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.
What is the difference between a circulation space and a threshold? In technical terms, they both serve the same function: transporting a person from point A to point B. However, a threshold is more than a route. It mediates the transition between two conditions, shaping how a person arrives at their destination. It can stretch or compress time, heighten anticipation or offer a moment of pause. Most importantly, it transforms movement into experience.
The paradox? A threshold can take almost any shape or form. It can be a corridor, a sequence of rooms, an open space, a staircase, a screen, an edge and so forth. Below are seven projects that offer a different interpretation of this often-overlooked architectural space.
AYDC Public Art Center
By Atelier XI, China
Jury Winner, Architecture +Art, 14th Architizer A+Awards
Upon first glance, this public art complex, comprising the Xima Library, Ginkgo Chapel and Dali Stage, appears almost disjointed. Each pavilion is revealed through its own carefully choreographed arrival sequence, yet no prescribed path dictates how visitors move between them. Instead, the landscape itself becomes the connective threshold. Porous material skins allow wind and light to pass freely through the structures, softening the boundary between architecture and nature and creating moments of pause along the way. Here, the threshold is no longer confined to an entrance. It unfolds across the entire site, transforming the journey between pavilions into the project’s defining architectural experience.
Memorial Brumadinho
By Gustavo Penna Arquitetos Associados, Brumadinho, Brazil
Jury Winner, Sustainable Cultural Building, 14th Architizer A+Awards
This project is conceived as a processional journey. Programmatically, it is a space of memory and resistance, built to honor the 272 victims of the collapse of the Mina Córrego do Feijão tailings dam in Brumadinho. Conceptually, rather than treating the memorial as a single destination, the architects transform the entire experience into an elongated threshold. The entrance pavilion, carved pathway and memorial rooms compose the visitors’ movement and pacing through moments of compression, reflection and release before dissolving into the surrounding landscape, where remembrance extends beyond the architecture itself.
Gelareh
By ZAV Architects, Iran
Popular Winner, Architecture +Colour, 14th Architizer A+Awards
The Gelareh project turns an existing structure into a threshold. Instead of treating the original house as a fixed boundary, the architects take advantage of the current building and add to it “new body members.” These “limbs” are made of a series of interconnected vaults that crawl into the garden and provide additional habitable spaces. Through this gesture, circulation becomes occupation, as the vaults create a gradual spatial transition that extends domestic life beyond the original footprint of the house.
Redhill Early Learning Centre
By Hubo Studio, Sandton, South Africa
Jury Winner, Kindergarten, 14th Architizer A+Awards
Inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy, this early learning center asks: Who needs corridors? In a sense, the project demotes circulation altogether. Inside, a network of interconnected ateliers and homebases flows around a central piazza, while outside, the building’s edge “disappears” into landscaped play areas. Through this spatial restructuring, the program itself becomes a threshold, where every transition doubles as a space for learning and play.
Cloud Center, Financial Street Ancient Spring Town
By Wutopia Lab, Zunhua, Tangshan, China
Popular Winner, Spa & Wellness, 14th Architizer A+Awards
At first, the project looks like a giant boulder that has landed atop the mountain. But appearances can be deceptive. Rather than functioning as a singular object, the building takes the form of a circular path. Following a zigzagging landscape route, visitors approach the building gradually, eventually descending into a cavernous interior that encases a spiraling ramp that burrows through the artificial stone. Despite its monolithic exterior, the interior alternates between concealment and revelation. Here, the threshold is not simply a way of entering the building, but an orchestrated sequence of discovery.
AquaPraça
By Carlo Ratti Associati, Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Belém, Brazil
Jury Winner, Pavilion, 14th Architizer A+Awards
AquaPraça asks a deceptively simple question: What if the threshold never stayed still? Floating at the water’s edge, the public plaza transforms the changing tide into its defining architectural feature. Visitors follow a gently sloping perimeter path that alternately rises above and dips below the waterline, before arriving at a central amphitheater organized around a tidal pool.
Powered by an active ballast system, the structure continuously adjusts its height in response to sea-level fluctuations, turning climate change into a lived, spatial experience rather than an abstract concept. In doing so, the project becomes a conceptual as well as a physical threshold between architecture, climate and public life.
Crow Museum of Asian Art at the University of Texas at Dallas
By Morphosis Architects, Dallas, Texas
Popular Winner, Museum, 14th Architizer A+Awards
At the Crow Museum of Asian Art, the most important rooms are not rooms at all. The project is part of a larger cultural district, organized around a porous network of plazas, covered outdoor rooms and transparent ground-floor spaces that oscillate between the various programs: two museums, a performance hall and music building, a parking garage, public spaces and so forth. Ultimately, in order to effectively bridge art, education and everyday campus life, the design treats circulation as a cultural experience in its own right, instead of a means to reach each distinct destination.
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.
Featured Image: Memorial Brumadinho by Gustavo Penna Arquitetos Associados, Brumadinho, Brazil, Jury Winner, Built – Sustainable Cultural Building, 14th Architizer A+Awards
