The present proceedings document a collective endeavour developed for the UIA World Congress of Architects 2026 Barcelona. They bring together practitioners, researchers, institutions, students, industries and citizens who have participated in a shared laboratory of spatial practice: through cartography, built prototypes, critical writing, public conversation, situated research and collective engagement. As an international congress convening the national professional organisations of architects from more than one hundred countries, this edition has sought to create bridges between practice, academia, institutions, policy-makers, cultural agents and wider publics. Rather than understanding architecture as a closed professional field detached from scholarly inquiry, the Congress approaches it as a rich spectrum of spatial practice, capable of producing knowledge, opening debate and catalysing processes of transformation. This introduction frames a constellation of publications produced around the Congress. Alongside two volumes of proceedings, the Congress has edited a book co-published by Park Books and Puente Editores, gathering twenty-four commissioned investigations and multiple critical writings and conversations developed in preparation for the event.1 While the first volume of the proceedings presents the selected contributions from the international Call for Participants, its second volume, to be published after the Congress, will gather the exchanges, frictions and outcomes produced during the event itself.