RIBA International Award Winners 2011 Announced

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the 13 buildings which are receiving RIBA International Awards for architectural excellence later today. The RIBA International Awards are presented to architecture practices based outside the UK building anywhere outside the UK; or for practices based in Britain and working outside the EU. All winners are eligible for the RIBA Lubetkin Prize awarded to the best international building by an RIBA member the presentation.

This year also sees the dramatic rebuilding and renovation of buildings including the Iron Market in Port au Prince – seen as Haiti’s 'Eiffel Tower' and the transformation from empty factory to housing of the Stanislavsky Factory in Moscow, both by John McAslan + Partners.

The jury for the International Awards included Bob Allies, Gianni Botsford, Alison Brooks, Tony Chapman, Peter Clegg, Paul Finch, Murray Fraser, Philip Gumuchdjian, Deborah Saunt, Bill Taylor, and Cindy Walters.

Following are the 2011 Award Winners.

Guangzhou Opera House
Guangzhou, China

Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects    
Client: Guangzhou Municipal Government        
Contractor: SHTK (Shanghai, China); Guangzhou Pearl River, Foreign Investment Architectural Designing Institute
Contract Value: confidential
Date of completion: Feb 2010
Gross internal area: 70000 sq m

Jury Verdict: "Zaha Hadid’s characteristic shape-making does not always lead to intimate interiors, but here – as we saw in MAXXI – is a building that is as much about its internal places as its external forms.  And here too, the inside and out are linked by artfully placed window. For all the auditorium’s asymmetry the acoustics are perfect.

This is the realisation of her 1994 dream of bringing a touch of continental magic to Cardiff Bay - the UK’s loss is finally China’s gain. There is no doubt that practice has made perfect; this is surely a better building than Cardiff was ever going to be."

Brain and Mind Research Unit - Youth Mental Health Building, University of Sydney, Australia
Sydney, Australia

Architect: BVN            
Client: University of Sydney
Contractor: Buildcorp
Contract Value: $14m    
Date of completion: August 2009
Gross internal area: 3000 sq m

Jury Verdict: "This building has a tough context, situated as it is in the former rag trade area of Sydney and with a heritage listed façade.  The architects have responded with a delightful mongrel of a building with the laboratories placed in a glass box which is balanced on top of the two storey retained building.  The resulting composition is visually exciting and a major addition to the streetscape.  

Materially the use of recycled timber and steel reflect the gritty urban context, while the translucent glass planks give it modernity and produce an excellent working environment.  The same materials in the atrium and stair, which link all the areas, are just as tactile, just as tough.  This is intelligent and highly appropriate architecture."

Iron Market
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Architect: John McAslan & Partners    
Client: Denis O’Brien
Contractor: ISPAN, Haiti
Contract Value: confidential    
Date of completion: January 2011
Gross internal area: 4645 sq m

Jury Verdict: "When the Haiti earthquake mangled Port-au-Prince’s Iron Market, it destroyed a symbol of the nation.  Built in France and bound for Cairo to serve as a railway station, the vagaries of history, tides or captains led it to end up here, where it served as a perfectly good market hall until ravaged first by fire in 2008 and then by earthquake.  

Working on a pro-bono basis the architects led an international multi-disciplinary team working with all-local craftsmen to salvage what they could of the original twisted structure and other materials and painstakingly reconstruct the rest.  

Funded by Irish billionaire, Denis O’Brien, and re-opened by former US President, Bill Clinton, the Iron Market is now fully functioning with 700 stall holders and forms the cornerstone of a new cultural hub for the city."

Alila Villas
Bali, Indonesia

Architect: WOHA        
Contract Value: $100m
Date of completion: June 2009
Gross internal area: 26,595 sq m

Jury Verdict: "Located on the dry savannah landscape of Bukit Peninsular in south west Bali, this ecologically sustainable development of a 50 suite hotel and 35 villas is Green Globe 21 rated.

Materials are locally sourced, with the stone produced through the making of cuttings through the roads.  Only recycled Ulin timber and bamboo is used and local craftsmen made the fittings.  All this reduces the sense of conspicuous consumption that pervades most luxury resorts and adds to its air of tranquillity.  Rainwater and sewerage is re-cycled, heat pumps heat all the water, all the public areas are naturally ventilated. The gardens use only local plants that require far less water than non-native species, and they support fauna. This all makes for truly sustainable tourism."

Stanislavsky Factory
Moscow, Russia

Architect: John McAslan & Partners   
Executive Architect: ADM Moscow
Client: Sergey Gordeev
Contractor: Mebe Construction
Structural Engineer: Arup
Contract Value: confidential   
Date of completion: January 2011
Gross internal area: 60,400 sq m

Jury Verdict: "McAslan’s impressive regeneration of this quarter in Moscow has seen an important renewal of a series of buildings interlaced with fine new work to produce a mixed-use scheme. Old factories and classically-proportioned houses, Stanislavsky’s 1912 building and the Moscow Arts Theatre, these have all been lovingly repaired, re-worked and re-used.  The theatre is now an arts centre, the rest are offices, apartments, restaurants and a hotel.

All of this sits happily within a masterplan, also by John McAslan, which provides a gently restrained setting for the buildings new and old."

School of Arts
Singapore

Architect: WOHA        
Client: Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts    
Contractor: Tiong Aik Construction
Contract Value: $100m    
Date of completion: 2010
Gross internal area: 52,945 sq m

Jury Verdict: "The aim of this new arts-based school for 13-18 year olds was ‘to groom the next generation of artists, creative professionals and individuals who are passionate for and committed to the arts in a multi-cultural society.’  A tall order then to which the architects have responded splendidly.  

This pair of vegetation-clad slab blocks guarding an open atrium criss-crossed by walkways represents an exploration of ideas for high-density educational spaces in the urban tropics, with a seamless integration of indoor-outdoor spaces for education, interaction, communication and exhibitions on a compact inner city site.

The podium contains a theatre and concert hall and a number of informal performance spaces.  This is a beautiful, safe and secure environment for arts education."

Galleria Centercity Department Store    
Cheonan, South Korea

Architect: UN Studio           
Client: Hanwha Galleria
Contractor: Hanwha E&C
Contract Value: Confidential   
Date of completion: December 2010
Gross internal area: 66700 sq m

Jury Verdict: "Shopping doesn’t get much more different than this. When Future Systems gave us the silver disc-clad blue amoeba that is Selfridges we thought that the future of shopping had arrived. We have to wait a long time for UN Studio to come up with the next instalment, but the wait has been worthwhile.

The monochromatic, reflective facade is a double skin; the external face is laminated low-iron glass and the internal face is composite aluminium panels. The moiré pattern of the curtain walling is created by the slender mullions that separate and support the two skins. The rounded floorplates and repeated curves unfold as shoppers move through the building.

This intriguing project intelligently addresses the transience of our global shopping culture and creates a unique and distinctive building type."

Laboratory Building
Basel, Switzerland

Architect: David Chipperfield Architects        
Client: Novartis Pharma
Contractor:  Implenia / Dressler Bau
Structural Engineer: Walt + Galmarini
Services engineer: gb consult / Fact
Contract Value: Confidential    
Date of completion: May 2010
Gross internal area: 11,600 sq m

Jury Verdict: "The colonnade is a recurring theme in David Chipperfield’s architecture and here it adds a classical seriousness to this laboratory of the future for the pharmaceutical company Novartis; it also picks up on the use of the device in neighbouring buildings.  The load-bearing pre-cast multi-angular concrete columns extend to all the building’s façades and structure, with 27 metre beams giving column-free interiors for flexible working arrangements.  Services are also neatly incorporated into these beams.  

There is poetry in the simplicity of this arrangement but it is further enhanced by the commissioning of a three storey yellow sculptural stair from Ross Lovegrove and by the installation by Serge Spritzer in the garden that is enclosed by the 5th, top storey."

Loft Gardens
Istanbul, Turkey

Architect: Tabanlioglu
Client: Akfen Gayrimenkul  & Saglam Construction
Contractor: Akfen Insaat Turizm ve Ticaret A.S.
Contract Value: £12.4m    
Date of completion: 2010
Gross internal area: 22,500 sq m

Jury Verdict: "The 21 storey residential building takes the Miesian tower model and subtly humanises it by manipulating its pure shape into a modulating inhabited form. High-rise garden patios are then inserted into the façade as a counterpoint to the protruding bay windows and deepen the play of solid and void within the façade.  Plan and section are organised to create a range of apartment types of great spatial variety, some horizontal based around patios, others vertical around double-height spaces.

Internally the designers display an unabashed passion for the aesthetic of the industrial loft with their exposed services and structure and with their use of concrete, steel and timber.  The Loft Gardens are an extreme demonstration of elegance and restraint within a subtly modified typology."

Masdar Institute
Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Architect: Foster and Partners
Client: Mubadala Development Company
Contractor: Al Ahmadiah - Hip Hing JV
Structural Engineer: Adams Kara Taylor
Services Engineer: PHA Consulting
Contract Value: Confidential
Date of completion: Oct 2010
Gross internal area: 45,000 sq m

Jury Verdict: "Foster’s Masdar Institute is the first part of a masterplan for a new quarter of Abu Dhabi, Masdar City, and is powered entirely by the sun – a plentiful local resource.  These six buildings, including laboratories, teaching rooms and apartments, also respect the vernacular without being subservient to it. So while the accommodation is shaded by perforated screens reminiscent of traditional Islamic architecture, the labs are clad in insulating cushions of ETFE.  A clever glulam roof to the Knowledge Centre allows for filtered light and natural ventilation, as well as providing a platform for the photovoltaics.  

This prototype is as sophisticated as ever a finished article could be."

Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Architect: Foster and Partners            
Client: Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Contractor: John Moriarty & Associates
Contract Value: $180m    
Date of completion: Nov 2010
Gross internal area: 11,270 sq m

Jury Verdict: "The maestro has re-orchestrated one of the world’s great galleries, sampling some of his greatest hits - the Great Court of the British Museum and the Reichstag – to re-instate Guy Lowell’s Beaux Arts plan, while at the same time introducing light and clarity.  The created space houses the Art of the Americas Wing with no fewer than 53 new galleries arranged over four storeys.  All this against the backdrop of the work of no-bit-part player I M Pei, whose previous extension Foster’s have restored along with Lowell’s original.

In another Great Court moment the architects have reprised the colonisation of a courtyard with a glass-covered cafe and special exhibitions gallery incorporating state of the art climate control.  This is consummate architecture."

North College, Rice University
Houston, Texas, USA

Architect: Hopkins Architects Partnership       
Client: Barbara White Bryson
Client: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Contractor: Linbeck Group
Structural Engineer: Haynes Waley Associates / Ulrich Engineers
Contract Value: $110m   
Date of completion: August 2009
Gross internal area: 300,000 sq m

Jury Verdict: "On a campus established in 1912 and amid a zoo of more recent additions by James Stirling and Michael Wilford, Cesar Pelli, Ricardo Bofill and others, Hopkins Architects were commissioned to design two new colleges, McMurtry and Duncan, providing a total of approximately 400 rooms, housing up to 650 students. Each quadrangle is completed by a ‘commons’ or dining space, the communal heart of the colleges.

Walls are self-supporting of 8 inch deep bricks, reflecting the rich character of existing campus buildings, using a high lime content mortar, so that the bricks span across each façade of the building without being broken by expansion joints. This material honesty took the Texas construction industry by surprise and required extensive dialogue between architect, client, engineers and contractor."

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Richmond, Virginia, USA

Architect: Rick Mather Architects    
Executive Architects: SMBW
Client: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Contract Value: $150 m    
Date of completion: April 2010
Gross internal area: 165,000 sq.ft./15,330m² New Build,  42,000 sq.ft./3,900m² Renovation

Jury Verdict: "Rick Mather has returned to his homeland to add a new wing to Richmond’s Museum of Fine Arts.  The project provides not only three new floors of gallery space, it also adds a shop, library, lecture hall, conservation studios, offices and a cafe and restaurant overlooking a four acre sculpture garden.  

This is Mather at his best: making sense of what is there but adding his own finely-honed stamp.  The museum, which used to turn its back on the city with it blind facades, now addresses the grand boulevard on which it is sited in a very civic manner with a 40 foot high window of low-energy glass. Materially the building takes its cue from the old in its use of limestone. This is masterful city-making."