Launched in 2017, The Architecture Drawing Prize is organized annually to celebrate and showcase the art of architectural drawing across multiple formats and techniques. Co-curated by Make Architects, Sir John Soane's Museum and the World Architecture Festival (WAF), and supported by Iris Ceramica Group with ArchDaily as media partner, the ninth edition has announced the 11 recipients. This year, the drawings were selected from 168 entries from around the world, with a special prize for hand-drawing. An overall recipient will be announced at Sir John Soane's Museum in London in early 2027, where The Architecture Drawing Prize exhibition will run from January 27 to February 28, 2027.
The World Architecture Festival invited entries of all types and forms, from conceptual, technical or construction drawings to cutaways, perspective views, speculative scenarios and transgressive formats. Entries were open to architects, designers and students and evaluated by a professional jury on technical skill, originality of approach and the ability to convey an architectural idea. Acknowledging the growing influence of AI tools and techniques as well as the evolving nature of drawing itself, the awards are judged on an overall basis rather than in category silos. The special prize for hand-drawing, established to recall the original spirit of the awards, was awarded to Ross Cameron for his pencil drawing of the scaffolding that has surrounded Glasgow School of Art since the fires of 2014 and 2018, "capturing the tension between permanence and impermanence in a structure intended to be temporary."
From memory and housing to addiction, climate, myth, fiction, perception and public consultation, the drawings recognized this year reflect a broad range of subjects, scales and techniques. In addition to Ross Cameron's drawing, works engaging with memory and history include Ioana Enache's The People's Palace, an archive of spoken testimony within the foundations of the unfinished Romanian Opera, and Bojana Sićović's Urban Scenography, which examines social housing in New Belgrade. Javier García Goicoechea's In the Eye of the Storm uses six floor plans to trace the progression of addiction through the spaces of a casino, offering a psychological analysis.
Contemporary climate and ecological concerns appear in Annabelle Tan's Post-Tropical Landscapes, which shows vine-covered concrete structures for Singapore, and in Laurie Chetwood's Re-enchanted City, which imagines the resettlement of an abandoned metropolis. Alexandra Kazandzhyan's Floating Feast, a drifting ziggurat formed by a single table, and Gary Polk's Gilgamesh, a kaiju-like assemblage of architectural fragments, point to the speculative and fantastical possibilities of drawing. The selection also includes research-based and artistic practices, such as Michael Chapman's 49-panel map of the fictional Fox River prison and Ben Johnson's drawing-and-paint exploration of a gravity-free corridor, as well as Jarrell Goh's illustrative masterplan for Cambridge Business Park, produced for public consultation.
For this edition, the drawings were selected by Ken Shuttleworth, founder of Make Architects; artists Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell; Lily Jencks, executive chair of the Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House; Federica Minozzi, group CEO of Iris Ceramica Group; Narinder Singh Sagoo MBE, head of design communications at Foster + Partners; Erin McKellar, assistant curator of exhibitions at Sir John Soane's Museum; and Paul Finch, WAF program director and chair of the jury. Selected drawings will also be displayed at the World Architecture Festival, taking place at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from November 18 to 20, 2026.
Other organizations in architecture and design have announced awards in recent weeks. Pritzker Prize laureates Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal have been named the recipients of the 2027 Le Prix Charlotte Perriand, organized annually by the Créateurs Design Awards. In October, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announced two major awards: Nakshabid Architects' alternative factory model in Bangladesh was named the recipient of the RIBA International Prize 2026, while the Lion Green Road housing development in London by Mary Duggan Architects and RUFFARCHITECTS received the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026. Looking ahead, the second edition of the ArchDaily Student Project Awards is now open for submissions, asking students around the world one question: What can architecture enable in the city?
