Winners of the WAF Architecture Drawing Prize 2020

The fourth annual Architecture Drawing Prize, curated by World Architecture Festival, Sir John Soane’s Museum, and Make Architects just revealed the 2020 winners. 

The prize winners will also be exhibited at WAF 2021 in Lisbon.

Overall Winner and Hybrid Category Winner: Apartment #5, a Labyrinth and Repository of Spatial Memories by Clement Laurencio, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL (cover image)

Summary: "The dwelling, set in London, re-creates atmospheres of places remembered from a recent voyage to India. Separate pencil hand-drawings are digitally composed, corrupting and curating places into a labyrinth of spatial memories." 

Jury comment: "This drawing creates a labyrinth of drawings, each with its own story. Familiarity and mystery are conveyed with a sensitive, confident technique of great skill and precision. There is nothing loud or colorful, only a realm of acutely observed detail with a powerful muted presence. You can really imagine being here."

Lockdown Prize Winner and Hybrid Category Shortlist: Airplane Tower by Victor Hugo Azevedo and Cheryl Lu Xu, Robert A. M. Stern Architects

Jury comment: "We were captivated by the Airplane Tower drawing’s immediacy, wit and use of multiple perspectives while addressing serious questions around the pandemic, interlinking the environment and reuse agenda with the housing crisis and the many challenges faced by the travel industry."

Other shortlisted entries in the Hybrid Category are:

Hand-Drawn Category Winner: Dear Hashima by architect/artist Marc Brousse

Summary: "The drawing, one of a series, is intended to re-question the position of man within the city, based on the ideas of the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Ink/charcoal, invisible ink, using Traitillism as a method, whereby the line symbolizes life, space, thought and memory." 

Jury comment: "All the judges were very impressed by the incredibly individual drawing technique used here, which is technically impressive and visually highly effective."

Other shortlisted entries in the Hand-Drawn Category are:

Digital Category Winner: Re-Reading Metropolis by Chenglin Able, University of California, Berkeley

Summary: "The project adopts a 'frame within frame' quality to create tension between isolation and unity, between quiet residential and bright urban lives, and between infill and pavilion knitted to the frame of the surrounding context. The project is actively engaging new interpretations of iconic historical buildings and redefining the typology of a water temple."

Jury comment: "Layering drawing types - maps, plans, infrastructural systems and data entry, Re-Reading Metropolis suggests a fresh way to map an urban territory, both playful and precise."

Other shortlisted entries in the Digital Category are:

The 2020 jury panel included artists Ben Langlands & Nikki Bell; Gary Simmons, Main Board Director at William Hare Group; Ken Shuttleworth, Founder of Make Architects; Lily Jencks, Cofounder of LilyJencksStudio and JencksSquared; Louise Stewart, Curator of Exhibitions at Sir John Soane's Museum; Narinder Sagoo, Senior Partner at Foster + Partners; artist, Pablo Bronstein; and Paul Finch, Program Director of the World Architecture Festival.

The announcement of the winning entries was made online yesterday in conjunction with a virtual panel discussion featuring members of the jury. Rewatch the panel video below.