BAU's Yuandang Bridge takes top prize in Australian Institute of Architects 2022 International Chapter Awards

The Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) has announced the 2022 International Chapter Architecture Award winners. The program was developed in order to celebrate and recognize work produced by Australian architects within the country and overseas. This year, a stunning example of "hybrid" public infrastructure by Brearley Architects + Urbanists (BAU) took the top prize. The firm's Yuandang Bridge project in the Chinese Jiangsu Province was awarded the International Chapter Architecture Medallion and International Chapter Named Award for Urban Design. 

This year's jury was co-chaired by architects Nic Brunson, RAIA and John Chow, RAIA. The awards program was announced during an in-person celebration at New York's Brickworks Design Studio. All International Chapter winners are now in the running to complete in the National Architecture Awards program.

View the complete list of this year's winners below.

INTERNATIONAL CHAPTER ARCHITECTURE MEDALLION & INTERNATIONAL CHAPTER NAMED AWARD FOR URBAN DESIGN
Winner: Yuandang Bridge by Brearley Architects + Urbanists (BAU)

Excerpt from jury citation: "Yuandang Bridge is at once playful, achingly beautiful, and surprisingly it astutely interweaves the intimate human scale with the vast seascape. En route, there are moments for shared gatherings under the pavilion with its warped metal structure, referencing the wearing of water of the local Suzhou Taihu rocks, along with intimately calibrated moments for individual contemplation and discovery. The pavilion roof structure is detailed to a seemingly impossible thinness, almost like a hovering sheet of water fashioned more evocatively by its rippled reflective metal lining [...] The bridge plan is a graceful ribbon, sinuously developed from a series of gentle curves spanning the water. These curves form alternating bays and peninsulas with corresponding experiential qualities of refuge and prospect across the length of the journey.  Each component contributes to the unity of the whole in deceptively simple gestures."

INTERNATIONAL CHAPTER NAMED AWARD FOR COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE
Commercial Bay – Te Toki i te Rangi by Warren and Mahoney, Woods Bagot, and NH Architects

Excerpt from jury citation: "The project is undoubtedly ambitious. Its unprecedented local scale and position has driven its architects to successfully address a plethora of complex, contextual and cultural conditions, whilst setting a world-class standard for major commercial architecture in New Zealand. The architects’ selection of a diagrid structure for the tower is visible through a transparent facade and reads clearly in the city skyline. The pattern adds intricacy to the massing, helping to break down its scale as one of the city’s largest buildings, and successfully aids in expressing the building’s subtly curved form."

AWARD FOR EDUCATIONAL ARCHITECTURE
Tianyou Experimental School by Brearley Architects + Urbanists (BAU)

Excerpt from jury citation: "The Tianyou Experimental School, designed by Brearley Architects & Urbanists, delightfully explores a new and dynamic typology for education. The design breaks away from a traditional institutional design by allowing the education space to extend beyond the bounds of a student’s home classroom. The architects planned the school around six parallel ‘beams’ connected by a central meandering beam, in turn surrounding a central playing field. Pockets of space are integrated cleverly throughout the internal design, providing different modes of interaction and education. In addition, many outdoor fields and grounds are linked with the various school structures, capitalizing on the negative spaces between the building massing and thus blurring indoor and outdoor environments. These strategies provide an interesting and stimulating informal learning environment and encourage activities that promote students’ interaction, elevating their learning capacity and improving their mental and physical health."

COMMENDATION FOR PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE
Australian Pavilion (for Expo 2020) by bureau^proberts 

Excerpt from jury citation: "The Pavilion captures the essence of the Australian landscape, its culture and society under the key design feature of the cumulus cloud, a natural phenomenon occurring across Australia’s diverse landscape. Built as a tectonic structure, featuring aluminium panels of various sizes, it hovers over the entry and public forecourt. As night falls, lights illuminate the clouds creating a dynamic display that evokes an Australian lightning storm." 

WILLIAM J. MITCHEL PRIZE 
Felicity D. Scott, PhD

Award Details: "This year, the International Chapter has awarded the WJM Prize to Felicity D. Scott, Phd, Professor of Architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, where she is the director of the doctoral program in architectural history and theory as well as co-director of the program in critical, curatorial, and conceptual practices in architecture. Ms. Scott studied architecture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, history and philosophy of science at the University of Melbourne, urban design at Harvard University, and completed her doctorate at Princeton University. Her research, including work within the Asia-Pacific region, lies at the nexus of architecture, media, politics, and the environment and has become increasingly important as the profession broadly rethinks its capacity to address climate change, colonial exploitation, and racial inequity."

A live-streamed version of the program can be seen below.