National Museum in Szczecin crowned as 2016 World Building of the Year

That's a wrap for the 2016 World Architecture Festival! After a final round of presentations and jury critiques for the Day One and Two category winners, the National Museum in Szczecin in Poland made it to the top as the ninth recipient of the coveted World Building of the Year. In recent years, the overall-winning title went to The Interlace by OMA/Ole Scheeren in Singapore and a21studio's The Chapel in Vietnam.

Additionally, the South Melbourne Primary School by Hayball scooped the Future Project of the Year award, while the Kopupaka Reserve in Auckland, New Zealand by Isthmus won Landscape of the Year. Last but not least, the Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Architecture won Small Project of the Year for their ZCB Bamboo Pavilion.

All the winners were presented with their awards during the Friday night gala dinner, which took place at the Wilhelm Tuckermann-designed Postbahnhof in Berlin. As for next year, WAF will return to Berlin next November.

Scroll down to see the winning projects.

WORLD BUILDING OF THE YEAR: National Museum in Szczecin, Poland by Robert Konieczny/KWK Promes

Jury chair David Chipperfield cited the National Museum as an “optimistic, poetic and imaginative” ode to the past. “This project enriches the city and the life of the city. It addresses a site with three histories, pre-World War II, wartime destruction, and post-war development, which left a significant gap in the middle of the city,“ Chipperfield stated. “This is a piece of topography as well as a museum. To go underground is to explore the memory and archaeology of the city, while above ground the public face of the building, including its undulating roof, and be interpreted and used in a variety of ways.”

FUTURE PROJECT OF THE YEAR: South Melbourne Primary School by Hayball

“The school is a new model of vertical building that responds to the specific inner-urban context of the developing Fishermans Bend urban renewal area. Accommodating 525 students, the new school will be an integral component of the Montague Precinct within Fisherman’s Bend providing an education and community focus as the area is developed.”

“WAF’s Future Project super-jury — Kim Nielsen, Ole Scheeren and Coren Sharples — selected the project for ‘the way the space interprets and promotes pedagogy’, and how it connects indoor and outdoor teaching areas and differentiated learning environments. The judges felt the architects overcame the challenges of designing a vertical school, using a central staircase as a point of interaction and as a gathering space.”

LANDSCAPE OF THE YEAR: Kopupaka Reserve in Auckland, New Zealand by Isthmus

“The [Kopupaka Reserve] is a hybrid park that combines a storm-water reserve with an urban park, playground and skate park, — all made possible by dovetailing the masterplanning of the streets with the green infrastructure of the 22-hectare reserve. Judges praised the project as ‘a successful translation of Maori traditions that succeeded in being both poetic and imaginative in its creation of a landscape that captures the soul and nature of the area’.”

SMALL PROJECT OF THE YEAR: ZCB Bamboo Pavilion by The Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Architecture

“The ZCB Bamboo Pavilion is a public event space built for the Construction Industry Council (CIC)’s Zero Carbon Building (ZCB) in the summer of 2015 in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong. Located in the ZCB Garden Area, the pavilion is a 4-storey-high, 37 metre spanning, bamboo gridshell structure with a usable area of approximately 350m2 and a seating capacity of 200. It is built from 473 large bamboo poles that are bent onsite to shape the structure and that are hand-tied together with metal wire using techniques based on Cantonese bamboo scaffolding craftsmanship. Recognised by judges as ‘an excellent architectural outcome’ the project was commended as a ‘brilliant example of cutting edge simulation and modelling combined with delightful traditional craft and skill’.”

All photos and quoted text courtesy of the 2016 World Architecture Festival.