WOHA Architects: The Latest Architecture and News

For the 18^th year, the International Architecture Awards has returned to celebrate outstanding architectural achievements globally. Based in Chicago, these awards feature exceptional new buildings, urban planning projects, and landscape architecture of 2023. Additionally, this month, the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5) is currently taking place in the city. Both the awards and the Biennial attempt to shed light on each country’s architectural, design, cultural, and social trends.

Since the inception of the International Architecture Awards in 2005, this annual program has served as a platform for celebrating contemporary architecture. Moreover, the awards institution believes in architecture’s potential to enhance the quality of life for individuals globally. This year, the selected winners span 48 countries, from Ethiopia to Tokyo and New York to Nova Scotia.

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Last week, the President*s Design (P*DA) Award chose 8 winning recipients for its 2023 edition. The award that honors designers making a transformative and positive impact on the lives of Singapore’s society and the broader global community recognized Henning Larsen, BIG, and the Singapore Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai.

The P*DA presented two categories: Designer of the Year and Design of the Year. Organized jointly by the DesignSingapore Council and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the biennial award was given to two “Designer of the Year” and six “Design of the Year” recipients. Beyond the excellence of their design execution, the honorees demonstrated a genuine sense of purpose and mission that is consistent with P*DA's core values. The outstanding designs of this year tackle fundamental and systemic issues like consumerism and circularity, dementia and caregiving, climate change and sustainability, and show how Singapore is developing its best design practices that are applicable to enhancing lives worldwide.

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The Singapore Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai illustrates the city's aspiration towards a sustainable future that merges architecture, nature, technology and culture. Under the title "Nature.Nurture.Future", the pavilion designed by WOHA Architects and landscape design practice Salad Dressing showcases a sample of Singapore's urban environment that epitomizes its City in Nature vision. The multi-layered green space creates a self-sufficient ecosystem highlighting ideas of sustainability and resilience through the marriage of technology and nature.

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WOHA and BRAC University have unveiled the latest images from the 5.3-acre university campus, scheduled for completion in 2021. Located in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the intervention will transform a polluted and flooded wasteland into a sustainable inner-city campus and public park.

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Expected to be completed in 2023, construction works have started on the campus of the Singapore Institute of Technology designed by WOHA. The 91,000 square meter project located in an existing forest, will create a “Campus in a Park” experience, where learning spaces and green spaces will be combined.

WOHA was chosen to design the Singapore Pavilion for the Dubai 2020 World Expo. Under the theme of “Nature, Nurture, Future”, the pavilion will aim to demonstrate “Singapore’s story of overcoming its physical limitations as a small island city-state and adapting itself to become a highly livable and sustainable city”.

Developers Cbus and Nielson Properties have released a shortlist for the design of a $600 million office tower in Brisbane’s North Quay. Four local and international architectural teams have been selected to create proposals for the commercial tower that will accommodate 50,000 square meters of office space. The developers aim to establish an innovative workplace of the future that will represent the new world of work.

New photographs released by ceramics manufacturer AGROB-BUCHTAL show nature beginning to claim the Oasia Hotel Downtown in Singapore. WOHA Architects’ 30-story scheme was designed to be a “verdant tower of green” in the heart of the city’s financial district.

The tower’s red aluminum mesh cladding has begun to sprout a lush landscaping, consisting of 21 different species of creepers. The colorful flowers and green leaves provide food for birds and insects, while the reaction of the creepers to different light, wind, and shade conditions come together to form a natural mosaic.

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WOHA has released an update of their first office skyscraper for China, as their Vanke Yun City scheme tops out in Shenzhen. Manifesting as three tower blocks attached to a central T-shaped core, the scheme seeks to present “an alternative office tower typology that responds to the sub-tropical climate in Shenzhen.”

Set against the backdrop of ubiquitous post-modernist skyscrapers, the 1.6 million-square-foot (150,000 square-meter) scheme aims to “radically transform the soulless skyscraper into a highly liveable, humane, and sustainable micro-vertical city.”

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As part of the MEXTRÓPOLI festival in Mexico City early last month, Singapore-based firm WOHA debuted their first exhibition in the Latin America, GARDEN CITY MEGA CITY. WOHA's architecture introduces biodiversity into public spaces, turning high-rise courtyards and hallways into teeming community assets. In this exhibition, the architects show how their work has addressed both climate change and the social challenges that occur as a result of rapid (upward) urban development.

In honor of World Photo Day (August 19th) ArchDaily wanted to thank the photographers who bring to life the projects that we publish every day. So we asked architects to weigh in on the work of some of our most-appreciated architecture photographers. Here, Richard Hassell of WOHA writes on behalf of Patrick Bingham-Hall.