Projects in 43 Nations Win the 2016 International Architecture Awards

A jury of Italian architects and critics has announced the winners of The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies’ International Architecture Awards for 2016.

“This year’s awarded projects address critical architecture and planning concerns for advanced post-industrial cities and Third World communities alike,” says Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, The Chicago Athenaeum’s museum president, “in a way to imagine the possibilities for the future restoration and renovation of deteriorating downtown cores, depressed neighborhoods, and humanistic alternatives for derelict neighborhoods.”

The winning 132 projects—including commercial and institutional developments, landscape architecture, urban planning, and new buildings—include work from Zaha Hadid Architects, HOK, Toyo Ito & Associates, Safdie Architects, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Pininfarina, and other firms in 43 nations around the world.

“These projects awarded by the Italian jury,” Narkiewicz-Laine says, “speak about invigorated cities and city centers, the creation of domestic environments and public spaces that restore dignity to a population while offering universal space for the balanced encounter between two apparently irreconcilable worlds. These projects are at the frontline and have worldwide implications that challenge us in the way we see our world.”

An exhibition of the winners will premiere at the Istanbul Design Biennial at the UCTEA Chamber of Architects of Turkey Istanbul Metropolitan Branch, on view from September 2nd through the 30th, before touring across Europe as an exhibition called “The City and the World.” The winners can also be viewed in the forthcoming catalog Global Design + Urbanism XVI (“New International Architecture”) edited by Christian Narkiewicz-Laine for Metropolitan Arts Press.

All photography courtesy of The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design.