Focus 2026: ‘Systems’ Hack’ Jury Statement

The OBEL Foundation has announced Systems’ Hack as the focus of its 2026 cycle, calling on architecture to critically engage with the systems that underpin contemporary society — from infrastructure and energy to food, water, education and information.

Set annually by the OBEL Jury, the focus defines the conceptual framework for the foundation and its activities aiming to stimulate global dialogue around the most urgent challenges shaping the built environment. With Systems’ Hack, the Jury asks how architecture can move beyond conventional problem-solving and instead intervene in the very systems on which society and nature depend.

At a time of accelerating economic, political and climatic instability, architecture increasingly operates within complex systems that are under strain or no longer fit for purpose. While the discipline is rich in ideas and innovation, the Jury identifies the core challenge as systemic: linear design processes, fragmented resource chains and outdated structures are limiting architecture’s capacity to respond to interconnected global crises. This, partnered with a disconnected construction and resource approach, means that we face a time where architects need to innovatively tackle the design and contextuality of existing and new (infra-)structures in order to create a reciprocal relationship between societal needs and natural ones. 

Systems’ Hack invites architects to expose, infiltrate and reconfigure these entrenched systems — not by rejecting them, but by transforming how they function. The theme asks whether architecture can become an active part of ecological and social systems, operate within planetary boundaries, and help reshape the networks of production, governance and influence it relies on.

Following 2025’s theme, Ready Made, which explored material resources and reuse, Systems’ Hack shifts attention to the wider systems that enable societies to function. By addressing how these systems can be adapted or “hacked,” OBEL encourages architectural approaches that prioritise long-term resilience, regenerative relationships and collaboration with natural systems.

The 2026 OBEL Award winner will be selected based on this focus by the OBEL Jury, chaired by Nathalie de Vries of MVRDV, and announced in May of this year.

[Systems’] — a group of interacting or interrelated elements working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network, acting according to a set of rules to form a unified complex whole
 [Hack] — a strategy or technique for managing activities or complexities more efficiently; the practice of attempting to manipulate the behaviour of a system