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World Architecture Festival: The Latest Architecture and News

World Building of the Year and Interior of the Year revealed at 2023 World Architecture Festival

The World Architecture Festival announced the ultimate accolades of World Building of the Year, World Interior of the Year, Future Project of the Year and Landscape of the Year. A host of Special Prizes, including the International Building Beauty Prize, Best Use of Colour Prize and Small Project of the Year were also announced at the closing event, to celebrate the sixteenth edition of the festival. The announcement follows the final day of WAF, in which prize winners across all 44 categories competed for the winning titles.

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World Architecture Festival 2023: Day Two Winners Announced

The second round of award winners of the 2023 World Architecture Festival have been announced, following Day Two of live presentations at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, in which hundreds of shortlisted projects were presented by practices from around the world. Amongst today’s category award winners of the world’s largest international live-judged architectural event there were six projects from Australia and four projects each from Iran and the United Kingdom.

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World Architecture Festival 2023: Day One Winners Announced

The first award winners of the 2023 World Architecture Festival have been announced, following Day One of live presentations at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, in which hundreds of shortlisted projects were presented by practices from around the world. Amongst today’s category award winners of the world’s largest international live-judged architectural event are MAD Architects, Woods Bagot and Nextoffice, Studio of Architectural Research & Design, who won across three individual categories.

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Meet the Category Winners of the 2023 Architecture Drawing Prize

The Architecture Drawing Prize, now in its 7th edition, celebrates the art of drawing in three main categories: hand-drawn, digital, and hybrid. The Prize attracted nearly 250 drawings from around the world, a record for the competition, with the majority of entries being in the hand-drawn category. The winners of each category have been announced. The winning drawings, along with the shortlisted entries will be displayed at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore from 29 November until 1 December 2023, and at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London from 31 January to 3 March 2024. The Overall Winner will announced on 29 January 2024 as part of a webinar hosted by Sir John Soane’s Museum, ahead of the exhibition.

According to the jury, the technologies used by the entrants to find creative ways of depicting buildings generated probing discussions among the jury members, testing the nature and definition of architectural drawing. Sponsored by Iris Ceramica Group, the Architecture Drawing Prize is co-curated by Make Architects, Sir John Soane’s Museum and World Architecture Festival (WAF).

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2023 Architectural Events: A Calendar of 22 Global Occurrences from September till December

Most biennales and architecture events, especially the recent ones, have influenced and shaped the dialogue of the ones that followed. In fact, during a conversation earlier this year with Lesley Lokko, the curator of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, she explained and affirmed that “all exhibitions […] take sustenance from those that came before”, further noting that “if I look back at the dozen or so Architecture Exhibitions over the past twenty years, each one has contributed in some way to the discourse of the next.”

So far, 2023 has witnessed significant events in the architectural world, ranging from the XXIII Architecture Biennial in Santiago, Chile, and the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, KSA, to Milan Design Week and Salone del Mobile in Milan, Italy, as well as the Venice Biennale and the UIA World Congress of Architects in Copenhagen. Addressing both contextual and global themes, this year continues to contribute to the international architectural discussion.

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Call for Submissions - The Architecture Drawing Prize 2023 Entries Now Open

In partnership with Make Architects and Sir John Soane’s Museum, World Architecture Festival (WAF) announces the call for entries for the seventh edition of The Architecture Drawing Prize, sponsored by Iris Ceramica Group. Launched in 2017, the Prize was established to celebrate and showcase the art and skill of architectural drawing.

"Form Follows Fiction": An Interview with Ole Scheeren

Captivated by cinematographic references and the narrative space, Ole Scheeren's work stands out by its disruptive solutions to the present social challenges and the cities we live in. With more than 30 years of career in the architecture field, Ole Scheeren has won several awards and one of its most iconic works includes the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing when was director and partner at OMA, before founding Büro Ole Scheeren.

In this interview, documented at the World Architecture Festival 2022, Scheeren discusses the importance of the narrative of a project and the quality architecture has by building the stages where people live: "the fictional anticipation of life".

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Meet the Winners of the World Architecture Festival 2022

Quay Quarter Tower (QQT), designed by 3XN has been declared the World Building of the Year 2022 at the fifteenth annual World Architecture Festival (WAF), held in Lisbon.

The 206-meter tower, located close to the Sydney Opera House, is an office building arranged as a vertical village, creating a sense of community and providing spaces that focus on collaboration, health, well-being and external terraces.

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Day Two Winners of The World Architecture Festival Announced

Atelier TAO+C, Weston Williamson + Partners, OHLAB and JC Architecture are among the award category winners announced on the second day of the World Architecture Festival in Lisbon. The festival’s judges recognized a diverse array of completed, future and interior projects across over 20 categories.

World Architecture Festival Announced Day 1 Winners

World Architecture Festival, opened its doors yesterday in Lisbon. Following an exciting day of live presentations, in which hundreds of shortlisted projects were presented by architectural and design practices from around the world, the first award winners of the 2022 festival have been announced. Amongst the first day’s award category winners are Woods Bagot, Sanjay Puri Architects, HKS, White Arkitekter and many more.

World Architecture Festival 2022: Watch the Live Stream

Follow along during the 15th edition of the World Architecture Festival through ArchDaily's Live Stream. As the world’s biggest architectural awards program, WAF brings together more than 2,000 architects and designers to Lisbon for three days of conference programs, awards, and exhibition events from November 30 to December 2. Tune in to our Facebook live streams for a selection of lectures.

The Architectural Photography Awards Announces the 2022 Shortlist

The tenth edition of the Architectural Photography Awards has announced its shortlist, selected from entries from 64 different countries. The photographs are divided into six categories: Exterior, Interior, Sense of Place, Buildings in Use, Mobile, with Bridges being this year’s theme, and Portfolio, focusing on the theme of Transport Hubs. The photographs will be displayed at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) Lisbon in Portugal from 30th November - 2nd December. The winners, two per category, will be announced by the end of the festival.

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Jean Mah, Ole Scheeren and Ana Pinto da Silva Join Line-up of Speakers at World Architecture Festival 2022 in Lisbon

Ana Pinto da Silva, Co-Founder & CEO at Minka Homes & Communities, will give the closing keynote address at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Lisbon on Friday 2 December 2022. She will follow a stellar line-up of the industry’s most influential figures shaping the global architecture agenda over the three-day event, including Ole Scheeren, Christina Seilern and Reinier de Graaf. The festival runs from 30 November to 2 December.

World Architecture Festival Reveals the 2022 Shortlist

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The Rajasthan School by Sanjay Puri Architects, Ras, India. Image © Dinesh Mehta

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) revealed the 420 shortlist for this year’s festival, with entries from all around the world, including Portugal, Malaysia, Finland, Mexico, Turkey, Australia, Japan, India, and the UK. The awards program celebrates the best new completed buildings and landscape design projects, ranging from rural villas to contemporary religious buildings and healthcare facilities built during the pandemic.

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Enter Your Projects Into the World Architecture Festival Awards

World Architecture Festival will take place in Lisbon, from the 30 November – 2 December 2022. This year’s WAF theme is ‘Together’. Festival speakers and participants will be invited to consider how architecture is responding to the renewal of collective life post-pandemic, and in the light of commitments to combatting climate change.

Drawing from an Architect’s Perspective: Interview with Ken Shuttleworth to Mark 5 years of The Architecture Drawing Prize

This short essay, written by the author and critic Jonathan Glancey, coincides with the launch of the inaugural Architecture Drawing Prize – a competition curated by the World Architecture Festival, the Sir John Soane's Museum, and Make. The deadline for the award is the 17th of September 2021.

“Is graphicacy a word?” asks Ken Shuttleworth, founder of Make Architects and instigator of The Architecture Drawing Prize. It is. “Like literacy”, he says, “, it’s certainly what I’m interested in when looking at and judging drawings. It’s about a fluency in making and understanding them.” The Architecture Drawing Prize is in its fifth year now. “We tend to see very few hand drawings by young architects - they mostly use computers - and, today, most architectural students come from more of a maths and physics than an art background. I still believe, though, that hand drawing is very important.”

Last Week To Submit Your Projects To The 2021 World Architecture Festival

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LocHal Public Library by Civic architects, Braaksma & Roos Architectenbureau, Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse - 2019 World Building of the Year. Photo © Stijn Bollaert

The awards entry deadline is next Friday, May 7th, 2021, allowing all completed and future projects up until this date to have the chance to compete in the awards program.

For the first time, the World Architecture Festival will take place in Lisbon, from the 1-3 December 2021. The annual global awards program is now open for entries to all international architects and designers. WAF attracts more than 1000 entries each year to compete in Completed Building, Future Project and Interior categories.