Architizer's 13th A+Awards features a suite of sustainability-focused categories that recognizing designers that are building a green industry — and a better future. Start your entry to receive global recognition for your work!
Timber is a building material as old as time — its storied grain connects us to the ancient longhouses of our ancestors and their early settlements forged from wattle and daub. Yet it remains a core instrument in the modern architectural toolkit, especially as we become more mindful of the industry’s environmental impact. Wood is recyclable and renewable, and when sourced from sustainable forests, it can help architects minimize the carbon footprint their work leaves behind.
Our applications of wood have diversified alongside technological innovation. In the hands of interior designers today, timber has become a powerful resource for storytelling. It’s an enduring embodiment of the past imbued with infinite creative potential. From a penthouse apartment to a kindergarten and even a seafood restaurant, these seven winning projects from the 11th A+Awards each channel the wisdom of wood in exciting new directions.
Jonas IJburg
By Orange Architects, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Popular Choice Winner, 11th Annual A+Awards, Multi Unit Housing – Mid Rise (5 – 15 Floors)
Careful attention was paid to the environmental cost of the development. To reduce transportation emissions, European Douglas Fir timber was used throughout the ambitious scheme. Solar panels and rainwater collection systems service the residences and wider facilities, and habitats have been established for local wildlife too. Environmentally and structurally, protection is at the heart of this daring project.
EDGE Suedkreuz Berlin
By TCHOBAN VOSS Architekten GmbH, Berlin, Germany
Jury Winner, 11th Annual A+Awards, Office – Mid Rise (5 – 15 Floors)
Crowning the remarkable central hub, an ultra-lightweight ETFE foil roof is encased in an intricate wood diagrid. The thin trusses offer a vast, unobstructed window to the external world, while swaths of interior windows ensure light penetrates through each office floor. The result is a sleek iteration of a greenhouse that translates notions of growth into a captivating tableau.
Panorama Penthouse
By Bureau Fraai, Netherlands
Jury Winner, 11th Annual A+Awards, Residential Interiors (>3000 sq ft)
The project negotiates a careful dialogue between public and private. Fitted with glazing, the porous timber boxes house more intimate spaces, including the master bathroom, closet, office and sauna. However, they also act as privacy dividers between the bedrooms and the communal zones. After nightfall, blinds can be lowered, transforming the units into solid boundaries. The apartment conceals and reveals with deft precision.
Prime Seafood Palace
By Omar Gandhi Architects, Toronto, Canada
Popular Choice Winner, 11th Annual A+Awards, Restaurants (L >1000 sq ft)
The restaurant’s philosophy emphasizes honest, transparent ingredients, a commitment that’s instilled in the spatial layout. The kitchen sits open to the dining area, offering customers a glimpse into the inner culinary workings.
Shor House
By Measured Architecture Inc., Mayne Island, Canada
Popular Choice Winner, 11th Annual A+Awards, Sustainable Private House
By extending the life cycle of the wood, the home’s carbon footprint is mitigated, and the landscape’s wider cultural history is protected and preserved. Rather than being lost to landfill, the architectural past lives on in what is surely a new blueprint for sensitive residential design.
YNS
By Takeru Shoji Architects. Co., Ltd., Niigata, Japan
Jury Winner, 11th Annual A+Awards, Kindergartens
The kindergarten’s design conjures up the architecture of a village. The region’s meandering paths are reconfigured into winding exterior corridors, while a series of gabled rooflines are reminiscent of a residential street. Within the structure, wooden trusses form suspended ceilings, shaping intimate hut-like spaces for learning and recreation. Vaulted open volumes above the slats draw the outside in, creating points of connection with the wider environment.
Harbour Home
By LAAB Architects, Hong Kong
Popular Winner, 11th Annual A+Awards, Residential – Apartment
Light oak panels envelop the living room, the convex ceiling drawing the eye to the glistening water beyond. Turning away from the window, dramatic black oak walls zone the dining area — the movable screens can be retracted at will to open up the floor plan or closed when privacy is required. But the relationship between the hues is an everchanging equation. As dusk sets in, the dwindling light blurs the distinction between light and dark, and for a time, the space is unified.
Architizer's 13th A+Awards features a suite of sustainability-focused categories that recognizing designers that are building a green industry — and a better future. Start your entry to receive global recognition for your work!