its surroundings, becoming visible as a vital learning resource? “When designing the facility, we were solving an existing problem while also aiming to make a long-term impact on our climate crisis,” says Chris Hardie , design director of Perkins&Will subsidiary SHL - Schmidt Hammer Lassen 's Shanghai office. “To fully address the problem, there also needed to be an element of education.”