Vana Vasa Resort by MJ Kanny Architect, Steel Architectural Awards ASEAN 2024 Winner. Image Courtesy of NS BlueScope
The Steel Architectural Awards ASEAN 2026 is a regional architectural awards program presented by NS BlueScope to recognize built projects that demonstrate architectural excellence through the use of coated steel solutions. Under the theme Shaping Resilient Futures: Timeless Design with Coated Steel, the program highlights projects across Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, progressing from the Country Awards to ASEAN-level recognition. This article explains how the two-stage pathway works, what categories are included, and how projects are assessed through Design Excellence, Innovation, and Sustainability.
Architectural competitions have long offered a space for experimentation: platforms where ideas can be tested, typologies reimagined, and critical questions addressed through design. Freed from some of the constraints of commercial commissions, competition entries often reflect ambitious visions for how architecture can respond to environmental, cultural, and social challenges. Whether focused on future habitats, public institutions, or small-scale community infrastructure, these proposals give shape to the values and priorities driving architectural thinking today.
This month's Unbuilt selection brings together eight competition-winning projects submitted by the ArchDaily community. Each received first, second, or third place in recent local and international competitions. The featured proposals span a wide range of programs and geographies: a sustainable library in Lima, a Martian habitat exploring closed-loop systems, an adult orphanage designed for empowerment in India, a new French school in Athens, and a placemaking initiative in Singapore rooted in local folklore. While varied in scale and scope, they all highlight architecture's capacity to engage context, foster inclusion, and propose new ways of inhabiting space.
486 Moby. Image Courtesy of Finland’s New Museum of Architecture and Design
The Finnish Museum of Architecture and Design Foundation, in partnership with the Real Estate Company ADM, has unveiled the five designs shortlisted for the international competition aimed at offering Helsinki a new venue highlighting architecture history and design. This new museum, to be located in the historic South Harbour, has received global interest, with 624 anonymized submissions reviewed since September 2024. This announcement marks the completion of the competition's first phase, as all successful entries will advance to a second stage, receiving a financial award to refine their concepts.
The Louvre Museum in Paris has announced the American-French consortium WHY Architecture -BGC as the winner of an international competition for the exhibition design of the museum's ninth department, dedicated to Byzantine and Eastern Christian Art. The 5,500-square-meter project aims to offer a more balanced and connected narrative of the Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic civilizations, fostering a greater understanding of the influences and relationships between artistic expressions of these historical regions. The spaces are expected to open to the public in 2027.
The Obel Award is an international prize seeking to highlight unconventional and original initiatives within the architectural profession. Supported by the Henrik Frode Obel Foundation, each annual award is centered around a specific theme. By exploring a different challenge of the built environment each year, the award remains open to a wide range of solutions and architectural innovations, honoring those contributions that have a positive impact on both people and the planet.
"Architectures WITH," the recently announced theme of the 2024 edition, explores participatory design, co-creation, and interdisciplinary collaboration, challenging traditional roles in architecture to foster inclusive, adaptable environments. It aims to empower all stakeholders and enhance collective intelligence in architecture.
The King Salman Charter for Architecture and Urbanism Award has just announced the winners for 2024. Recognizing outstanding achievements in architecture and urbanism in Saudi Arabia, The King Salman Charter for Architecture and Urbanism Award is an initiative designed to celebrate projects that are aligned with the values of the King Salman Charter in Saudi Arabia. This year, since projects were honored with the award from three categories: built projects, unbuilt projects, and student projects.
Courtesy of David Kohn Architects, noA Architecten, and Asli Çiçek
The team comprised of David Kohn Architects, noA Architecten, and Asli Çiçek has won the international competition for the redesign of SMAK, the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent, Belgium. The project includes the reconfiguration of the museum grounds and the extension of a cluster of historic buildings in the center of the city. Established in 1999, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst aims to redefine its relationship with the city and to create more appropriate space for the design of its extensive contemporary art collection.
Architectural competitions are valuable learning tools, offering architects a unique opportunity to experiment and expand their creative boundaries. By engaging with real-world challenges and receiving critical feedback, participants gain practical experience and a deeper understanding of the profession. Whether conceptual or not, competitions foster innovation, encouraging design professionals to think outside the. This week's curated selection showcases winning competition entriessubmitted by the ArchDaily community, providing architects and architecture students with new perspectives and inspiration for their own practice, be it diploma projects, professional licensing, or commissions.
From an immersive urban park in Seoul, South Korea, to a rural education campus in the Amazon, or a reimagined port in Corsica, this selection highlights projects that have stood out in competitions from around the world. While some of the proposals have been developed by established firms, including KAAN Architecten, ArchiWorkshop, Studio Akkerhuis, or Richez Associés, these competitions have also proven to be an opportunity for emerging designers to showcase their creativity and problem-solving abilities
Housing Salinas - For Everyday.Life. Image Courtesy of For Everyday.Life
United Kingdom-based office For Everyday.Life (FEL) is one of the three selected winners for the Open Category of ICON’s Initiative 99, an open competition aiming to promote affordable home designs that can be built for under $99,000 employing ICON’s 3D printing technologies. FEL’s project, titled “Housing Salinas,” focuses on community living while applying principles of long-term sustainability, and social and environmental responsibility.
Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has been announced as the winner of the international competition for the design of the Riga Ropax Terminal in Latvia. Collaborating with Latvian practices Sarma Norde Architects and Alps Landscape Architects, as well as Sweco Finland, ZHA’s proposal includes the repurposing of an existing shipping warehouse, to be transformed into a key multi-modal transport hub for the city, located along the Daugava River. The competition was open to anyone who qualified. Out of the ten registered entries, the third prize was awarded to US-based Berenblum Busch Architects, the second prize went to R-Konsult from Estonia.
‘(Re)membering the See Monster' by Eldry John Infante - Overall Winner . Image Courtesy of WAF
The World Architecture Festival and Prize, together with co-curators Make Architects and Sir John Soane’s Museum, have announced Filipino Architect and Illustrator Eldry John Infante as the Overall Winner of the 2023 Architecture Drawing Prize. The awarded drawing, titled ‘(Re)membering the See Monster,’ is a mixed-media representation of a defunct oil platform. The image aims to invite conversations on the topic of reuse, going beyond the structure’s physicality.
AKIN has been announced as the winning team in the Barangaroo Harbour Park Design Competition, a project that will transform a central location along the waterfront of Sydney, Australia. The winning team is a First Nations-led and Sydney-based ground composed of Yerrabingin, Architectus, Flying Fish Blue, Jacob Nash Design, and Studio Chris Fox, with Arup as engineering consultants. Through its designers, the group integrates Indigenous knowledge systems along with landscape architecture, regenerative design, public art, and place-making.
Five finalists have been shortlisted in the competition to design the new Griegkvartalet Theater in Bergen, Norway. The project is set to be a cultural powerhouse in Western Norway, hosting multidisciplinary forms of art, including opera, musical theater, ballet, dance, concerts, and conferences. The competition emphasizes integration with the surroundings, urban space, energy efficiency, and feasibility.
The shortlisted teams include Henning Larsen Architects, Snøhetta, Zaha Hadid Architects, MAD arkitekter and Kengo Kuma, and the Nordic Office of Architecture includes Arkkitehtitoimisto ALA in the architecture subjects. Each studio was selected from 32 participants worldwide and will be filtered into three winners in the coming stages in the fall of 2023. Ultimately, by March 2024, one winner will be selected and receive the official service contract to begin construction.
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.
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.
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.
