Mashadipati: And the Pritzker Prize goes to...

Hello and welcome to Bloomberg's weekly design digest. I'm Kriston Capps, staff writer and editor for Bloomberg CityLab and your guide to the world of architecture and the people who build things.

This week Chilean architect Smiljan Radić won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the field's highest honor. The prize was delayed for weeks following Thomas Pritzker's exit as executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corp. in February over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Read on for our coverage of the accolade and the controversy.

But first: Read this dispatch from Bloomberg CityLab contributor Feargus O'Sullivan on the blaze that consumed Glasgow's Central Station building this week. And sign up to keep up: Subscribe to get the Design Edition newsletter every Sunday.

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - MARCH 08: The Fire Brigade fight a blaze in the vicinity of Central Station on March 08, 2026 in Glasgow, Scotland. Glasgow Central Station is closed due to a major fire and explosion at a building on nearby Union Street. Firefighters are at the scene and all trains to and from the station have been cancelled. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images) Photographer: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images Europe — Firefighters battle a blaze on March 8 at Forsyth House, a landmarked domed building adjacent to Central Station.

My heart broke when I heard that Glasgow's splendid Central Station had gone up in flames last Sunday. It wasn't just the fact that the now-damaged building — a grand Renaissance Revival structure built in yellow sandstone between 1883 and 1905 — is one of the UK's most likable bits of railway architecture. It wasn't even the fact that the fire isn't the first to damage a major Glasgow landmark — the internationally renowned (and still-not-reconstructed) Art Nouveau building that housed the Glasgow School of Art was reduced to a shell by fire in 2018. It was also a small personal twist. I stayed in the station's hotel just last year, while researching how Glasgow's beleaguered city center was finally turning a corner to better times.

I hope that piece doesn't prove entirely wrong in the long run. Sunday's fire, which started in an adjacent building now reduced to ashes, mercifully didn't damage the station itself beyond reasonable repair, though at the time of writing its train services remained canceled. The fire still highlighted two truths about the center of Scotland's largest city: that Glasgow has one of the most under-appreciated and distinctive cores of any major European city, and that this core has been in a poor state for some time.

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - JULY 10: A skyline view before work begins on the demolition of the burnt-out Glasgow Art School on July 10, 2018 in Glasgow, Scotland. The grade A listed building was undergoing a multi-million-pound restoration when it was hit by fire on June 15, 2018 following a smaller blaze in May 2014. Built in the late 1890's by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, then a junior draughtsman, the building is widely considered to be his masterpiece. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images) Photographer: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images Europe — The Glasgow School of Art, a building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the 1890s, pictured in 2018 after a blaze that destroyed the building.

My belief in the great value of Glasgow's architecture is not local partisanship: I grew up far away in London and bristle involuntarily when people mistake my Irish name for Scottish. Indeed, one of Glasgow's distinctive quirks is that it can feel like somewhere very far from Scotland: the eastern seaboard of the United States. The city's central US-style grid plan — rare in Scotland and all-but-unheard of south of the border — is packed with handsome buildings much like New York brownstones. Further out, its Victorian tenements wouldn't look out of place in Boston's South End or Brooklyn's Park Slope. This resemblance is not coincidental: The beloved turrets of America's Victorian rowhouses are derived more from Scottish than English models.

There's far more to the kinship. As a boomtown of the late 19th and early 20th century — when it became Europe's fourth-largest city — Glasgow is marked by a decidedly steampunk-ish blend of Victorian opulence and proto-modernist experimentation. Its landmarks show builders trying to construct higher and lighter with new materials such as concrete and steel frames, mingling technical innovation and historicist ornateness with sometimes spectacular results. Rarely very tall, such buildings are still skyscrapers waiting to happen, intriguing chrysalises needing the likes of a Louis Sullivan to realize their full structural potential. As such, they are a rare but invaluable European comment in an otherwise American conversation.

New signage outside the upgraded restaurant, Mackintosh at the Willow, at the original Willow Tea Rooms building in Glasgow, on the 150th anniversary of the birth of designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, after Â£10 million restoration project. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images) Photographer: Jane Barlow - PA Images/PA Images — Art Nouveau tea rooms designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, blocks from both Central Station and the School of Art.

New teasmith Holly Murphy on her first day at the upgraded restaurant, Mackintosh at the Willow, at the original Willow Tea Rooms building in Glasgow, on the 150th anniversary of the birth of designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, after Â£10 million restoration project. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images) Photographer: Jane Barlow - PA Images/PA Images — A teasmith at Mackintosh at the Willow following an extensive restoration project.

Add to this Glasgow's rich seam of grand neoclassical and Gothic Revival architecture — plus its clutch of buildings by Art Nouveau pioneer Charles Rennie Mackintosh — and it's easy to see why the city's built heritage is so valuable. Its fragile state is thus doubly shocking. Despite the Glasgow region's economy being moderately buoyant, buildings in the city core remain in poor condition. Protected by historical listing, they have often been
left that way by landlords who fear they won't recoup renovation costs, and by a city council that cannot serve a compulsory purchase order without having an end-user in place.

This poor condition creates a vicious cycle. It's possible that Forsyth House, the handsome domed building next to the central station where Sunday's blaze started, would not have burned if it — and central Glasgow in general — had been in better condition.

The new Central Station Hotel, Glasgow, 1883. 'This new grand hotel, in connection with the Caledonian Railway, was opened last month, under the management of Mr. Charles Lord...It is of vast size, as there are no fewer than 550 apartments within the building, giving accommodation for over 420 guests, in addition to 170 servants and officials. The main entrance is situated at the corner of Hope-street and Gordon-street...On the same level with the entrance-hall, opening to Hope-street and to the station, are the public smoking-room and dining-room for gentlemen in the city...In the carpeting of the establishment 1000 yards of Axminster have been used for the staircase and corridors, 800 yards of Wilton for the public and sitting rooms, and 5400 yards of Brussels for the bed-rooms. From the various parts of the house 1200 electric bells communicate with 600 indicators; the speaking-tubes extend to fully 5000 feet, weighing 4½ tons, and the wires in connection with the bells measure 29 miles and weigh 2½ tons. The culinary department is on the basement floor, with ample store-rooms, wine- cellars, and plate-rooms, engines for the hoists, the electric light, and ventilating apparatus, and for the extinction of fire'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883. Creator: Unknown. (Photo by The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images) Photographer: Heritage Images/Hulton Archive — An 1883 drawing of the Central Station Hotel in Glasgow, which today houses the concourse for Central Station. The facade was damaged by the March 8 fire.

Away from the now-smoldering ruin, central Glasgow is hardly depressing: There is life, bustle and evidence of money flowing through. There is also hope that the shock of the fire might create the sense of urgency needed to get the area back on track. Mind you, people also hoped that would be the case after Glasgow's beautiful art school burned down. And look where we are now.

Design stories we're writing

Architecture pavilion Santiago Photographer: Courtesy of Smiljan Radic — Guatero, a temporary inflatable pavilion designed by Radić for the 2023 Architecture Biennale in Santiago.

Chilean architect Smiljan Radić Clarke was named the winner of the 2026 Pritzker Architecture Prize. A relative unknown until 2014, when his Neolithic-inspired structure for Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London brought his work wide recognition, Radić practices design like a sculptor. His work emphasizes qualities such as tactility and transparency, often juxtaposing heavy stone boulders with luminescent inflatable materials. In recent years the prize has gone to firms with a social message: Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal won in 2021 for their work adapting public housing towers, for example, while the next year Francis Kéré won the prize for setting a new bar for sustainability.

So this award represents something of a return to form — for better or worse — as elevating a singular practitioner for his artistic vision. But the prize itself was subject to extra scrutiny this year, following Thomas Pritzker's departure as executive chairman of the Hyatt Hotels Corp. in February over records that revealed his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

One of the prototypes developed under Operation Breakthrough involved building multi-story structures using hydraulic jacks.

In the 1970s, feds at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development were planning for the future. A program known as Operation Breakthrough tasked builders as well as defense contractors with inventing new ways of building homes at scale using factory technology. The program called for constructing some 26 million new homes, a moonshot that reflected the daring of the Cold War–era space program. Zach Mortice writes up the thrilling experiment — and tragic failure — of America's most ambitious housing agenda, the subject of an exhibit at Chicago's National Public Housing Museum.

Design stories we're reading

Shock and debris from the bombing campaigns by US and Israel across Iran have damaged two historic sites — the 14th-century Golestan Palace in Tehran and 17th-century Chehel Sotoon Palace in Isfahan — leading Iran foreign minister Abbas Araghchi to criticize the UN's cultural arm. "Its silence is unacceptable." (The Guardian)

Congratulations to Thomas De Monchaux and Mark Krotov, whose dual reviews of Paul Rudolph at the Met helped to secure a National Magazine Award nomination for the New York Review of Architecture. (NYRA)

Ivan Nechepurenko reports on Gang, a local citizen brigade in the Russian city of St. Petersburg that has embraced architectural preservation as a form of resistance. Like any good story about the City on the Neva, it's beautiful and frustrating. "It's understandable why it might look like we're only doing small things. It's because doing big things is forbidden," says Gang founder Ksenia Sidorina. (The New York Times)

Martin Austermuhle writes about how the US Commission of Fine Arts members appointed by President Donald Trump are extending his neoclassical agenda to local school buildings in Washington, DC. (The 51st)

Read Andrew R. Chow and Connor Greene on a program in Henrico County, Virginia, to use data centers to subsidize homes: "Virginia's program is the first known example in the country to specifically use data center revenue for an affordable housing trust fund." (Time)

The old Chicago Stock Exchange Building trading room, a Gilded Age marvel by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, is once again endangered by demolition plans — this time from the Art Institute of Chicago. (Chicago Sun-Times)

The latest renderings for the Washington Commanders stadium have me convinced that the building is a tribute to Dallas architect George Dahl. (The Architect's Newspaper)

I wanna know how Alex Bozikovic really feels about Doug Ford's proposal for Toronto's waterfront airport. (The Globe and Mail)

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And the Pritzker Prize goes to...

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