United States: The Architectural Review 1534, September 2026

On the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, the founding principles it set out feel like a distant dream in today’s diminished democracy. The transformation of the White House and the Obama Presidential Center reveal how architecture reflects and exerts presidential authority. Architects design detention facilities for a state at war with immigrants, while US colonial control over Puerto Rico accelerates its coastal development. The issue revisits Fallingwater and looks toward the Emma S Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center and Tekαkαpimək Contact Station in Maine as projects that offer glimmers of light.