The World Architecture Festival's annuals awards shortlist has just been revealed offering a comprehensive snapshot of the best and brightest design ideas in 2018. The massive global competition spans 39 categories and this year's shortlist features 536 projects from 81 countries around the world.
The winners will be announced in November at the big keynote festival event in Amsterdam, after a jury of over 100 professional judges evaluate all the shortlisted projects. As well as specific category winners, the Awards will task a Super Jury to select winners in three prestigious categories: World Building of the Year, Future Project of the Year and Landscape of the Year.
"This has been a terrific year for the WAF Awards, reaching our largest entry total to date," says Paul Finch, WAF program director. "This has not resulted in any decrease in quality, if anything the opposite. It has been extremely gratifying to review entries from more than 81 different countries and note the way in which architects are absorbing lessons from contemporaries across the world."
The shortlist includes some high-profile projects including Heatherwick Studio's Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in South Africa, which transformed an old grain silo into a giant art museum, and Bjarke Ingels Group's Tirpitz museum in Denmark, an elegant subterranean museum set next to a World War II-era bunker.
The Awards also feature extensive future concept categories focusing on yet to be completed projects. Here we come across a stunning array of designs that range from extraordinary experimental buildings, to more pragmatic, but no less mind-boggling, structures.
Take a closer look at our World Architecture Festival Awards gallery to see some of our favorite projects in the shortlist.
Source: WAF