The year 1942 in architecture involved some significant events.

• April 25 – Marriage of English architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry in London.
• May 30/31 – Bombing of Cologne in World War II: The first 1,000 bomber raid and associated fires destroy 3,330 non-residential buildings and make 13,000 families homeless; eleven of the twelve Romanesque churches of Cologne are damaged.
• September – Alker Tripp publishes Town Planning and Road Traffic in England, advocating segregated roads.
• An abridged version of the Athens Charter by Le Corbusier is published.

• October 10 – The Normandie Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, designed by engineer Félix Benítez Rexach and architect Raúl Reichard, is opened.
• The National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, United States is completed.
• Walthamstow Town Hall in London, designed by Philip Hepworth in 1932, is completed.
• Wythenshawe Bus Garage in Manchester, England is completed.^[1]

• RIBA Royal Gold Medal – William Curtis Green.
• Grand Prix de Rome, architecture – Raymond Gleize?

• January 19 – John Sheehy, American architect
• February 1 – Tonny Zwollo, Dutch-born architect
• March 23 – Fabio Reinhart, Swiss architect
• September 15 – Ksenia Milicevic, Yugoslav-born French painter, architect and town planner
• Patty Hopkins, born Patricia Wainwright, English architect
• Roger Walker, New Zealand architect

• March 31 – Randall Wells, English Arts and Crafts architect (born 1877)
• May 17 – Mārtiņš Nukša, Latvian architect and diplomat (born 1878; executed)
• May 20 – Hector Guimard, French-born Art Nouveau architect (born 1867)
• May 23 – C. R. Ashbee, English interior designer (born 1863)
• June 25 – Arthur Anderson, Australian architect (born 1868)
• July 24 – Sir Edwin Cooper, English architect (born 1874)
• September 22 – Ralph Adams Cram, American collegiate and ecclesiastical architect (born 1863)
• December 8 – Albert Kahn, German American industrial architect (born 1869)
• December 13 – Robert Robinson Taylor, first accredited African-American architect (born 1868)
• December 27 – Reginald Blomfield, English architect (born 1856)
• Ernest George Trobridge, British architect (born 1884)