Winners of The Architecture Drawing Prize 2018

In the run-up to the annual World Architecture Festival (WAF), held this year in Amsterdam, at the end of November, the winners of the second annual Architecture Drawing Prize 2018, curated by WAF, Sir John Soane’s Museum and Make Architects, were announced in London.


In our age of images, besides photography, we are still attracted to hand and digital drawing, so much so that it has given rise to an international competition - The Architecture Drawing Prize 2018 - now in its second year. The prize will be awarded at the annual World Architecture Festival (WAF), to be held this year in Amsterdam.
A lot of interest was shown in this year’s prize, with a total of 31 countries represented in the entries. 56% of the entrants are under 30, as are 63% of the shortlist.
The entrants were shortlisted in the three categories: hand-drawing, hybrid and digital still image. The overall winner was chosen from the winners of the individual categories. Li Han, one of the founding partners of Drawing Architecture Studio in Beijing, was the overall winner and also won the digital category, with his work entitled The Samsara of Building No. 42 on Dirty Street. This project is a chronological visual narrative of the development of a residential building in Beijing, Chine between 2008 and 2017, using drawing to examine the relationship between civil society and the state in urban development. Narinder Sagoo, senior partner at Foster + Partners and one of the judges of the 2018 Architecture Drawing Prize, said, “This drawing challenges preconceptions of digital presentation. It tells hundreds of stories over nine years in which architecture, cities and people’s lives change. It’s important for all architects to consider the life of buildings over the course of time.”
The other two category winners are Lukas Göbl of Austrian practice göbl architektur ZT GmbH in the hybrid category for City of Beautiful Bodies and Carlijn Kingma of Studio Carlijn Kingma in the hand-drawn category for The Babylonian Tower of Modernity.
Lukas Göbl’s drawing is part of an ongoing drawing project focusing on the idea of utopia and its role in today’s society. Farshid Moussavi, founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture and a judge of the 2018 Architecture Drawing Prize, said, “It’s about drawing as process, not outcome.” Carlijn Kingma’s drawing recasts the story of the Tower of Babel in the light of the modern religion of capitalism, where social media and the new tools of digital communication are leading to an increasingly polarised society. Ken Shuttleworth, founder of Make Architects and a judge of the prize, said, “This is an incredible drawing technically (…) You can look at it for days.”
In addition to the prizes, the jury, comprised of Owen Hopkins, senior curator at Sir John Soane’s Museum; Nicola Kalinsky, director of The Barber Institute of Fine Arts; artists Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell of Langlands & Bell; Jeremy Melvin, curator of the World Architecture Festival; Farshid Moussavi, founder of Farshid Moussavi Architecture; Narinder Sagoo, senior partner at Foster + Partners; and Ken Shuttleworth, founder of Make Architects, made a few commendations. In the Hybrid category, these were 6 Moments: Meaning through Repetition by Vincent Perron of the University of British Columbia and American Dream or American Nightmare by Yue Ma of Cornell University. In the Digital category Juan Alberto Arjona Belmonte of Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM) was highly commended for The Tower of Memory: the tower and the landscape as was Daisy Ames of Studio Ames (US) for Other Medians: Perceivable Future.
The winners and shortlist are on display at a dedicated exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London from 17 October to 8 November and will also be exhibited at WAF.

Christiane Bürklein

The Architecture Drawing Prize 2018,
exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London from 17 October to 8 November
Images
1) Li Han, The Samsara of Building No.42 on Dirty Street, 2017 - Overall Winner Category Winner
2) Carlijn Kingma, The Babylonian Tower of Modernity, 2017 Category Winner Hand-Drawn
3) Juan Alberto Arjona Belmonte, The Tower of Memory: the tower and the landscape, 2018
4) Roberto Boettger, Reconciling Infrastructural Artefacts: Section, 2017
5) Reza Aliabadi, Spatial Cocktails (Day & Night), 2018
6) Yue Ma, American Dream or American Nightmare: 2020, 2050, 2070, 2018
7) Daisy Ames, Other Medians: Perceivable Future, 2018
8) Simon Kalajdjiev, Chuo Ward, Tokyo, 2017
9) Divakara Murthy V, Hiranyagarba, 2018
10) Lukas Göbl, City of Beautiful Bodies, 2016, Category Winner Hybrid
11) Li Han, The Samsara of Building No.42 on Dirty Street, 2017 - Overall Winner Category Winner
12) Li Han, The Samsara of Building No.42 on Dirty Street, 2017 - Overall Winner Category Winner
Find out more: https://thedrawingprize.worldarchitecturefestival.com/