Bjarke Ingels Group’s waste-to-energy plant with a ski slope on its roof has been named World Building of the Year at the 14th annual World Architecture Festival (WAF).
Almost a decade in the making, CopenHill, also known as Amager Bakke, is a piece of energy infrastructure in a Copenhagen industrial zone that is also a destination for community and leisure. Alongside the 9,000-sqaure-metre ski terrain, the building includes a rooftop bar, cross-fit area, climbing wall, viewing plateau and a 490-metre hiking and running trail within a lush, mountainous terrain designed by Danish landscape architects SLA.
WAF program director Paul Finch Programme Director said the building showed what architecture can do “in the new world of recycling and zero carbon.”
“It treats infrastructure projects in a way which makes people say ‘Yes in my back yard’ rather than ‘no’,” he said. “It encourages designers to think beyond the brief, to argue for ideas, and to ride the tides of politics and economics in the pursuit of the socially beneficial. And it reminds us that buildings can be fun.”
Silo City by Studio V Architecture.
Image: Studio V Architecture
Taking out The Future Project of the Year was Silo City by Studio V Architecture, the adaptive reuse of the historic grain elevators in Buffalo, New York into a mixed-use arts and cultural complex.
The design for Silo City adapts the silo structures into “laboratories for experimentation, artistic expression, and community engagement, supporting grass roots and internationally recognised cultural institutions.”
The design preserves the unique forms of the silos and lack of fenestration by carving out unique interior chambers that manipulate space and light.
The judges said, “this project started with the ruins of the world’s greatest collection of grain elevators, and through wonderfully seductive imagery envisages a future for them, the city of Buffalo – and of post-industrial cities”.
Al Fay Park by SLA Architects.
Image: Philip Handforth
Landscape of the Year 2021 was awarded to SLA Architects for the 27,500-sqaure-metre Al Fay Park in downtown Abu Dhabi, described as “the Middle East’s first urban biodiversity park.”
The judges said, “Al Fay Park is a thoughtful and intelligent response which takes into consideration pressing contemporary social and environmental issues. It is more over a delightful and biodiverse oasis in a dense desert city”.
The WAFX Award, which recognizes project proposals tackling today’s global issues, went to Horizon Manila by William Ti, Jr., a 419-hectare masterplan designed to serve as a new hub for growth and development for the Philippines’ capital.
Several Australian projects won category awards, which were announced in the leadup to the festival.
See all the winners here.
