The A’ Design Award was "born out of the desire to underline the best designs and well-designed products." It is an international award whose aim is to provide designers, architects, and innovators from all design fields with a platform to showcase their work and products to a global audience. This year's edition is now open for early entries; designers can register their submissions here.
While there is no shortage of design awards out there, the A' Design Award stands out for its exceptional scale; with over 100 design categories. Alongside a category for Architecture, Building and Structure Design, the award features a number of categories that may be beneficial to those in the world of architecture—including categories for Good Industrial Design, Good Architecture Design, Good Product Design, and Good Communication Design. You can see all of the categories on their website here.
Winners of an A' Design Award receive a trophy alongside a host of other benefits: a certificate, inclusion in an exhibition, inclusion in a yearbook publication, winners' badges, an exclusive interview to be featured on the A' Design Awards website, inclusion in the world design rankings, an invite to a gala night hosted by the awards for networking, feedback notes from the award jury, and participation in an extensive PR campaign are all offered to winners among other benefits. Click here to see the full list of benefits.
Entries will be judged by A' Design Award's jury of hundreds of experts from around the globe including scholars, professionals and media members. Each jury member is required to sign a jury agreement and follow a code of conduct. In addition, jurors may not be employees of the participating companies to avoid conflicts of interest. This jury process has been designed to lead to a more fair and equitable awards process, with no single juror exercising undue influence on the results of the awards. You can find out more about the jury and its process here.
The early submission period for the A' Design Award closes on June 30th. You can submit your designs here, or find out more about the awards in multiple languages here. After the winners are announced on May 1st, a selection of architecture-related winners will be featured in a post on ArchDaily. See a selection of winners from previous years below.
Jinan Cultural Archives Center Library by Muchuan Xu, Minxi Cai and Xin Yan
Silver A’ Design Award in Design Category
As a very iconic urban cultural building, the library provides a place for residents to develop a good reading habit, and facilitates them to carry out various social, cultural, entertainment, and sports activities, and builds sharing community. In response to the theme of sharing and the trend of the era, it was started from people's perception and experience, optimized the sight relationship in the space, placed space nodes, added functional spaces, reorganized people's social behavior, and promoted the realization of "shared knowledge".
Rice Wine Town Reception Room Cultural Exhibition by Wei Zhang and Kesuo Wu - gad
Silver A’ Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Category
The site is surrounded by a dense water network. In ancient times, it was the waterway of Shaoxing Grain transport, facing the Dashu River in the east, with good landscape conditions. The design makes full use of this advantage, the three-story building volume is stacked and retreated back from south to north, forming a number of roof terraces overlooking the Dashu River, creating more possibilities for the later use of the restaurant. Through the investigation and comparison of various materials, the facade decoration is made of recycled bamboo as the main material of the exterior wall. The bamboo planks are preprocessed into L-shaped members in the factory, which reduces the on-site assembling workload and joint treatment, and improves the construction speed and the accuracy of on-site installation.
Fusing with Nature Office Design by DB and B Pte Ltd
Silver A’ Design Award in Design Category
Drawing insights on collaboration patterns and the needs of different departments, it was planned a diverse range of configurations to suit different group sizes and work settings. This agile design creates a palette of place that encourages people to change postures, move around throughout the day, and be more engaged with their workplace. With a focus on employee wellness and sustainability, the design team sought to create a pleasant work environment with the use of thematic collaboration hubs that evoke the dynamic qualities of nature, bringing the outdoors in to fuse workspace and nature into one.
Stone White Villagers Activity Center by Minjie Si and Xianfeng Ye
Bronze A’ Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Category
The design comes up with the challenge that how to intelligently preserve the original structure and build on the existing traces. A new light-structured white house therefore was designed to rise above the heavy stone walls. The activity center for villagers was built during epidemic time, mainly by the locals through community participatory process with low-tech methods. A balance is achieved between built and preserved, specificity and generality, immediacy and evolutionary instinct. The objective is to build open public infrastructure, by reusing the existing traces and imagining their future development. It's a matter of reading the richness of a specific context in order to plan new rurality, capable of stimulating both villagers and out comers.
Skyboat Cafe and WalkOn Glass by Xin Yuan
Gold A’ Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Category
The structure cantilevers 36m over the 613m deep sinkhole. The top is extremely narrow, which can only accommodate a small passageway. Skyboat is proposed to span over the passageway and cantilever out to each side of the mountain ridge. Similar to tumbler toys, it is proposed to lower the structure centre of gravity and utilize the minimum area (10 metres by 30 metres), in which way, the self-balance of the structure is therefore achieved.
Haus Am See Residential House by Carlos Zwick Architekten BDA
Gold A’ Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Category
The architectural concept of the house pays tribute to the historical roots of the place. Without compromise, it subordinates itself to them without touching their essence. The structure floats above the terraces, respecting their space and form. The large crowns of the ancient oaks and chestnuts take the modern tree house with its restrained wooden facade in their midst.
Espacio Kaab House by Matia Di Frenna Muller
Silver A’ Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Category
Espacio Kaab is a house project for a young couple, where the fundamental requirement was the interaction with the environment and the use of materials visually and conceptually integrated with the natural context, such as stone and earth, giving a modern touch with steel and concrete. The difficult topography of the land gave the opportunity to do a strong and unique character in the area, it is a project with a lot of interesting spaces, beautiful views and environments that blend with nature.
Iron Ore Center Production Command by Saiwen Liu
Silver A’ Design Award in Design Category
Daye iron ore has a long exploitation history, for over 1700 years until now. The rest mine resources exploitation age limit is less than 10 years. In order to not make the waste due to the repeated investments, when the central control hall was designed, it was considered its exhibition function, that is to meet the requirements of current enterprise central control operation, and also offer a small-scale museum for the future tourism development. The feeling of time tunnel which is built by the linear lighting would connect the modern times with the past, let the whole central control hall design flavour to be uncopyable and unique.
Farmer House in Kudara Country Home by Masato Sekiya
Bronze A’ Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Category
The design was based on the concept of a low-rise volume that would not block the sunlight against the surrounding farmland, taking into consideration the landscape and sunlight, and aiming for harmony with the beautiful paddy fields. As a farmhouse, the challenge was to secure space for cargo handling and aisles, while arranging functions within the limited area and proportions of the house. Therefore, all small functions (storage, TV, piano, refrigerator, washbasin, and workspace) were placed on the west side of the house. The bedrooms, dining room, and other living rooms are dynamically connected through the courtyard to create a practical space.
Shanghai Edge Mixed Use Building by Aedas
Silver A’ Design Award in Architecture, Building and Structure Design Category
Shanghai EDGE is a prime mixed-use development at the heart of Shanghai, the project revitalizes the old city blocks along Suzhou Creek. As a direct result of the city’s zoning regulations, the building’s shape is divided into four stepping tiers. These setbacks are used to create dramatic rooftop terraces, which serve as leisure areas, informal meeting spaces or event venues. The uplifting movement creates attractive open space that is dedicated to the city, to address the street corner and to create a gateway for the entire river bank development.
Register for this year's early submission here.