This year's World Architecture Festival Awards shortlist has been named, and it’s a future-focused one, with upwards of 40 percent of the nominees in the Future Project category, which, the organization says, counts as “an unusually high percentage.”
Among the projects coming out of the U.S. this year are a residence named High Horse Ranch in Northern California by Kieran Timberlake; Innovation Curve, a Silicon Valley flexible office environment by Form4 Architecture; Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos’ Sweetwater Student Housing; and the The Windturbine, an Experimental category entry by Scott Brownrigg with Crown Architecture & Consulting.
Paul Finch, program director of World Architecture Festival, said, “It is encouraging to see so many entries from the U.S., and doubly encouraging because so many of them relate to ideas and approaches for the future.”
Among the completed project entries are Miami Design District by SB Architects, in the shopping category; the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta by HOK, in the Sport category; and Zaha Hadid Architects’ King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Large and small firms alike made the cut, with some of the notable international firms including OMA, Foster & Partners, BIG, China Architecture Design Group, Leigh & Orange, Aedas, Grimshaw, Woods Bagot, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Heatherwick Studio, and FJMT.
In November, each talent will compete for category prizes at the World Architecture Festival, where they'll present their projects live to international juries. Winners across each category will then compete against one another for the distinctions of World Building of the Year, Future Project of the Year, Interior of the Year and Landscape of the Year.
The so-called Super Jury, which judges the World Building of the Year, is chaired by Nathalie de Vries, director and co-founder of Dutch practice MVRDV, with panelists including Sir David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates; Manuelle Gautrand, principal at Manuelle Gautrand Architecture; and Li Xiaodong, founder of Li Xiaodong Atelier and professor at Tsinghua University School of Architecture.
