Every year many architects use the platform of various awards not just to compete but also showcase their innovative designed projects to the world.
The projects which aim at user and context oriented design and sustainability have always gained popularity among all major architectural award organizations. Here are a few of the best award winning projects of 2019 across multiple platforms and categories.
Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) established by Aga Khan in 1977, aims to identify and reward architectural concepts that successfully address the needs and aspirations of Muslim societies in the fields of contemporary design, social housing, community development and improvement, restoration, reuse and area conservation, as well as landscape design and improvement of the environment.
1. ALIOUNE DIOP UNIVERSITY TEACHING AND RESEARCH UNIT
Location: Bambey, Senegal
Architect: IDOM, Bilbao, Spain
Award: Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2017-2019 cycle
Category: – –
IDOM’s prize-winning Alioune Diop University Teaching and Research Unit is a lecture building in Senegal. A part of a rural academic campus which serves a flourishing student population, it incorporates sustainable elements such as a perforated masonry wall for air flow and an expansive roof canopy for shade; both adding to the drama of the architecture. Following sustainability principles and incorporating familiar construction techniques, the project succeeded in keeping costs and maintenance demands to a minimum, while still making a bold architectural statement.
2. PALESTINIAN MUSEUM
Location: Birzeit, Palesetin
Architect: Heneghan Peng Architects, Dublin, Ireland
Award: Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2017-2019 cycle
Category: – –
This Project in Birzeit, built atop a hill of terraced gardens with a view of the Mediterranean, is a recipient of the LEED gold certification. A sharply angled structure, clad in limestone quarried in nearby Bethlehem. The zigzagging forms of the Museum and hillside gardens are inspired by the surrounding agricultural terraces, linking with the land and Palestinian heritage.
3. REVITALIZATION OF MUHARRAQ
Location: Muharraq, Bahrain
Architect: Authority for Culture & Antiquities Conservation Department, Manama, Bahrain
Award: Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2017-2019 cycle
Category: – –
Highlighting the World Heritage site’s pearling history, this project was first initiated as a series of restoration and adaptive reuse projects. The project evolved into a comprehensive programme entitled Pearling Path, with an aim to re-balance its demographic makeup, alluring local families back through improvements to the environment and provision of community and cultural venues.
4. THE PUBLIC SPACES DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
Location: Various locations in Tatarstan, Russian Federation
Architect: –
Award: Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2017-2019 cycle
Category: – –
An ongoing program in the Republic of Tatarstan, has revamped 328 public spaces all over the country including infrastructure for cultural activities. The ambitious Public Spaces Development Programme seeks to counter the trend toward the privatization of real estate by refocusing priorities on quality public spaces and to offer an equal quality of environment to all Tatar citizens by reflecting on each place’s unique culture and history.
Architizer A+ Awards is one of the largest awards program focused on promoting and celebrating the year’s best architecture and products. Its mission is to nurture the appreciation of meaningful architecture in the world and champion those products that are integral to bringing great buildings to life.
5. DONGSI 5L MEET
Location: Dongcheng District, Beijing, China
Architect: DAGA Architects
Award: Architizer A+ Awards 2019
Category: Commercial-Co working Space
Dongli 5L meet, is an innovative space in an old community in Beijing. The design concept of the project originated from enclosing the culture of a traditional Chinese courtyard. The “floating island” is formed by the cut-out on the floor. The traditional architectural culture is detailed with modern techniques. This transparent display space in the internal space becomes the most important feature. “Floating island” is the most efficient use of the region with a hundred activities per month.
6. LIGHT MUSIC
Location: Washington DC, United States
Architect: A + A Studio
Award: Architizer A+ Awards 2019
Category: Concept+ light + architecture
Light music is an immersive lobby and lounge, created for a residential project in Washington. It combines digital fabrication methods with artisanal techniques to create a specific interior world. The fabricated custom backlit panels transform it into a work of art visualized like patterns on piano rolls, allowing light to glow through the notes and create a 3-D aura.
7. GENERALI TOWER
Location: Milano, Italy
Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects
Award: Architizer A+ Awards 2019
Category: Commercial-Office – High Rise (16+ Floors)
The 44-storey structure, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, offering broader views across the Italian city, rises with a realignment of its successive floors through incremental twisting in relation to the floors above and below. Its double-facade of sun-deflecting louvers flanked by glazing provides extremely efficient environmental control for each floor and ensures excellent energy performance, contributing to its LEED Platinum certification by the US Green Building Council.
8. 8111
Location: Bogota, Colombia
Architect: Taller de arquitectura de bogotá
Award: Architizer A+ Awards 2019
Category: Commercial-Office – Mid Rise (5-15 Floors)
This diagrid type structure system, being associated with diagonals and not with straight beams and columns implied a more demanding integration of structure and functionality making it an iconic building in the city. In addition, the inherent “V” shapes were rescaled in its own vertical development providing a solution in order to achieve optimal visibility to the retail areas.
9. BOOLEAN OPERATOR
Location: Suzhou Shi, China
Architect: Marc Fornes / Theverymany
Award: Architizer A+ Awards 2019
Category: Commercial-Pop-Ups & Temporary
Boolean operator is a large scale outdoor pavilion installed by Marc Fonnes which interrupts the usual traffic, acting as an emerging environment. The massive scale and delicate white aluminum, makes an impression from a distance. It’s a terrain for play where a continuous surface branches out columns which recombine into a shell.
10. THE SHADOW GARDEN OF WORLD HORTICULTURE
Location: Yangzhou, China
Architect: Chybik+Kristof Associated Architects
Award: Architizer A+ Awards 2019
Category: Concepts – plus – Architecture + Landscape
The building is one of the five satellite pavilions located in the first completed phase of 2021 World Horticulture Expo site in Yangzhou. Reflecting the beauty of local landscape and plants as well as its programmatic requirement, which is an educational place, the design generates a new relationship between landscape and architecture. A special washed granolithic finish is used to simulate the complex texture and vitality of nature.
Rethinking the Future- Global Design & Architecture Design Awards (GADA) is one of the most Renowned Awards in the field of Architecture and Design. The program aims to bring exceptional works in the field of Architecture the prestige they deserve. The objective of these awards is to raise awareness around the strategies Architects and Designers are employing to deal with the contemporary global challenges, and to bring the best of such projects into the light to inspire the next generation.
11. I GIARDINI DI MACCHI 61
Location: Milano, Italy
Architect: SA- Architecture
Award: RTF- Global Design & Architecture Design Awards 2019
Category: Housing (More than 5 Floors) (Concept)
The project aims to realize one prestigious and exclusive downtown residential building with its new kind of modernity given by the wide and bright windows and its wise use of materials; that are highly complimented by the strategically inserted green spaces, giving every single flat a private garden. The architectural language of this building is well-integrated with its surrounding, declaring its Milanese imprint by a frame-based design of its facades.
12. SIGNATURE TOWER ONE
Location: United States
Architect: Adrian Smith Gordon Gill
Award: RTF- Global Design & Architecture Design Awards 2019
Category: Commercial (concept)
Signature Tower one is a project that was designed with advanced sustainability features for a new district in Dubai. The design brings an opportunity to make an international statement that showcases a high-performance building in the region. The ultimate goal of the tower is to achieve net-zero energy use, carbon neutrality, and water independence. These targets are set for energy savings, CO2 emissions reductions, and potable water conservation and are based on high-performance design measures. The building’s ladder-like form gives the project greater structural stability, while its “rungs” create a conceptual and programmatic connection between the two halves.
13. FOUR SEASONS AT THE SURFCLUB
Location: United States
Architect: Kobi Karp
Award: RTF- Global Design & Architecture Design Awards 2019
Category: Mixed Use (Built)
The luxury hospitality and residential project designed by Kobi Karp Architects, has a unifying strategy to introduce natural light, and the establishment of visual corridors both of which will connect the old with the new buildings. The overall design is a juxtaposition of historic South Florida and modern Miami lifestyle. The two blend harmoniously in its interior and exterior spaces. This project has been successful in incorporating the historic structure and remaining sensitive to the gracious, low-rise context of Surfside, Florida and further exploring the relationship between structure and sea.
14. LINCOLN THEATER
Location: United States
Architect: Kobi Karp
Award: RTF- Global Design & Architecture Design Awards 2019
Category: Commercial (Built)
Originally designed by Thomas W. Lamb in 1936, Kobi Karp Architects designed the restoration and adaptive reuse of this four-story theater structure as retail and offices. The restoration of the historic Art-Deco facade strives to enhance the pedestrian environment by introducing a number of retail spaces on the ground level facing the heavily trafficked Lincoln Road, Maintaining parts of the original lobby. Compromising one large structure, the rehabilitation features a historic double-volume theater space.
15. PALAU SUNSET HARBOUR
Location: United States
Architect: Kobi Karp
Award: RTF- Global Design & Architecture Design Awards 2019
Category: Housing (Up to 5 Floors) (Built)
A traditionally planned mid-rise infill city block of residential units, designed for the climate and natural environment of South Florida, the project is designed around a sheltered ‘Secret Garden’ at the center of the site, a common area which evolved from Miami’s archetypal courtyards, breezeways, and other indoor/outdoor living spaces. Under a thin concrete canopy adorned with hanging plants, and behind a mixture of apartments and townhouses, the ‘Secret Garden’ is a new variation on that archetypal Floridian living space.
16. CHURCH NIANING
Location: Paris, France
Architect: Nicolas Vernoux-Thélot
Award: RTF- Global Design & Architecture Design Awards 2019
Category: Cultural (Built)
This church is located in Nianing, South of Dakar, or what is known as “The Shell Coast”. The project takes the shape of a shell as its starting point and develops it architecturally, In accordance with the constraints of the brief, the site and the bioclimatic context. The building closes in the north, to protect itself from the hot and dry winds of the Harmattan, and opens towards the west to welcome the cooling trade winds from the sea. The bell tower functions as a, “wind tower” that uses natural convention to bring the trade winds into the building and create natural ventilation.
Prix Versailles – The world Architecture and Design award, established in 2015, is a series of architectural prizes which are discerned annually. It aims to underscore “the role that economic agents of all sectors may play in beautifying and improving our living environment”. It means to promote “the creation of quality spaces in every inhabited area”. Its ambition is for everyday architecture to be a tool for a form of sustainable development including ecology, society and culture.
17. SIX SENSES BHUTAN
Location: Thimphu, Bhutan
Architect: Habitat Architects
Award: Prix Versailles Awards 2019
Category: Hotel
Six Senses, Bhutan presented a unique and challenging project in terms of size and location, by being separated into smaller hotels across a number of locations. It is a blend of local design styles with modern luxuries. The lodges showcase the diversity and special character of each valley. Offering sweeping views, the spacious interiors are framed by subtle references to Bhutanese architecture. Sustainability lives at the foundation of Six Senses Bhutan and is reflected through active management of energy, water, waste, purchasing and chemical usage.
18. COAL DROPS YARD
Location: London, United Kingdom
Architect: Heatherwick Studio
Award: Prix Versailles Awards 2019
Category: Shopping Mall
Originally built to receive coal from northern England, the structure was previously used in light industry and warehousing. Now the coal drops have been extended along the inner gabled roofs of the warehouses linking the two viaducts together, to create a new public space and retail destination. The studio lead a sensitive restoration of the Victorian structures to preserve their historical character.
The Progressive Architecture (P/A) , established in 1954, aims to recognize un-built projects demonstrating overall design excellence and innovation.
19. DL 1310 APARTMENTS
Location: Mexico
Architect: Young & Ayata with Michan Architecture
Award: 66th Progressive Architecture Awards 2019
Category: Multifamily
The DL 1310 Apartments, mid-market residential building was described by jury critic J. Frano Violich as, “providing a sense of thickness and depth that is very skillful and super effective.” This building is the product of extensive research into the technical capabilities of and local traditions in concrete design, to solve the issues of a challenging site. The pressed apertures into the envelope at a sharp angle, create a pattern of trapezoidal windows that make each apartment different from the next. The slanted glazing within a single unit makes a dramatic shift in perspective.
20. UCLA MARGO LEAVIN GRADUATE ART STUDIOS
Location: Culver City, CA
Architect: Johnston Marklee
Award: 66th Progressive Architecture Awards 2019
Category: Education
UCLA MARGO, a massive wooden and concrete warehouse campus, enhances the progressive artistic renaissance of the area. Designed for LEED Gold certification, the structure integrates systems and sustainable materials throughout the construction. It’s made from the exterior tilt-up concrete pillowed pattern walls and the soaring open wood truss roof structure, which helps distinguish the building while it integrates into the neighborhood.
