World Architecture Festival

The tradition & historical record

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) is an architectural and design event held annually and considered to be one of the most prestigious events dedicated to the architecture and development industries. It was founded by Paul Finch and Jeremy Melvin for the purpose of showcasing and exhibiting architectural projects and is the world's largest annual architectural event. It is the only architecture festival that combines a live–judged awards programme, where shortlisted architects present their projects live in crit rooms to a judging panel, with seminars and networking events. One of these projects is then awarded the 'World Building of the Year' title. ¹

The World Architecture Festival was first held in 2008 as a "festival and live awards competition dedicated to celebrating and sharing architectural excellence from across the globe". The first four events were held in Barcelona, from 2008 to 2011, at which point the festival moved to Singapore for four years. Since 2016, host cities have included Berlin and Amsterdam. ¹

Over a thousand projects are entered in the competition for the awards each year and more than 550 of these are shortlisted for live presentation at the festival. The architects pay a submission fee to enter a Future Project or a Completed Building project and travel to where the festival is arranged to present the shortlisted project live to a jury panel. The entries are voluntary and the festival does not control who submits projects. In 2011, the sister event INSIDE Festival (for interior architecture and design) was added in the same venue and arranged at the same time as WAF. WAF maintains the World Buildings Directory as an official listing of all past and present projects entries to festivals. ¹

Entries can be submitted to the following award categories – Completed Building, Future Project, Landscape or Inside. ¹

COMPLETED Completed Buildings - Civic and Community Completed Buildings - Creative Re-use Completed Buildings - Culture Completed Buildings - Display Completed Buildings - Health Completed Buildings - Higher Education and Research Completed Buildings - Hotel and Leisure Completed Buildings - House and Villa Completed Buildings - Housing Completed Buildings - Mixed-Use Completed Buildings - Retrofit Completed Buildings - Office Completed Buildings - Production, Energy and Logistics Completed Buildings - Religion Completed Buildings - School Completed Buildings - Shopping Completed Buildings - Sport Completed Buildings - Transport FUTURE Future Projects - Civic Future Projects - Commercial Mixed-Use Future Projects - Competition Entries Future Projects - Culture Future Projects - Education Future Projects - Experimental Future Projects - Health Future Projects - House Future Projects - Infrastructure Future Projects - Leisure-led Development Future Projects - Masterplanning Future Projects - Office Future Projects - Residential LANDSCAPE INSIDE (Interiors Category) Inside - Bars and Restaurants Inside - Education Inside - Health and Fitness Inside - Hotels Inside - Public Buildings Inside - Residential (housing, more than one dwelling) Inside - Residential (single dwelling) Inside - Retail Inside - Temporary/Meanwhile uses Inside - Workplace (Large) Inside - Workplace (Small) SPECIAL PRIZES Best Use of Natural Light Best Use of Stone Sustainability Prize Best Use of Colour Best Use of Timber Small Project of the Year ADDITIONAL PRIZES The GROHE Water Prize Student Charette ¹

Each year the World Architecture Festival publishes a list of the winners of the awards on their official website. ¹

WAF organises an annual architectural and design event for architects, designers and suppliers to gather together and celebrate, learn and discover. It provides an opportunity for architects to present their projects and ideas, highlighting innovative design solutions, sustainable practices, and cultural diversity in architecture. The festival aims to promote architectural innovation, recognize outstanding projects, and stimulate meaningful and impactful conversations about the future and processes of the built environments. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “World Architecture Festival”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

World Architecture Festival is annual festival and awards ceremony for architecture, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²