In awe of the blue print

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World Architecture Festival 2012 gave the artistic industry cutting edge and astounding designs to absorb. Held from October 2 to 4, 2012 at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, it celebrated its fifth year in style. Recently quoted in The Straits Times as the “Oscars of the Architectural World,” the event brought together over 1,500 international architects to compete and celebrate excellence in architecture.

The festival awarded 37 category winners and concluded with recognising three winners for “World Building of the Year,” “Future Project of the Year” and “Landscape of the Year.”
Attendees enjoyed a wide variety of keynote presentations, including an address from Thomas Heatherwick and Moshe Safdie, seminar sessions and more learning and networking opportunities than ever before.

Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay has won the top prize at WAF, World Building of the Year, on its home territory.

Officially, the prize went to Wilkinson Eyre Architects for the design of the Cooled Conservatories, but festival director Paul Finch stressed at the awards ceremony that this was a magnificent team effort and that the whole team should be recognised in addition to the architect, the landscape architect Grant Associates and engineers Atelier One and Atelier Ten.

Finch was quoted to have said, “Choosing a winner was a tough decision, but the winner is a scheme of the highest quality. The jury was insistent that the project should be recognised in the round and that all the design team should have recognition.”

He continued, “A first-rate client had a vision and a strategy. The result is not an experimental building but its ventilation strategy has an experimental component. In a globalised environment, there is so much interest in how we deal with density and this combination of urbanism with a garden that is both an attraction and nature is a wonderful solution. “If they can cool these glasshouses through natural cooling, we should ask why it can’t be done in other buildings?”

The Landscape of the Year award was divided into three main sections: Completed Buildings,
landscape architecture, and future projects (for designs in progress). Landscape of the Year —
Kallang River Bishan Park, Singapore has been designed by Atelier Dreis(-pic dis)