This month The Architectural Review celebrates the 2012 ar+d Awards for Emerging Architecture, for work by architects under the age of 45. It’s always simultaneously heartening and sobering to engage so closely with the next generation of architects. Heartening in that it gives a unique insight into the critical preoccupations that will shape the future of architecture and urbanism. Sobering in that we hope that youthful optimism and a capacity for experimentation can still flourish against the deadening backdrop of the current economic and ecological crisis. Yet judging from the quality of the work shown here (and of much that did not make the final cut), such qualities continue to underscore a crucial sense of creative resilience.