Archticeture & Design April edition available to read online

In Malta, the question of preservation is no longer only about keeping buildings intact. It is about how tradition is carried forward, how it is used, adapted, and allowed to evolve without being reduced to surface or memory.

Across the islands, some of the most meaningful architectural work today engages directly with this tension. Rather than treating historic fabric as something to be frozen, these projects work with it: repairing, extending, and reinterpreting what already exists. The result is an approach rooted less in replication and more in continuity.

Mulberries in Żabbar, by architect Aaron Abela, sits within this conversation and appears on this issue’s cover. What began as a neglected rural structure became a slow, hands-on reconstruction carried out stone by stone over several years. Abela’s process was guided by direct engagement with the building itself. “I wanted to understand every part of it, how it stands, how it works,” he says. That attitude shaped a project where making and understanding become inseparable.

Elsewhere, Dr Alexia Mercieca’s work expands preservation into the social realm, where architecture supports care, dignity, and everyday life, as seen in Dar Tereża.

In Valletta, AP Valletta’s work at St John’s Co-Cathedral continues the careful negotiation between heritage and contemporary use, working with proportion, light, and material restraint.

Together, these projects suggest a broader shift: preservation not as fixation, but as continuation, an ongoing relationship between past and present, held through building, use, and time.

Read here.