The A’ Design Award & Competition is recognized as one of the most significant international platforms for architecture, design, and innovation. Its mission is to promote excellence by identifying and celebrating the most outstanding projects across a wide range of creative fields. Each year, participants from over one hundred countries submit their work, making the competition not only a showcase of global talent but also a space where disciplines intersect and new ideas emerge.
Entries are now open for the 2026 to 2027 awarding period. The standard submission deadline falls on 30 September 2026, with a final late entry deadline on 28 February 2027, and results announced to the public on 15 April 2027 during Milan Design Week. Architects and designers who wish to take part can nominate their design here.
About the A’ Design Award & Competition
Organized from Como, Italy, the A’ Design Award & Competition has run since 2008 as a juried program open to architects, designers, studios, manufacturers and students. Entry proceeds in three phases. Registration, upload, and a preliminary score cost nothing and carry no obligation; a nomination fee applies only when a participant chooses to enter the competition proper, and eligible laureates in the Professional, Digital, and Vision editions pay no further fees for the winners’ services that follow.
Winning an A’ Design Award provides far more than a title. It offers architects and designers an opportunity to gain international visibility through exhibitions, yearbooks, press exposure, and participation in an extensive global network. For many creative professionals, the recognition functions as a point of entry into conversations that would otherwise be difficult to reach. Further background on the program is available at whatisadesignaward.com.
Competition Categories
The competition is organized into multiple categories, reflecting the diversity of design practice today. For ArchEyes’ readership, the most relevant clusters are the Good Architecture Design Award, the Good Industrial Design Award, the Good Product Design Award, the Good Communication Design Award, the Good Service Design Award, and the Good Fashion Design Award. Each field captures a different aspect of contemporary practice, from large-scale urban interventions to the refinement of everyday objects.
Beyond these, the award spans dozens of additional disciplines, offering specialized recognition for nearly every design typology imaginable. Further categories are available at the full category listing.
Ten Benefits of Winning
The value of winning the A’ Design Award lies not only in the honor but also in the comprehensive support given to laureates. The Winners’ Pack gathers the services into a single program, and ten of them matter most to an architecture and design audience.
- Inclusion in the physical Design Award Winner’s Exhibition at MOOD, the Museum of Outstanding Design, which changes location each year.
- Publication in the annual A’ Design Award Yearbook, distributed to an international readership.
- An extensive PR campaign, including press release preparation and distribution to magazines, blogs and media partners.
- Inclusion in the World Design Rankings, which aggregate results by country and by studio.
- An invitation to La Notte Premio A’, the black-tie gala night and award ceremony, where networking is the point.
- The A’ Design Award trophy and the winners’ certificate.
- Use of the A’ Design Award Winner Logo, together with the Prime Design Mark for verification.
- Translation of the winning project into more than one hundred native languages for international press.
- Inclusion in the Designer Rankings, the Design Classifications and the Popular Designers Index.
- A digital Winner Showcase and an exclusive interview, syndicated through the award’s own media network.
Recognition extends beyond symbolic accolades. Alongside the trophy and certificate, these benefits create a complete ecosystem that ensures winners’ work reaches audiences far beyond their immediate professional circles, and for eligible Professional, Digital and Vision edition laureates, they are provided at no further cost.
Jury & Evaluation Process
The credibility of the A’ Design Award is grounded in the rigor of its evaluation process. Entries are judged by an international jury panel of academics, design professionals and press members, and scored anonymously so that the work is assessed on its own terms. This broad composition ensures that projects are examined from multiple perspectives: intellectual, practical, and cultural.
Evaluation considers innovation, functionality, aesthetics, and social impact, which makes the award both transparent and meaningful. Those interested can review the panel at the A’ Design Award Jury, and explore the complete evaluation framework through the Award Methodology.
Key Dates for the 2026 to 2027 Edition
- 30 September 2026, standard submission deadline for the regular nomination period.
- 28 February 2027, final late submission deadline.
- 15 April 2027, results announced to the public during Milan Design Week.
Featured Winners of the 2025 to 2026 Edition
One of the most compelling aspects of the A’ Design Award is the quality of its laureates. The sixteen projects below were recognised in the 2025 to 2026 period and have been selected here for their relevance to an architectural readership, from civic and cultural buildings to interiors that rework existing structures. The complete list is available through the A’ Design Award winners directory.
Park1538 Gwangyang Cultural Facility by Unsangdong Architects and Posco A&C
Built in a South Korean city shaped by steel production, Park1538 turns industrial identity into public culture. Unsangdong Architects and Posco A&C treat steel as a pliable rather than a rigid material, bending it into sweeping surfaces that catch and redirect daylight through the day. A cantilevered exhibition hall releases the ground as an open plaza, while ramps and vertical circulation draw visitors through the history of steelmaking. Completed in April 2025 and awarded the Platinum A’ Design Award.
Villa 49 Residential House by Kris Lin International Design
Kris Lin International Design reworked an ageing riverfront villa in Shanghai around a single organising element, water. Rather than conventional zoning, the thousand square metre house is arranged so that light, air and a central pool mediate between the family rooms and the surrounding woodland. The strategy repairs a damp, poorly lit basement and an exhausted facade while reframing the relationship between domestic interior and garden.
Changchun Aerospace Expo Cultural Building by Cheng Sun, Dagang Qu and Xi Huang
Set inside a protected wetland in northeast China, this cultural building answers an unusually delicate brief. Cheng Sun, Dagang Qu and Xi Huang keep the volume low so that the ecology is disturbed as little as possible, then let the roof of the first floor merge with the surrounding park. A bespoke steel framework carries the curved profile, which borrows its silhouette from celestial forms, while an integrated envelope handles thermal performance and reduces material use.
King Boat Cultural Museum by C.M.Chao Architect & Planners
Taiwan’s first museum dedicated to the King Boat Ceremony takes its form from the vessel itself. A five storey white volume rests on a wave like base, with folded lines and recessed entrances that read as ocean swell. Inside, aluminium mesh panels ripple across a central atrium that houses a full scale replica of the boat, lit so that the object rather than the architecture holds attention. Completed in Donggang in December 2024.
The Taipei Weather Station by IMO Architecture + Design
Nine years separate the competition entry from completion, and the result is a building that registers the weather it exists to measure. Movable fins turn with the wind, rain traces the Corten surfaces, and sunlight filters through to cast shifting shadows across the wind shaped forms. Developed jointly in Taiwan and Spain and completed in New Taipei City in 2023, it argues that instrumentation and architecture can share a language.
PW Senrichuo Senior Residence by UDS Ltd.
UDS Ltd. treats a large senior residence in Toyonaka, Osaka as a piece of neighbourhood infrastructure rather than a closed institution. Independent and assisted living are combined, but the more consequential move is the openness of the ground plane. A Villa and a Salon are shared with the surrounding community, so daily life inside the building stays connected to the district. The residence opened in March 2023.
Higeta Building Headquarters Office by Nobuaki Miyashita
Higeta has brewed soy sauce since 1616, and the company’s seven storey headquarters in Nihonbashi makes that history measurable. Nobuaki Miyashita takes wheat, introduced to the recipe in 1697, as the facade motif, working in anodised aluminium so the elevation reads as a field moving in the wind. The result avoids pastiche and instead translates a production process into an ordered contemporary street front. Completed in May 2025.
L Company Guest House by Keiji Harada
Commissioned by a diversified Fukuoka enterprise, this guest house was developed over two years as a controlled exercise in hospitality at domestic scale. Keiji Harada handled both the architecture and the interior, which keeps the detailing consistent from the envelope through to the fittings and allows the building to work as a single coherent gesture rather than a shell furnished later.
Learning Landscape Primary School by People’s Architecture Office
At 20,535 square metres, Wuzhou Elementary School in Shenzhen abandons the classroom and corridor diagram entirely. People’s Architecture Office organise the school around three landscape figures, the Mountain, the Valley and the Beach, so that circulation, play and teaching overlap rather than separate. It is a direct architectural response to a city that has staked its future on innovation, and a useful test of how far a primary school plan can be loosened.
Tramdepot Bern by Penzel Valier
Penzel Valier’s tram depot in Bern is wrapped in a glass and aluminium shell that refuses the heaviness usually associated with transport infrastructure. White glass, a worked surface texture and a staggered half grid installation give the hall an expression that shifts with the light through the day. Delivered in two stages between 2008 and 2023 on Bolligenstrasse, it is a reminder that operational buildings repay architectural attention.
Olivino Restaurant by Not A Studio
A former industrial exhibition hall becomes a Michelin level restaurant without erasing what was already there. Not A Studio retain the steel dome and the column free volume, then insert a circular glass wine cellar and a copper stove as discrete objects within it. The approach is dialogue rather than concealment, and it preserves the continuity between the experience of an exhibition space and that of a dining room. Completed in May 2025.
Wuhan Senbo Resort Hotel by WJD Design
WJD Design translate Wuhan’s mountains, water and lotus into an interior narrative for a parent and child urban resort. The method is abstraction and material substitution rather than imitation, which keeps the references legible without sliding into theming. Programme and atmosphere are tuned to two audiences at once, a difficult balance in hospitality interiors. Completed in May 2025 after a two year development.
Classy Mansion Sales Center by Matrix Design
Matrix Design draw on the timber purlins of the Forbidden City and the stillness of Jinan’s Daming Lake for a club interior that reinterprets Eastern architecture and landscape. Natural materials and low saturation tones set the base, against which handcrafted screens, antiques and heritage crafts are placed at deliberate intervals. Completed in Jinan in September 2024.
Ryokan Ohana Hotel by UDS Ltd.
The Tachibana family, feudal lords of the Yanagawa Domain, lived at the residence known as Ohanaya and converted it into an inn after the war. The reworking by UDS Ltd., which opened in January 2025, treats that layered history as the project’s material, keeping the building in service as a working ryokan rather than a preserved artefact in a town that depends on visitors.
Nanjing City Wall Museum Exhibition Hall by Yuan Zhuan and Quan Liu
Organised around the idea of presenting the wall, this exhibition hall borrows the masonry technique and the spatial enclosure of the Nanjing City Wall itself. Five zones carry the argument from a thousand years of history through to the present question of heritage protection, which keeps the display tied to the structure it interprets rather than floating free of it. Completed in May 2023.
Cest Lavie Gallery by MTO & HWCD
MTO and HWCD give this commercial gallery a deliberately wild luxury, working with eco friendly materials whose surfaces carry the atmosphere instead of relying on applied decoration. Functional zoning does the organisational work, leaving the palette free to establish the brand image. Completed in August 2025.
Submit Your Design to the 2026 to 2027 Edition
Architects, designers, studios and manufacturers can register and upload their work free of charge, receive a complimentary preliminary score, and decide afterwards whether to nominate the project for judging. The standard deadline is 30 September 2026 and the final late deadline is 28 February 2027. Nominate your design here, or read more about the programme at whatisadesignaward.com and designaward.com.
Results for the 2026 to 2027 period will be announced to the public on 15 April 2027, and ArchEyes will publish a selection of the winning architecture and interior projects on that date.
