The World Architecture Festival (WAF) revealed the 420 shortlist for this year’s festival, with entries from all around the world, including Portugal, Malaysia, Finland, Mexico, Turkey, Australia, Japan, India, and the UK. The awards program celebrates the best new completed buildings and landscape design projects, ranging from rural villas to contemporary religious buildings and healthcare facilities built during the pandemic.
The theme for the 2022 edition of the festival is “Together,” exploring how architecture responds to the renewal of the collective life post-pandemic. The festival’s live events program also seeks to analyze architecture’s role in the commitments to combating climate change. In addition to the completed buildings, the shortlist showcases the most inspiring new architectural concepts in the Future Projects category.
The WAF is a live-judged awards program, which means that the selected architects and designers behind each shortlisted project will meet live to compete for the 43 category prizes. Category winners will then compete for the final awards: The World Building of the Year, Landscape of the Year, Future Project of the Year, and Interior of the Year. This year’s international judging panels will include Mario Cucinella, Tracy Meller, Sanjay Puri, Gonka Arik Caliskan, Sir Peter Cook, Yui Tezuka, and Shane O’Toole, Eva Jiricna, Issa Diabaté, Nadia Tromp, Jo Noero, Ann Lau and Nigel Coates.
The number and quality of entries this year has been very encouraging, and we are looking forward to meeting in-person to carry out category judging and then our best-in-show awards. WAF, the outstanding live event in the world of architecture, celebrates its 15th year in 2022. We are delighted to be hosting the event in the magnificent city of Lisbon and look forward to re-engaging with our architect and designer friends from across the world. - Paul Finch, WAF program director
This year internationally renowned offices are present on the stage, including Foster + Partners, 3XN, Zaha Hadid Architects, Studio Gang, Nikken Sekkei, Mecanoo, and White Arkitekter. At the same time, many smaller practices are also present live pitching against the big names. For the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, the 2022 World Architecture Festival returns as an in-person event in Lisbon, Portugal, from 30 November to the 2nd of December.
The full shortlist for this year's completed buildings, future, and landscape project awards can be viewed here.
