The deadline to submit your designs to the A’ Design Awards and Competition 2024 is quickly approaching. Don’t miss your final opportunity to present your creativity on an international platform. The cutoff for project submissions is February 28th, 2024. ArchEyes magazine is excited to reveal this year’s competition winners on April 15th, showcasing an exclusive look at the standout designs.
Spanning over 100 different categories, the A’ Design Awards offer a vast stage for design excellence in fields such as architecture, building and structure design, interior space and exhibition design, lighting products and projects, decorative items and homeware, and packaging design. This platform celebrates the diversity and ingenuity of designers from various disciplines.
Becoming a laureate of the A’ Design Awards & Competition garners not just fame and prestige but also significant recognition, credibility, and international visibility. Winners receive the “A’ Design Prize,” a comprehensive kit that includes the highly sought-after 3D Printed Metal A’ Design Award trophy, presented in a luxurious black box, the annual yearbook, and a plethora of other advantages.
Explore our selection of past winners to spark your inspiration. Seize the opportunity to join the ranks of esteemed participants in this distinguished design competition!
Patina Maldives Hotel by Studio MK27
The Patina Maldives project embodies an architecture that respects and enhances its natural surroundings rather than overshadowing them. This approach results in a space where light and views are filtered to create immersive narratives within the stunning landscape, offering a seamless blend of contemporary and classic elegance. The hotel’s design delicately navigates the balance between providing shade and coziness while capturing the landscape’s vibrancy. Buildings are designed to be visually permeable, ensuring that the architecture speaks softly against the backdrop of the horizon and places human experience at its core. The spatial journey from private to public areas and from tranquility to vitality is crafted to enrich guests’ connections with nature and each other, highlighting the essence of luxury amidst the natural beauty of the Maldives.
Scacco Matto Portable Lamp by Francesco Cappuccio
Drawing inspiration from the daring spirit of the 1960s radical design movement, “Scacco Matto” merges the realms of art and design through bold explorations of color, texture, and form. Named after the Italian for ‘checkmate,’ reflecting its chess-inspired versatility, this project introduces a sculptural lighting piece that offers a dynamic range of atmospheres—from ambient to focused illumination. By integrating three magnetically connected elements, it presents five distinct lighting configurations. Beyond its functional appeal, Scacco Matto invites users to engage with it creatively, allowing for the assembly of an occasional vase or a striking dinner light.
Tangens Furniture Collection by Sara Kele
The Tangens furniture collection is inspired by the profound value of human connections, embodying the themes of touch and togetherness through its design. By exploring the metaphors of embrace and tactile interaction, Tangens achieves a tangible structure that visually and physically represents closeness, with its curved tubular frames echoing the iconic graphic elements of the Bauhaus tradition, symbolizing a blend of respect for historical design principles and a forward-thinking approach to sustainability. Designed to adapt to the evolving dynamics of today’s work environments, Tangens offers an office furniture system that merges the comfort of home with the flexibility needed in modern, agile workspaces.
Qiushi Academy by U A D
The architectural design of this building complex, destined for academic activities ranging from talks to exhibitions, ingeniously marries modern functionality with the aesthetic and structural principles of traditional Chinese architecture. Drawing inspiration from the historical Qiushi Academy, the complex achieves a harmonious balance between solemn symmetry and creative asymmetry. Its design carefully integrates with the natural topography and water systems of the site, incorporating staggered buildings around a central courtyard. This layout not only respects the site’s geographical features but also reflects the dynamic qualities of southern Chinese architecture alongside the dignified essence of northern Chinese styles, thus representing a fusion that respects both local architectural traditions and the requirements of contemporary educational spaces. The project revives the “courtyard-style” arrangement typical of ancient academies, with a modern interpretation that connects buildings like the “Qiushi Lecture Hall” and “Xiqian Hall” through corridors, echoing the enclosed courtyards of the past and fostering a sense of continuity with historical educational institutions.
City Gather Forest Themed Park by Siyuan Tao
In this landscaping and soft furnishings project, the designer embraced the theme of an urban forest, aiming to harmonize natural ecology with urban living. Inspired by the serene beauty of deer in a forest, the design intertwines modern art with landscape elements to foster a sense of humanistic care. This approach results in a park-like forest community alongside a sports park, where urban lifestyles are enriched with beautiful, poetic experiences through encounters with nature. The project serves as a catalyst for a green, artistic living environment, blending art and nature within an urban park setting to address the multifaceted demands of urbanization. By creating a natural landscape that complements urban life and a lively public space for community activities, the design fosters interactions among the city, its inhabitants, and the community, paving the way for innovative lifestyles.
River Cloud Outdoor Landscape by Shang Cai
The “Cloud” art installation, deeply rooted in Eastern culture, captures the essence of clouds’ aesthetic value and symbolic significance, embodying the spiritual qualities of randomness, freedom, harmony, and detachment that are highly valued in Eastern philosophy. This pursuit of embodying natural phenomena through art is considered a lofty spiritual ambition. The installation, an impressive outdoor structure measuring 8 meters in height, 30 meters in width, and 6 meters in depth, is strategically placed on a rooftop at the cliff’s edge overlooking a river. It seeks to reflect the prestigious nature of the high-end real estate project it represents, aptly named after the cloud. Utilizing lines, colors, and shapes, the designer successfully crafts a cloud form that resonates with Oriental aesthetics. The installation encourages an interactive experience with the environment, where the interplay of clouds, water, and smoke creates an enchanting spatial ambiance, inviting viewers to explore the morphological meanings and reflections of ever-changing cloud symbols through form, color, and light.
Grace Lounge Chair by Daniel Devadder
“Grace” draws inspiration from the complexity and elegance of nature, challenging traditional design norms by suggesting that form can reflect emotions as vividly as function. This design philosophy is reminiscent of expressive dance forms like ballet and tango, where movements convey deep feelings. The design’s uniqueness lies in its ability to elicit varied interpretations and emotions from viewers, offering a personalized experience that changes with perspective. As observers move around it, they may see different images—a bird, a plant, or even a whimsical ghost through a child’s eyes—imbuing the piece with a distinct personality and timeless charm. Adaptable to various finishes and materials, “Grace” fits seamlessly into diverse settings, from luxurious hotel lobbies to private residences, transcending its functional role to become a sculptural element that enhances its surroundings.
Xerolithi Residence by George Sinas
This house design is deeply inspired by its desire to integrate seamlessly into its natural surroundings, a landscape characterized by steep dirt and gravel slopes adorned with wild thorny bushes and majestic rock formations. Central to this environment are the xenoliths, short stone retaining walls traditional to the area, originally constructed for agricultural cultivation. These walls, typically not exceeding a meter in height, create flat terraces across the hillside, shaping the land in harmony with the slope. The presence and historical significance of these xenoliths ignited the spark of inspiration for the design, guiding the architectural approach to respect and reflect the natural contours and textures of the site, ensuring that the house not only blends with its environment but also pays homage to the cultural and functional landscape shaped by generations past.
Skyboat Cafe and WalkOn Glass by Xin Yuan
The structure cantilevers 36m over the 613m deep sinkhole. The top of the sinkhole is extremely narrow and 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’s center of gravity and utilize the minimum area (10 meters by 30 meters), which achieves the structure’s self-balance.
Hill Wind by Huafang Wang
According to the regional characteristics, the designer combines the local culture and historical context in the process of conception. Under the dominant atmosphere of modernism, the designer uses the language of design to create a dialogue with space, and then interprets the visual, tactile, and spiritual resonance, reproducing the Anji area humanistic landscape pattern of “The cicada noise highlights the silence of the forest, and birdsong sets off the depth of the mountain.”
Tangxing No.5 Residential House by Saiwen Liu
Concerning environmental pollution and the reduction of natural resources, we try to utilize low-cost raw materials in the design. Moso bamboo is generally 3 to 5 years old; its soil consolidation capacity is 1.5 times the Pinus massoniana. The ability to conserve water is 30%-45% higher than that of Chinese fir. The same biomass of bamboo releases 30% more oxygen than other vegetation. With the increasingly terrible haze, plenty of bamboo wares will stimulate the bamboo planting.
Cloud of Luster by Tetsuya Matsumoto
The modern wedding ceremonies inspired the design for Cloud of Luster in Japan. These are all about the lightness, the brightness, and the smooth transition towards happy future family life. The lines needed to be naturally curvy, and the space needed to be open to receive as much light as possible. The columns needed to feel official as the ceremony is taking place and yet be as smooth and glamorous as to spread the moment’s happiness.
Solar Skywalks Energetic Activation of Footbridges by Peter Kuczia
The world’s metropolises have a large number of pedestrian bridges traversing busy traffic arteries. They are often unattractive, downgrading the overall urban impression. Peter Kuczia’s idea of cladding the pedestrian bridges with aesthetic, power-generating photovoltaic modules and transforming them into attractive city spots is sustainable and creates a sculptural diversity that becomes an eye-catcher in the cityscape.
EN Skincare Salon and Store by Yusuke Kinoshita
Adding a series of circular partitions across four rooms and two levels gently defines the space’s various functions. This leads into the Japanese hospitality principle of discovery; patrons must wind through the store to find each treatment area rather than walking into an obvious open plan. The unusual geometric forms serve to spark curiosity in the customer. The concept of ‘beauty’ by choosing golden polished brass for the circular partitions and accent pieces throughout the store.
K11 Musea Shopping Mall by K11 Musea
K11 reinvigorates the mall together with 100 creative powers hailing from various disciplines and cultures to make K11 MUSEA the Silicon Valley of Culture and inject art, architecture, design, sustainability, and all forms of culture into the new consumer’s daily life. At the core is a 35m high atrium dubbed Opera Theatre, which features hundreds of 1,800 programmable spotlights to resemble a galaxy, evoking curiosity and creativity, taking the form of a galaxy and mysterious body of stars.
Jiangshan Fishing Village Renovation Renovation by Mix Architecture
Under the impact of modern urbanization, the decline of rural areas has become an unavoidable reality. Mix Architecture was commissioned by Jiangshan Fishing Village in Gaochun of Nanjing to meet indigenous peoples’ basic needs for modern functions and cultural life and formulated a rural renewal plan.
Bullet+Stone Concrete Collection Architectural Hardware by James Tsarouhas and Joseph Di Benedetto
Contemporary interiors were the primary influence. We do our utmost to listen to and observe architects and interior designers’ behavior to bring exciting and novel products to market that present actual value to our clientele. We noticed that many architects were stripping back ornamental finishes in favor of raw and sustainable alternatives, specifically exposed concrete. This allows the use of concrete to then spread into other interior spaces, such as furniture, sinks, countertops, flooring, and now, door hardware, with the Bullet+Stone collection by Designer Doorware.
Project EGG Small Pavilion by Michiel van der Kley
Michiel van der Kley has been muddling around and wondering about 3D printers and the fascinating possibilities of the latest software we have under our hands. It made him want to do something new, really fresh. Inspired by Nature and the intriguing possibilities of the software and people were encouraged to come up with this idea. We are now able to produce something like this in this unique way. After all, all of us together form some new kind of factory.
Termalija Family Wellness Swimming Pools by Enota
Termalija Family Wellness is the latest in the series of projects we have built at Terme Olimia in the last fifteen years. It concludes the complete transformation of the spa complex. A lot of effort was invested into designing the buildings so that they don’t fill the space but connect it even more with the surrounding nature. The volume of necessary space required siting of a larger structure, which couldn´t simply be buried below the grade like in our previous projects on the site. No longer being able to reference only the surrounding natural landscape, the solution was found in scale and form of surrounding vernacular structures. The large roof above the water area was divided into smaller segments to prevent its scale from overwhelming the surroundings. Viewed from a distance, the shape, color, and scale of the new clustered structure of tetrahedral volumes is a continuation of the cluster of surrounding rural buildings, which visually extends into the heart of the complex.
Registration to A’ Design Award & Competition 2023-2024, Last Call!
The deadline for submission is February 28th. Results will be announced to the public on Abril 2024.
