COMPILED BY Gina Dionisio
The World Architecture Festival has released its 2023 shortlist of buildings up for an award this year.
The World Architecture Festival (WAF) revealed the 422 shortlist for this year’s festival, with entries from all around the world, including South Africa.
WAF represents the world’s biggest live judged architectural awards programme, where all finalists present their projects to a panel of judges at the international festival. This year’s international judging panels will include Lily Jencks, Nigel Coates, Rafiq Azam, Albert Williamson-Taylor, Tracy Meller, Jason Bruges, Annette Fisher, Roland Schnizer and Issa Diabaté.
Below, in no particular order, are a few outstanding examples of projects up for awards this year.
Completed Buildings: Culture
Bamboo Dome for G20 Bali Summit | Biro | Bali
Both modern as well as traditional bamboo techniques were applied into various functions of the dome; from its main structure, its weaving, as well as its furniture, such as the dining table.
Oman Across Ages Museum | COX Architecture | Nizwa, Oman
The museum’s design uses the full panoply of architecture’s potential for expression and communication, including scale, geometry, form, light and vistas both as purely expressive devices and also to offer a wide range of possibilities for installations, displays and performances.
Teatra Letni | Flanagan Lawrence | Szczecin, Poland
The roof is the most striking element of the new amphitheatre, a thin fabric grid-shell, which hugs the form of the natural hillside amphitheatre, passing through and under the arch and dramatically rising over the stage. Our aim was to create a “window” for the audience to view the scenery of Lake Rusałka beyond.
MPavilion 2022 | all(zone) | Melbourne, Australia
MPavilion 2022 comprises an innovative three-layered marquee that explores the potential of tensile architecture. The uppermost layer is a brightly coloured fishing net, giving the structure a tactile quality. The middle layer is crafted from an STFE membrane fabricated by French manufacturer Serge Ferrari. As transparent as glass but 10 times lighter, this weather-proof polyarylate mesh has never before been used in Australia. The lowermost layer comprises a waffle of colourful fabric that moves with the breeze and creates dappled light, evoking the feeling of resting under trees.
Completed Buildings: Production Energy and Logistics
Angsila Oyster Scaffolding Pavilion | CHAT Architects | Angsila, Thailand
The pavilion design draws on and “bastardizes” the widely deployed bamboo scaffolding, traditionally used for oyster cultivation. The pavilion is composed of two parts- The permanent bottom portion is a fully functioning oyster farm, while the temporary top portion, a disassemble-able red-canopied bamboo platform, is utilized for demonstrations of oyster-cultivation, oyster-preparation, and oyster-tasting.
Toagosei Hydrogen station Tokushima | Osamu Morishita Architect and Associates | Nakajima, Kawauchi-cho, Tokushima-shi, Japan
A translucent cloud-like canopy floats in the air as a metaphor for expressing hydrogen. The cube-shaped units are covered with ETFE film and make people perceive the feeling of a balloon lightly floating in the air. Units fly around a grouping pillar called a tree, gathering together and look like a cloud or like a large tree. It is not a composition for the purpose of creating a shape, but a composition that envisions a system which covers the space ennui while being conscious of harmony with the environment. The structure gives the observers a mysterious perception like a cloud lightly floating in the air.
Completed Buildings: School
Lapalala Wilderness School | Local Studio | Limpopo, South Africa
The project is noteworthy for its context-driven materiality, using rammed earth, rock and timber in combination with concrete and masonry base structures. The rammed earth used in the walls, sourced from site excavations, plays a valuable role in the teaching of sustainable practices.
Curro Durbanville High School | BPAS Architects | Cape Town, South Africa
The brief called for a high-quality innovative school with a range of cultural and sports facilities. It was important that the design process was not isolated to a single author. The scheme came together through a collaborative engagement with learners, teachers, and other consultants. Inspiration was drawn from the surrounding landscape and the mountains in the distance, the colour of the canola fields and the materiality of existing structures located on and around the site. The design emits an exciting take on form, texture, and scale. Learning achieved through interactions is the basis of how a child develops.
Completed Buildings: Display
Panda Tower | Shanghai United Design Group Co.,Ltd. | Chengdu , China
The Panda Tower is designed for the new campus of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. It is a new cultural landmark that combines observation, exhibition, and sight-seeing.
Turrell Pavilion | Studio mk27 | Fari Island, Maldives
The building is a permeable pavilion, that allows natural light to come in and the nature surrounding it to be noticed. During nighttime, the pavilion emanates a soft light in nature. The Skyspace is structured exclusively by its timber facade, therefore, the perception of the whole ceiling is kept, without any central columns blocking it. The chamber is a manifestation of Turrell’s devotion to exploring space and light, an invitation to contemplation and wonder.
Completed Buildings: Religion
The Mosque of Light | Dabbagh Architects | Dubai, UAE
The ‘double skin’ dome also allows natural light to enter, filtering it through the internal decorative skin, which incorporates the same triangulated pattern as the rest of the building. This filtered light creates a soft naturally lit prayer space suitable for the introspective mind during prayer.
Santa Maria Goretti Church | Mario Cucinella Architects | Mormanno (Cosenza), Italy
The numinous interior, lit diaphanously from above through folds of translucent fabric hung in the form of curvaceous drapes from the 16-metre-high ceiling, has been inspired by, on the one hand, a resolute focus on the eucharist and prayer and, on the other, by the geometries of Italy’s most beautiful Baroque churches.
New Temple Complex | James Gorst Architects | Hampshire, UK
Located on the on the spur of hillside projecting westwards with expansive across the South Downs National Park, the new temple is grounded on what is believed to be an ancient ley line connecting Chapel Common to the old nunnery of Lyss Place. The new building, which is open to the public, comprises a temple, library, chapels, a multi-use community hall, public foyer and catering kitchen within newly landscaped grounds. The rationalised plan is organised as a series of orthogonal, timber framed pavilions connected by a cloistered walkway, facing onto a central courtyard garden.
Completed Buildings: House and Villa
Casa Ward | Carl Fredrik Svenstedt Architect | Sarnano, Italy
Building in this landscape is inevitably imbued with a certain ambiguity. The Casa Ward, a new present tense, is clearly built in a concrete frame, as required by strict seismic regulations, and is anchored on the slope so as to resist the movement of the earth. And yet an outer layer of stone and brick cloaks its presence, a borrowed past recycled from the ruins of a farmhouse on the site, it too destroyed by the shifting ground. It is a “risorgimento”, a Phoenix-like “resurrection” of an existing building in a totally new form. The result is a fragmented hybrid, a telescopic compression of time.
Mirai House of Arches | Sanjay Puri Architects | Rajasthan, India
A curvilinear punctuated envelope surrounds the house creating interstitial semi open spaces all along the perimeter with deeper recesses on the garden facing sides. This envelope reduces the heat gain substantially whilst providing sheltered open spaces around the house to each room.
Completed Buildings: Creative Reuse
Battersea Power Station Phase Two | WilkinsonEyre | London, UK
Battersea Power Station was built in two phases before and after the Second World War to designs by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott with interiors by J Theo Halliday. The centre of a new neighbourhood, Battersea Power Station Phase II is a true mixed-use scheme of considerable complexity. The enormous brick landmark accommodates new offices, retail, residential, event and leisure uses.
Completed Buildings: Hotel and Leisure
Iron Creek Bay Farm Stay | Misho + Associates | Sorell, Tasmania, Australia
Misho + Associates architecture showcases an intimate relationship between form and function and the essential overarching issue of sustainability. The design is purified to its essence, and the architectural record speaks directly to the process of spaces in a programmatic sense. Simple lines and expressive materials form the palette for the interiors. With environmental design at the forefront of each innovation, Misho + Associates seeks to dialogue between architectural form and context, an unrelenting attempt to understand how simple natural processes can inform architectural form.
Pusayapuri | EKAR Architects | Suphanburi, Thailand
Pusayapuri was designed with the intention to redefine the lost historical quality with a combination of construction technology and present-day materials.
Completed Buildings: Sport
China Hangzhou E-sports Centre | Central-South Architectural Design Institute co.,ltd | Hangzhou, China
The design concept closely revolves around the main body of the “interstellar vortex”, combined with the main flow lines to form a nebula-like multilateral rotating composition. The “vortex” rotates straight up from the ground, like a naturally growing organism in the landscape. Citizens can walk along the sky walkway that circles around the building until the roof garden overlooks the beautiful scenery of the park.
Completed Buildings: Civic and community
Jahad Metro Plaza | Khavarian Studio | Tehran, Iran
The previous condition of this station on the ground had facilities and buildings that were not in proportion to each other. This procedure had spread in the rest of the similar places at the entrances of the Tehran subway, ignoring pedestrians and pedestrians in an anonymous and inappropriate way in the fabric of the city, and had caused many problems for the users and local neighbours.
Completed Buildings: Higher Education and Research
Center for Computing & Data Sciences | KPMB Architects | Boston, USA
Towering boldly over the banks of the Charles River at 19 storeys, and spanning 345,000-square-feet, the Center is the largest, sustainable, operational fossil fuel-free building in Boston. Recognized by its cantilevered volumes that feature both reddish-brown-coloured diagonal louvered (to minimize solar gain and maximize shading) and gleaming mirrored sawtooth facades that rest atop the triple-glazed curtain wall that clads the structure. While contributing to the building’s distinctive linear aesthetic, these design elements also contribute to comfort and sustainability efforts, keeping the building warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.
Future Project: House
Silver Mountain | SAOTA | Aspen USA
The architectural composition of the house embodies three defining elements: At the core of its design concept lies the striking tilted roof mass, meticulously shaped to harmonize with the surrounding topography. Inspired by the mountain scape, the roof sculpture emerges as a captivating fusion of form and landscape, creating a visually cohesive connection.
Future Project: Leisure Led Development
Wuxi Film Club | SAOTA, Wuxi, China
The building is composed of scripted architectural elements to be experienced as a storyline, with elements of exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution, like the elements of a plot. The landscape folds into the building with peaks and valleys that draw the visitor into the space and rise into an incredible multi-volume central atrium that allows light to flood the internal spaces. A bold framework piercing through the landscape picks up references from the urban contextual setting while creating a strong vertical connection between what lies high above and down below. A skin comprising brushed stainless-steel fins dresses the framework and pods, just about hovering above the shaped landscape.
The Inside World Festival of Interiors shortlist will be announced later this week. The winners will be announced at the Festival in Singapore from 29 November – 1 December. View the full shortlist at worldarchitecturefestival.com.
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