A’ Architecture, Building & Structure Design Award Winners 2026: 22 Award-Winning Projects

Park1538 Gwangyang by Unsangdong Architects and Posco A&C, winner of a Platinum A’ Design Award, turns the industrial identity of Gwangyang, a South Korean city shaped by steel production, into a public cultural platform. Sweeping curved steel surfaces catch and refract daylight, a reference to the city’s name, which means sunlight. A cantilevered exhibition hall frees an open plaza at ground level, while ramps and vertical ribs lead visitors through layered spaces that reveal the unexpected flexibility of steel.

Park1538 Gwangyang, Cultural Facility by Unsangdong Architects and Posco A&C | © Sergio Pirrone
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Taipei Weather Station by IMO Architecture and JC Cheng Associates, led by Lain Satrustegui, houses a meteorological instruments center in New Taipei City and makes the weather it measures visible. Movable Corten fins respond to the wind, rain runs along their weathering surfaces, and sunlight filters through to cast shifting shadows on the wind-shaped forms. Initiated as a competition entry in 2014 and completed in 2023, the building treats environmental observation as an architectural experience rather than a purely technical service.

Taipei Weather Station, Meteorological Instruments Center by IMO Architecture and JC Cheng Associates | © IMO Architecture + Design
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L Company Guest House by Keiji Harada is a corporate guest house in Fukuoka, Japan, built for a diversified enterprise to host visiting partners. The program combines a welcoming hall, meeting rooms and guest accommodation beneath broad pitched roofs, with timber and planted edges softening the composition. Developed over two years from 2022, the project favors restraint and tactile materials, creating a serene setting where hospitality and business meetings unfold in close contact with the garden.

L Company, Guest House by Keiji Harada | © Toshihisa Ishii (Blitz Studio)
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Villa 49 by Kris Lin transforms an ageing detached house on a riverfront site in Shanghai into a 1,000-square-meter family residence with three floors above ground and a basement. The renovation resolved a deteriorated facade, damp interiors and a poorly lit lower level through a pool-centered spatial strategy that organizes family life and social gatherings around water and the surrounding woodland. Designed and completed during 2025, the project shows how a retrofit can recover the landscape value of an existing site.

Villa 49, Residential House by Kris Lin | © Kris Lin International Design
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Changchun Aerospace Expo by Cheng Sun, Dagang Qu and Xi Huang is a comprehensive cultural building proposed within a protected wetland in Northeast China. Its curved silhouette draws on spacecraft forms and the organic shapes of the wetland, while a low-profile layout limits ecological impact. The first-floor roof merges into the surrounding park, and a custom steel framework wrapped in an integrated skin delivers thermal efficiency and material savings in a cold climate.

Changchun Aerospace Expo, Comprehensive Cultural Building by Cheng Sun, Dagang Qu and Xi Huang | © Dagang Qu
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Higeta Building by Nobuaki Miyashita is the seven-story reinforced concrete headquarters of Higeta, a soy sauce maker founded in 1616, in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district. The facade translates the company’s 1697 introduction of wheat into koikuchi soy sauce: anodized aluminum louvers at a 300 mm pitch, set at variable angles, cut the southwest sun, protect privacy and shimmer like a wheat field over deep black walls that recall fermentation. Construction was completed in May 2025.

Higeta Building, Headquarters Office by Nobuaki Miyashita | © Nobuaki Miyashita
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King Boat by Pingtung County Government and C.M.Chao Architect & Planners is Taiwan’s first cultural center dedicated to the King Boat Ceremony, located in Donggang. A five-story white volume rises above a wave-like base, with folded lines and recessed entrances recalling ocean swells. Inside, an atrium clad in rippling aluminum mesh holds a full-scale king boat replica under natural light, while a rooftop observatory looks over Donggang Harbor. The museum was completed in December 2024.

King Boat, Cultural Museum by Pingtung County Government and C.M.Chao Architect & Planners | © C.M.Chao Architect & Planners
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PW Senrichuo by Uds Ltd. is a large senior residence in Toyonaka, Osaka, that rejects the closed institutional model of care homes. Designed for both independent and assisted living, it opens part of the site to the neighborhood through shared facilities such as the “Villa” and the “Salon”, which act as hubs for intergenerational exchange. Landscaped outdoor areas and varied common rooms let residents choose where to spend the day. The building opened in March 2023.

PW Senrichuo, Senior Residence by Uds Ltd. | © Nacasa & Partners
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Aero Grove by Xinyun Li is a concept design for a community cultural center in a public green space in Boston. The proposal asks how a large building can enter a well-used park with a humble presence: a fluid circular form with a central courtyard and accessible rooftop paths keeps the ground open, while exhibition and immersive experience spaces sit within layered facades. The result reads as landscape as much as building, inviting everyday use by the community.

Aero Grove, Community Cultural Center by Xinyun Li | © Xinyun Li
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Art Omi Deconstructive Utopia by Daria Yang Du proposes a design gallery and installation for Art Omi, the art and architecture park in New York’s Hudson Valley. Developed through experimental studies of balloon inflation and tensioned strings, the design shifts from a linear system to a carved spherical void that becomes the main exhibition space and public entrance. A pivoting path runs west to east between workshops and suspended studios before ending at the lake.

Art Omi Deconstructive Utopia, Design Gallery and Installation by Daria Yang Du | © Daria Yang Du
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The Ripple by Minghan Lin, Yuchen Qiu and Hao Zhong reimagines the hospice as a civic sanctuary in Chinatown, New York City. Developed for an architectural competition between 2025 and 2026, the scheme is organized by concentric rings that expand from a single water court, aligning structure, circulation and environmental systems in one spatial logic. Hybrid timber construction, passive ventilation and water reuse support a design that turns end-of-life care into a shared, sensory experience within the life of the neighborhood.

The Ripple, Hospice by Minghan Lin, Yuchen Qiu and Hao Zhong | © Minghan Lin, Yuchen Qiu, Hao Zhong
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Armada 3 by A Tasarım Architects is a mixed-use complex in Ankara, Turkey, scheduled between 2023 and 2027, that reinterprets the shopping mall as a piece of urban infrastructure rather than a closed commercial object. The project stitches together pedestrian flows, transport connections and public space, drawing on research into urban permeability, mixed-use hybridity, climate-responsive envelopes and changing retail habits. Its open frontages and terraces position the building as a connector within the city.

Armada 3, Mixed Use Architectural Complex by A Tasarım Architects | © TOBB Economy and Technology University
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Ascending Ground by Hao Zhong is a community library proposal for Wuzhen, the historic water town in eastern China. The design reinterprets the town’s grey brick and white-walled vernacular through a contemporary mass of locally sourced recycled brick, contrasting enclosed, cave-like reading rooms with open terraces. A light-filled central void organizes layered circulation and creates a social platform shared by residents and visitors. The concept was developed between 2018 and 2019.

Ascending Ground, Community Library by Hao Zhong | © Hao Zhong
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Learning Landscape by People’s Architecture Office is Wuzhou Elementary School in Shenzhen, a 20,535-square-meter school conceived as a three-dimensional landscape rather than a sequence of classrooms and corridors. Organized around three elements, the Mountain, the Valley and the Beach, it stacks terraces, green roofs and interstitial spaces that blur inside and outside. Vegetation moderates the hot, humid climate and the urban heat island, and the school extends a public park to the north.

Learning Landscape, Primary School by People’s Architecture Office | © Zhu Yumeng
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Tramdepot Bern by Penzel Valier houses tram maintenance and storage on Bolligenstrasse in Bern, Switzerland, completed in two stages between 2008 and 2023. The hall is wrapped in a light glass and aluminum shell: white glass with a textured surface, installed in a staggered half-grid, changes expression with the light and, in grazing sun, approaches the matte shimmer of bare aluminum. Shed glazing modulates daylight inside, and at night the depot glows like a lantern.

Tramdepot Bern, Infrastructure by Penzel Valier | © Dominique Uldry
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Barn Quartet by Katarzyna Starzyk is a single-level family house near Tarnobrzeg, Poland, composed of four barn-inspired volumes on a plot of more than 4,000 square meters. Each pavilion has its own role: a parents’ wing with a master suite and gym, a wing for children, guests, utilities and garage, a central living pavilion with wide glazing, and a detached hunting lodge for leisure and quiet work. Designed in 2024, the house balances rural calm with modern comfort at a discreet scale.

Barn Quartet, Single Family House by Katarzyna Starzyk | © Dawid Milecki
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UNESCO Ancient Theatre Revitalization by LYT-X Studio repositions a protected open-air performance site as contemporary cultural infrastructure. Instead of adding a new object, the project relies on minimal and reversible intervention that preserves archaeological integrity and the original spatial logic. A lightweight tensile membrane roof filters daylight and moderates heat while keeping views open to the landscape, and calibrated roof openings support natural ventilation, allowing year-round performances and civic events.

UNESCO Ancient Theatre Revitalization, Cultural Facility by LYT-X Studio | © LYT-X Studio
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Firstbank of Nigeria Headquarters by MZ Architects, led by Marwan Zgheib, is a sculpted, glass-clad tower rising from the reclaimed shoreline of Eko Atlantic City in Lagos. Its slender form and high-performance facade respond to the meeting of land, ocean and sky, while green-certified building systems target environmental performance. Launched in March 2025, the project gives architectural form to the evolution of one of Nigeria’s oldest financial institutions and adds a new landmark to the coastal skyline of Lagos.

Firstbank of Nigeria, Headquarters by MZ Architects | © MZ Architects
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Symbiosis Cat House by Happystudio, designed by Jimmy Yung, is a narrow row house in Douliu, Taiwan, built for a household that shares its home with cats while managing respiratory sensitivity. A vertical zoning strategy separates functions, and a dual-loop circulation system organizes movement for people and animals. A central atrium drives a stack effect that continuously flushes allergens, and a stepped setback anticipates future high-rise neighbors. The house was completed in 2024.

Symbiosis Cat House, Residential Building by Happystudio | © Yi-Hsien Lee
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Amami House by Kazunori Sakai is a self-sufficient family house on Amami Island in southern Japan, where a hot, humid climate and low solar radiation make off-grid living demanding. The design reinterprets the island’s vernacular, including its hip-and-gable corrugated metal roofs, and adds insulation, natural ventilation and daylighting so a family of four can live comfortably without grid power or air conditioning. The result is a quiet model of resilient dwelling rooted in local building culture.

Amami House, Residence by Kazunori Sakai | © Toshihisa Ishii
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Dissolving Corbin Building by Zihua Mo is a conceptual proposal that turns the historic Corbin Building into a vertical ecosystem of housing, communal kitchens and a public food court. Solid walls become porous layers that blur domestic and urban scales, and a language of dissolution mediates between ornate historic facades and contemporary simplicity. First developed in 2022 as an early study, the project frames the daily rituals of cooking and eating as cultural infrastructure.

Dissolving Corbin Building, Mixed Use by Zihua Mo | © Zihua Mo
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Baffi Restaurant by Nicholas Alencar sits in Mátria Parque de Flores in São Francisco de Paula, Rio Grande do Sul, described as the largest flower park in Latin America. The building is designed to merge with the existing relief, its arched concrete form partly embedded in the terrain beside the water. Completed in February 2022, the project trained and mobilized around 250 local people during construction, tying the architecture to the community that built it.

Baffi, Restaurant by Nicholas Alencar | © Leonardo Finotti
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