The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer's 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.
Prefab and modular architecture has long carried a certain image: efficient, repeatable and perhaps a little too easy to recognize. But that image is becoming harder to hold onto. Increasingly, prefabrication is being used less as a visual language than as a way of solving very different architectural problems, from rebuilding communities after disaster to working in remote landscapes, adapting to extreme climates and reducing the demands of construction on difficult sites.
The projects recognized in this year’s Architecture +Prefab & Modular category make that shift particularly clear. Some are assembled from timber modules, others from concrete components or volumetric units, yet few announce their method of construction at first glance. Instead, prefab becomes something that happens behind the architecture, making room for local materials, landscape, resilience and a lot more personality. These seven projects show just how far the category has moved from the idea of the prefabricated building as a standardized object.
Oceanfront Squamish Presentation Centre & Public House (PCPH)
By Stephane Laroye Architect | SLA Inc., Squamish, Canada
Jury Winner, Architecture +Prefab & Modular, 14th Architizer A+Awards
Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Prefab & Modular, 14th Architizer A+Awards
A timber structure this striking hardly looks like something assembled with prefabrication. Designed as a year-round gathering place on Squamish’s waterfront, the project brings together a presentation center, brewery and restaurant, opening directly toward Oceanfront Park and Howe Sound. Its defining feature is the exposed mass-timber structure, with Douglas Fir glulam and locally sourced spruce-fir-pine CLT used throughout and left visible wherever possible. Prefabrication played a major role behind the scenes: close coordination with the fabricators and contractors allowed much of the construction to be prepared off-site, while on-site prefabrication helped protect the exposed timber and brought the superstructure together in just six weeks.
Red Camp
By idee architects Vietnam, Hanoi, Vietnam
Designed as a temporary retreat for visitors exploring the landscape, Red Camp uses a lightweight modular system that can be assembled quickly while keeping its footprint deliberately restrained. The architecture is intended to sit lightly within its surroundings, giving visitors a place to pause, rest and reconnect with nature rather than competing with it. Its prefab approach is part of that idea, allowing the camp to be put together with speed and flexibility while maintaining a strong relationship with the landscape.
Lahaina Homes
By DXA studio and Liv-Connected, Maui County, Hawaii
Following the 2023 Lahaina wildfire, which left more than 7,000 people homeless, these factory-built houses were developed as a rapid response that still aimed to feel like home. Their prefabricated construction made the tight delivery schedule possible, with 109 houses completed, furnished and delivered on time.
Yet the modular system does not dictate how they look or feel. For the Kilohana site, board-and-batten cladding and bright colors reference the storefronts of Lahaina’s lost Front Street, while porches create places to sit, greet neighbors and reconnect with the community. Built off-site and shipped across the Pacific, the houses show how prefab can respond to crisis without making architecture feel temporary.
Desert Ark
By designRESERVE, Inner Mongolia, China
In the middle of the Tengger Desert, a place shaped by sandstorms and extreme conditions, architecture has to earn its place. Designed as a field camp for the rangers and volunteers working to contain the desert’s expansion, the project brings together nine modular units in an enclosed “Desert Ark,” providing shelter, workspaces and basic facilities in an otherwise unforgiving landscape. Prefabrication plays a practical role here, with key fixtures integrated into factory-made concrete components to reduce labor on site, while 3D-printed concrete allows the structures to be installed quickly. The camp is also entirely self-sufficient, recycling wastewater for irrigation and relying on off-grid solar power. Rather than hiding its modular logic, the project makes it part of a remarkably site-specific response to one of China’s harshest environments.
Studio House
By Ark-Shelter, Žilina Region, Slovakia
Designed for remote landscapes, this modular home uses three timber modules arranged around a thermal concrete core, with part of the volume tucked into the terrain and part projecting over the valley. The system keeps construction efficient while allowing the house to adapt to different sites and expand over time. Its materials give the prefab logic a more tactile character: timber, thermal-mass concrete and small copper details come together in a restrained palette, while engineered timber beams allow the modules to span without internal columns. The result feels less like a standardized product and more like a carefully considered house that happens to be prefabricated.
GREEN @ Wong Tai Sin
By Architectural Services Department, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Recycling facilities are rarely the kind of architecture people want to linger around. This project takes a different approach, turning a neighborhood recycling station in Hong Kong into an open, park-like setting where sorting waste becomes part of a larger public experience. The buildings are arranged across the existing terrain, connected by paths, ramps and staircases, with pocket plazas, lawns and planted areas woven between them. Prefabricated pavilion-like structures keep the construction light and open, while glass walls and skylights bring the surrounding landscape and sky into the activity spaces. Even the recycling facilities are placed directly beside the sidewalk, making the process visible rather than hidden away. With 40% green coverage, the project gives environmental infrastructure a distinctly public face.
Empire Vale Public School
By Modscape + Modbotics, Empire Vale, Australia
Empire Vale Public School. Designed by Pedavoli Architects, Landscape Architecture by Taylor Brammer, Graphics by Working Image, Fabricated by Modscape, Built by ADCO. Photography by The Guthrie Project. Occupying the unceded land of the Bundjalung People.
Following the devastating 2022 floods in New South Wales’ Northern Rivers, this new primary school was designed as one of six facilities built to withstand future flooding. Its 27 volumetric modules and seven roof cassettes allow the school to be assembled quickly while giving it the flexibility needed for contemporary learning, from classrooms and collaborative spaces to a library and outdoor learning areas. The most striking move is also the most practical: the main school facilities are lifted three meters above ground on a steel gantry. Below, durable, easily restored spaces can withstand inundation, making the modular system a tool for resilience as much as speed.
The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer's 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.
