Awarded Competitions: The Latest Architecture and News

Architectural competitions play a crucial role in developing the architectural profession and in advancing the quality of the built environment. They are also an opportunity for architects to showcase their creativity and experiment with innovative or unexpected architectural solutions, be it for real or imagines contexts. This week's curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights different competition-winning designs submitted by the ArchDaily Community.

From a spa and wellness center seamlessly integrated into the mountainous landscape of Austria to a refurbished city center that creates opportunities for social interaction in one of Bulgaria’s largest pedestrian city centers, the round-up spans various programs, scales, and attitudes toward the built or natural environment. The selected projects represent explorations in various design solutions, materials, and construction methods. They also showcase the broadness of possible responses ignited by site-specific conditions, from the volcanic landscape of Iceland, to the picturesque hills of the Kerala region in India or the lively central plaza in one of Israel’s largest cities.

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The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (Mitma) revealed in November 2022 the winning proposal for the curation and exhibition design of the Spanish Pavilion at the 18th edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale, which will take place from May 21 to November 26, 2023. Developed by Eduardo Castillo Vinuesa and Manuel Ocaña, "Foodscapes" focuses on the biennale's theme "The Laboratory of the future", by choosing as the object of its research the architecture related to the food production, distribution, and consumption chain, from the domestic to the territorial level.

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On April 6, SPACE10 will introduce a global design competition to reimagine home — using AI. Over the past year, generative AI tools have enhanced imaginative and creative capabilities, allowing millions of people to visualise worlds beyond those we ever thought possible. In a first of its kind competition, SPACE10 challenges participants to apply new AI tools to future homes and cities. Regenerative Futures is part competition, part open-source research, and open to everyone. The competition encourages play and imagination to create visual concepts of future homes, communities, and cities that help address some of the biggest challenges facing everyday life.

BIG has won a proposal to design a 300 m tall residential tower and a 250 m tall office tower for the Guiwan district, located in the metropolitan city of Qianhai, what is most commonly known as the international finance city of China. Part of the new development plan for Qianhai Bay, the Prisma Towers aim to transform the greater bay area. The project will include workspaces, residences, and 20,000m2 of leveled public spaces.

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Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) announced the winners of the 2022 edition. From a pool of 463 projects nominated for the 15th Award Cycle (2020-2022), the six winners show examples of architectural excellence in the fields of contemporary design, social housing, community improvement and development, historic preservation, reuse and area conservation, as well as landscape design and improvement of the environment. Two projects from Bangladesh, one from Indonesia, Iran, Lebanon, and Senegal, will share the UDS 1 million award, one of the largest in architecture.

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The A' Design Awards - the world's leading annual international juried design competition - were established to promote and recognize the best design work in all countries and in all creative disciplines. The Award has 100 main categories, including Architecture, Building and Structure Design, Interior Space and Exhibition Design, and Furniture Design, in addition to others related to the world of Lighting, Landscape, Building Materials, and many others. This year's edition is now open for entries; designers can register their submissions here.

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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UNStudio has been announced as the winner of the international competition "Un Iași pentru Viitor" to design a new residential district in the historical center of Iași, Romania. For this competition, organized by Iulius company, four offices have been invited to participate, Foster + Partners, MVRDV, UNStudio, and Zaha Hadid Architects. The main challenge of the competition brief was designing a building well integrated into a complex urban environment marked by historic monuments of different ages, new archeological discoveries, and open public spaces and gardens. The winning proposal, titled „Bridging Time, Bridging Communities,” aims to offer a coherent response to the particularities of the site.

Harvard University Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) has announced Marina Otero as the winner of the 2022 Wheelwright Prize. The 100,000 USD grant funds two years of research and travel to support contemporary architecture's investigative approaches, with an emphasis on globally minded research. The winning proposal, “Future Storage: Architectures to Host the Metaverse”, examines a new architecture paradigm for storing digital data. The project looks at how reimagining digital infrastructures could provide answers to the unprecedented demands facing the world today. The field research, data collection, and prototype development will result in an open-source manual for data center architecture design containing examples of ecological, circular, and egalitarian data storage models.

As the world's leading annual international juried design competition, the A' Design Awards were established to promote and recognize the best design work in all countries and in all creative disciplines. The Award has 100 main categories, including some of the most popular categories such as Architecture, Building and Structure Design, Interior Space and Exhibition Design, and Furniture Design, in addition to others related to the world of Lighting, Landscape, Building Materials, and many others. This year's edition is now open for entries; designers can register their submissions here.

Luís Pedro Pinto has won the tender to expand The Order of Architects Headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal. Selected out of 66 works presented, part of a public design competition, the project, according to the jury, was praised for “its cohesion, coherence and unitary image”.

The HOME competition 2019, organized by architectural initiative arch out loud, has released its winning projects. The annual challenge that pushed the limits of adaptability and innovation, asked designers “What is the future of HOME?”

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YAC - Young Architects Competitions - and Arte Sella announce the winners of Calamity Atelier, a competition of ideas that was launched last November and aimed to regenerate the greatest and most prestigious art park in the world.

For the last 6 years, the Fairy Tales competition has captured the imagination of designers and architects around the world. Last year's record breaking competition drew entries from over 60 countries, making the competition once again the largest annual architecture competition in the world. For the seventh year of the competition, Blank Space is proud to partner with ArchDaily, Archinect, and Bustler.

Fentress Architects announced the winners of the 2019 Fentress Global Challenge, the international annual student competition. For this 7th edition, under the theme of envisioning the airport of the future in the year 2075, students from more than 50 countries participated in the contest, and more than 500 applications were registered.

In their most recent design competition, Bee Breeders partnered with Urban Zoo Coworking to seek a signature style for Urban Zoo’s coworking spaces. Viewed as a prototype to be adapted to each new venue, these interior designs needed to be customizable for various users. Common inhabitants of Urban Zoo Coworking’s spaces include freelancers, start-ups, and small businesses who need a workspace to meet their different creative needs.

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Architecture, in all its forms, has the innate ability to trigger our emotions and alter our perceptions. Consequently, a lot of light is currently being shed on the relation between architecture, landscape, and health.

In the 2018 edition of the Blank Space Fairytales Competition, Katie Flaxman from Studio 31 Landscape Architects, wrote a story of a father, Horace, an architect suffering from late-stage dementia and his offspring, Rowan. The fiction describes Horace’s journey in different healthcare institutions and how his presence in a building and landscape properly designed for well-being, improved his psychological and physical health.

Here are some excerpts from Flaxman's fictional story, illustrated by architectural artist Sam Wilson.

Architecture research initiative “arch out loud” has announced the winners of their “Waste: Multi-Purpose Stadium” competition, asking participants to speculate on the design of a multi-purpose stadium at the former Olusosun Landfill in Lagos, Nigeria.

The competition was organized in response to the fact that the world creates more than a billion tons of garbage per year, most of which is incinerated, buried, and explored to landfills. As populations and major cities expand, so too must our “ability to reverse wasteful tendencies and begin living more efficiently and sustainably.”