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Three Lessons from the WAN Awards Jury Room: Michele Rhoda on What Good Design Looks Like Now
Three Lessons from the WAN Awards Jury Room: Michele Rhoda on What Good Design Looks Like Now
Cape Town, South Africa
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Three Lessons from the WAN Awards Jury Room: Michele Rhoda on What Good Design Looks Like Now
Cape Town, South Africa
What defines “good” design today? Judging the WAN Awards proved to be a recalibration. You arrive primed to reward polished, beautiful imagery, confident diagrams and the familiar signals of “design excellence”. Yet across categories as different as Adaptive Reuse and Future Leisure, the jury conversations consistently demanded more. The most compelling work was not simply well-composed; it asked a harder question: does this project meaningfully improve the lives of those who will inhabit it and can it continue to do so over time?
What became clear was not a dominant aesthetic, but a shared insistence on originality with consequence. The strongest entries weren’t loud. They were legible, in the clarity of their logic, the discipline of their restraint, and an understanding that sustainability is not a material palette but a long game of use, adaptability, and relevance. From these deliberations emerged three principles that feel increasingly critical to how architectural success is defined today.
Design for Use, Not a picture-perfect frame
Sustainability is no longer a checklist it is a test of purpose under pressure. In both Adaptive Reuse and Future Leisure, the strongest projects treated the brief as provisional: not because the design was unfinished, but because it understood the world around it isn’t static. These proposals did the harder work upfront; researching patterns of use, anticipating multiple user groups, and designing for cultural and operational shifts rather than a single “perfect” opening-day scenario.
That shift changes how success is measured. A building that performs beautifully on opening day but cannot adapt is, in effect, already obsolete, no matter how refined the detailing or persuasive the renders. Designers should consider sustainability not as a mood-board of local materials but as a commitment to continued usefulness. It’s operational intelligence, spatial generosity, and the kind of flexibility that prevents a building from becoming a burden, financially, environmentally, or socially, years after completion.
In Adaptive Reuse, that intelligence showed up as discipline. Not restoration for its own sake, but a clear logic behind what is retained and what is removed. The most successful projects didn’t “preserve character” as a sentimental gesture; they accentuated it through precise interventions that made the existing fabric more legible and more liveable.
This is where the everyday becomes the real benchmark. In ARRCC’s Wave Villa, for example, the restoration of the roof and key elements of the home was never treated as an aesthetic trophy. Instead, the design strategy was anchored in how the house would be lived in, how it would breathe, perform, and support daily rituals over time. That is the difference between preservation as image-making and reuse as a living system: you keep what matters, upgrade what fails, and design the future life of the building as carefully as you honour its past.
Future Leisure sharpened that same point from another angle. The sustainability argument often lived in the program: a clear public benefit, not just theatre; a building that belongs to its city rather than performing “icon” status; and spaces able to evolve beyond their first wave of novelty. The projects that stood out weren’t those that shouted the loudest, they were those that could convincingly answer, through design, how longevity, delight, and responsibility can reinforce one another rather than compete.
Minimalism Isn’t an Excuse for Less
Stripped-back architecture can be powerful, but only when it is underpinned by spatial generosity and environmental comfort. When minimalism functions only as budget reduction in disguise, it stops being a deliberate spatial strategy and instead reveals a lack of investment in comfort, longevity, and lived experience.
As judges, we repeatedly returned to human experience, as something measurable and uncompromising. Daylight had to function beyond the promise of a render. Ventilation, thermal comfort, and acoustic performance were treated as design drivers, not after thoughts.
A contemporary interior, whether in affordable housing or high-end hospitality - must feel genuinely inhabitable and comforting. What endures is not visual austerity, but disciplined calm: space shaped by material intelligence, proportion, and warmth rather than reduction for its own sake.
Make Community the Brief, Not the By-Product
Future-oriented architecture must answer one question clearly: who benefits? Buildings driven by spectacle or short-term impact fail when they cannot support real patterns of use over time. What matters is whether a project belongs to its context, strengthening public life and delivering value beyond image or market appeal.
The most effective work treats shared space as deliberate social infrastructure. Circulation should invite encounter, thresholds should reduce exclusion, and flexibility must allow use to evolve. Modularity only succeeds when it avoids repetition for its own sake, supporting dignity and identity rather than efficiency alone.
An adaptive reuse project by Neri&Hu demonstrates this succinctly: restraint paired with clarity can be generous, proving that long-term public value is achieved through purpose.
What became clear was not a dominant aesthetic, but a shared insistence on originality with consequence. The strongest entries weren’t loud. They were legible, in the clarity of their logic, the discipline of their restraint, and an understanding that sustainability is not a material palette but a long game of use, adaptability, and relevance. From these deliberations emerged three principles that feel increasingly critical to how architectural success is defined today.
Design for Use, Not a picture-perfect frame
Sustainability is no longer a checklist it is a test of purpose under pressure. In both Adaptive Reuse and Future Leisure, the strongest projects treated the brief as provisional: not because the design was unfinished, but because it understood the world around it isn’t static. These proposals did the harder work upfront; researching patterns of use, anticipating multiple user groups, and designing for cultural and operational shifts rather than a single “perfect” opening-day scenario.
That shift changes how success is measured. A building that performs beautifully on opening day but cannot adapt is, in effect, already obsolete, no matter how refined the detailing or persuasive the renders. Designers should consider sustainability not as a mood-board of local materials but as a commitment to continued usefulness. It’s operational intelligence, spatial generosity, and the kind of flexibility that prevents a building from becoming a burden, financially, environmentally, or socially, years after completion.
In Adaptive Reuse, that intelligence showed up as discipline. Not restoration for its own sake, but a clear logic behind what is retained and what is removed. The most successful projects didn’t “preserve character” as a sentimental gesture; they accentuated it through precise interventions that made the existing fabric more legible and more liveable.
This is where the everyday becomes the real benchmark. In ARRCC’s Wave Villa, for example, the restoration of the roof and key elements of the home was never treated as an aesthetic trophy. Instead, the design strategy was anchored in how the house would be lived in, how it would breathe, perform, and support daily rituals over time. That is the difference between preservation as image-making and reuse as a living system: you keep what matters, upgrade what fails, and design the future life of the building as carefully as you honour its past.
Future Leisure sharpened that same point from another angle. The sustainability argument often lived in the program: a clear public benefit, not just theatre; a building that belongs to its city rather than performing “icon” status; and spaces able to evolve beyond their first wave of novelty. The projects that stood out weren’t those that shouted the loudest, they were those that could convincingly answer, through design, how longevity, delight, and responsibility can reinforce one another rather than compete.
Minimalism Isn’t an Excuse for Less
Stripped-back architecture can be powerful, but only when it is underpinned by spatial generosity and environmental comfort. When minimalism functions only as budget reduction in disguise, it stops being a deliberate spatial strategy and instead reveals a lack of investment in comfort, longevity, and lived experience.
As judges, we repeatedly returned to human experience, as something measurable and uncompromising. Daylight had to function beyond the promise of a render. Ventilation, thermal comfort, and acoustic performance were treated as design drivers, not after thoughts.
A contemporary interior, whether in affordable housing or high-end hospitality - must feel genuinely inhabitable and comforting. What endures is not visual austerity, but disciplined calm: space shaped by material intelligence, proportion, and warmth rather than reduction for its own sake.
Make Community the Brief, Not the By-Product
Future-oriented architecture must answer one question clearly: who benefits? Buildings driven by spectacle or short-term impact fail when they cannot support real patterns of use over time. What matters is whether a project belongs to its context, strengthening public life and delivering value beyond image or market appeal.
The most effective work treats shared space as deliberate social infrastructure. Circulation should invite encounter, thresholds should reduce exclusion, and flexibility must allow use to evolve. Modularity only succeeds when it avoids repetition for its own sake, supporting dignity and identity rather than efficiency alone.
An adaptive reuse project by Neri&Hu demonstrates this succinctly: restraint paired with clarity can be generous, proving that long-term public value is achieved through purpose.
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