Awards: The Latest Architecture and News

The World Architecture Festival has announced the shortlist for its 2015 awards. The world's largest architectural awards program, WAF received more than 700 entires from architects and designers representing 47 countries. Some of the shortlisted architects include Foster + Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, Herzog & de Meuron, OMA, Buro Ole Scheeren and BIG.

All finalists will be invited to present their project live at the festival in November at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore to a "super jury" that will include Sou Fujimoto, Peter Cook, and ArchDaily editor-in-chief David Basulto. A winner for each of the awards' 31 categories will be selected. From this, an overarching World Building or Future Project of the Year award will be selected. Book your tickets today (here) and read on to for the complete WAF 2015 awards' shortlist.

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The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has shortlisted four buildings for the annual "Best Tall Building Awards." Considered to be the four best skyscrapers of the year, the buildings have been named from each of the four competing regions in the world - Americas; Asia and Australia; Europe; the Middle East and Africa - from nominees representing 33 countries. One of the buildings will be crowned the world's best at a ceremony this November.

The four top skyscrapers for 2015 are...

Norman Foster has been awarded the Louis Kahn Memorial Award, an annual award that was established in 1983 to recognize "excellence in architecture" in honor of one of Philadelphia’s most influential architects.

"I am deeply honored to receive this award, particularly as I studied for my master’s degree at Kahn’s Yale University Art Gallery in 1961," said Foster. "I have been hugely influenced by his work, which is still as fresh today as it was then. I was privileged to meet Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture and to later teach there.”

The American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) Housing Knowledge Community, together with the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has announced two selections for the 2015 AIA/HUD Secretary Awards, which recognize innovative housing projects with excellence in design. This year's projects were selected in the Excellence in Affordable Housing Design and Creating Community Connection categories.

The Excellence in Affordable Housing Design Award was awarded to Brooks + Scarpa for their Step Up project in Santa Monica, California, which embodies the award’s recognition of “architecture that demonstrates overall excellent design responses to the needs and constraints of affordable housing."

Gossens Bachman Architects was announced as the winner of the Creating Community Connection Award for their Co-op Plaza Redevelopment in Brattleboro, Vermont. This award “recognizes projects that incorporate housing within other community amenities for the purposes of either revitalization or planned growth.”

More about the winners, after the break…

The 2015 Nykredit Architecture Prize has been awarded to Gottlieb Paludan Architects (GPA) for their contribution to the design of public utility and industrial buildings. Founded by the Nykredit Foundation, the 500,000-DKK prize has become Scandinavia’s foremost architectural award, with past winners including Jørn Utzon, Bjarke Ingels and CEBRA.

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The Graham Foundation has awarded over $490,000 in "Grants to Individuals" of 63 "outstanding projects" that "engage original ideas in architects." From a photographic survey of Le Corbusier's completed works to an online oral history regarding efforts to building housing for homeless individuals living with HIV and AIDS in New York City, the awarded projects range from participatory workshops to exhibitions and documentary films.

As The Graham Foundation says, each awarded project "advances new scholarship in the field of architecture, fuel creative experimentation and critical dialogue, and expand opportunities for public engagement with architecture and its role in contemporary society."

View all 63 awarded projects, after the break.

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With a record number of entries, the 2015 Canterbury Awards, organized by the New Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA), honored 25 Canterbury-based designs spanning 10 categories. The esteemed awards recognize and promote projects that are exceptionally sensitive to both their environment and occupants. Prevalent in this year's awards was the theme of rebuilding, as several projects were realized despite earthquakes impeding their construction, resulting in innovative designs that adapted to the unforeseen setbacks.

Among 2015's top recipients are Warren and Mahoney with six awards, and Sheppard & Rout and Athfield Architects, whose work garnered four and three honors, respectively. All of the winning projects will compete for the NZIA's highest recognition in the awards program, the New Zealand Architecture Awards, to be announced in early November. See the full list of winning projects after the break.

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The Copper Development Association (CDA) has announced its selections for the 2015 North American Copper in Architecture Awards (NACIA), now in their eighth year. The awards celebrate stellar projects that incorporate copper in their designs. The 12 award-winning works span three categories and include educational, residential and healthcare buildings in addition to historic landmarks.

Winners were selected by a panel of industry professionals based on their overall design, incorporation and treatment of copper, and distinction in either innovation or historic restoration. 

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The European Conference of Leading Architects has announced the winners of the 2015 ECOLA Award. The biennial prize, now in its eighth year, honors projects for their use of plaster. This year, two projects won first prize, including Portuguese architect Álvaro Fernandes Andrade for his Pocinho Center for High Performance Rowing in Vila Nova de Foz Côa, and three projects received honorable mention. Each project was selected from 149 shortlisted projects by a five-person jury, chaired by Peter Cook.

View all five winning projects, after the break. 

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From a shortlist of 68 buildings, 38 London projects have been awarded the 2015 RIBA London Awards for architectural excellence, the city's most prestigious design honor. The awards highlight projects that embody exceptional merit in their designs and positively impact the lives of their occupants. This year's winners include three arts and leisure buildings, 11 educational and community facilities, 16 residential designs, and eight commercial buildings.

All of these designs will be further considered for the RIBA National Awards, to be announced in June.

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London’s Design Museum has announced the category winners of the prestigious “Design of the Year” award. The winner of this year's Architecture Category is the Anacleto Angelini UC Innovation Center designed by Alejandro Aravena.

The Architectural League of New York has announced the winners of its 2015 Prize for Young Architects + Designers. Launched in 1981 and organized by a committee comprising League Programs Director Anne Rieselbach and a selection of winners from last year, the Architectural League Prize is one of the United States' most prestigious awards for young architects, recognizing provocative work and offering a platform for the winners to disseminate their ideas. This year's theme, "Authenticity," asked designers how technological changes in computation, visualization, material intelligence, and fabrication technologies are altering our perception of design and the role of the architect.

The jury for the prize consisted of Keller Easterling, Sanford Kwinter, Michael Meredith, Lyn Rice, and Billie Tsien, as well as previous winners Carrie Norman, John Rhett Russo, and Jenny Sabin. As part of their prize, in June the six winning practices will present a series of lectures, and their work will be on display in an exhibition during the summer.

Read on for the complete list of winners.

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Videos

Thomas Heatherwick and PlanGrid co-founder Tracy Young have been ranked in Fast Company's top 100 Most Creative People in Business list for 2015. Topped by an ASU professor who is fighting ebola with tobacco, the list features some of the world's most powerful creatives, including Google VP Rajan Anandan, who's working to get everyone online, and 3D printing pioneer Jennifer Lewis of Materials Lead.

Coming in at number 24, Heatherwick is being lauded for "collapsing the walls within design," says FastCo. Working on projects of all scales, from the London Olympic cauldron to a proposed $130 million floating park in New York, Heatherwick's practice is often labeled as "multidisciplinary" - a misconception challenged by Heatherwick, who told the magazine his work falls under "one discipline: solving functional problems and trying to make a difference."

Michelle Tianhui Chen, a Master's candidate at the Yale School of Architecture, has won Robert A.M. Stern Architects' $10,000 RAMSA Travel Fellowship. With the award, Chen will travel to India where she will study the architectural shift from a diverse fabric of expressive design languages to a politically and ethnically neutral vocabulary.

"In our world of increasingly ubiquitous gleaming towers, clean in form but cleansed of details, looking to centuries-old traditions might be a means toward reestablishing human attachment to our everyday surroundings," says Ms. Chen. Her proposal promises to "culminate in a book of drawings and text that attempts to chart a path to a more balanced architecture—one which does not forsake cultural expression for a shallow conception of political order."

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has announced the winners of its 2015 National Design Award. Taking top honors, the late Michael Graves has been honored with the "Lifetime Achievement" award for "broadening the role of architects and raising public interest in good design as essential to the quality of everyday life."

MOS Architects was also selected to receive the "Architecture Design" award. The New York-based studio, founded by principals Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith in 2005, was lauded by the jury for their "academic research [that] occurs in parallel to the real-world constraints and contingencies of practice."

LAMP Lighting has revealed its top picks for this year’s Lamp Lighting Solutions Awards. Now in their 6^th year, the awards recognize projects that effectively explore the intersections of architecture, interior design, and landscaping with original, innovative, and sustainable lighting. With record internationalization, this year’s awards received 598 submitted projects from 54 countries worldwide.

The Lamp Lighting Solutions Awards span the categories of Architectural Outdoor Lighting, Indoor Lighting, Urban and Landscape Lighting, and Students Proposals. Winners will be announced at a ceremony in Barcelona in June, and will receive monetary prizes between € 2,000 and € 8,000. Additionally, one professional will receive the “Life of Light” award for committing his or her career to lighting.

See all the finalists after the break.

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Eleven buildings have been announced as winners of Docomomo US' 2015 Modernism in America Awards (#ModernismAwards), of which includes the Frederick Dunn-designed Lewis and Clark Branch Library that is currently scheduled to be demolished. Each awarded project is "emblematic of the work going on all over the country and represent buildings and building typologies of postwar society in the United States." It is hoped that these awards will shed light on the importance of preserving modern architecture. Take a look at the winners, after the break.

Ten projects have been named the top examples of sustainable and ecological design by the AIA and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) for the year 2015. Now in its 19th edition, the COTE Top Ten Awards program recognizes projects that adhere to the highest integration of natural systems and technology to produce spaces that positively impact their surroundings and minimize their environmental footprints.

All of the projects will be honored at the 2015 AIA National Convention and Design Exposition in Atlanta. See this year's top ten sustainable designs, after the break.

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