This year’s Festival took place at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore from 6–8 November 2024. ArchitectureNow rounds up this year’s most recognisable winners from across New Zealand and Australia, starting with this year’s World Building of the Year awarded to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki architects, fjcstudio.

The world-renowned awards programme attracted 775 global entries this year, which were then shortlisted down to 461 projects. The awards festival taking place over two days, selected the very best projects from this shortlist using a ‘Super Jury’ sourced from all over the globe, the editor of Architecture NZ, Chris Barton a member of the wider WAF jury this year. Only 40-odd projects were category winners or received a Highly Commended award respectively. The remaining awards of Future Project of the Year, Landscape of the Year, World Interior of the Year and World Building of the Year went to a sole winner — highlighting what a feat it is to be awarded in any of these award categories.

World Building of the Year

Darlington Public School in Australia by fjcstudio

The community school is located on the fringe of the city of Sydney, and has a strong connection to Aboriginal people embodied in its redesign.

The transformed school now seamlessly connects to its surroundings, offering glimpses of the inner courtyard from the main entrance, promoting a sense of privacy and community for the children, as well as providing facilities that are publicly accessible including the community hall, covered outdoor learning area and library.

Collaboration took place with educational consultants and the school community to inform the brief, resulting in an inclusive learning environment by the architects. The redesign embraces the rich Indigenous culture through the artistic heritage of the school, conserving and displaying aboriginal artworks around the school to preserve stories of the country for future generations. A community garden with indigenous plants has also been created to teach students indigenous cooking and culture. 

The school continued to operate during construction, minimising time, cost and disruption. The building also embraces sustainability, with passive design elements such as sawtooth roofs angled to the sun, high-level glazing for indirect daylight, and protective curved screens for filtered daylight. 

Alessandro Rossi, Associate at fjcstudio commented: “It’s very humbling given the modest scale of the building – it’s a little school project, so to have won against all the other big projects at WAF is a testament to the client and the community engagement that helped drive the design process. The real winners are the children who will spend time in the building - a place of enrichment for many years to come.” 

On behalf of the jury Paul Finch, Programme Director of the World Architecture Festival commented on: “the very high quality of several of this year’s finalists, not least the National Star Observatory in Cyprus, but the jury’s unanimous decision was reached relatively easily. 

“The result of the project is poetic, a building in which topography and landscape, inside and outside, form and materials, flow seamlessly in an unexpectedly delightful way. It is also an inspirational proposition about the acknowledgement and reconciliation of historic difference – a pointer to brighter, better futures for all.”

Warren and Mahoney receive three World Architecture Festival Awards

The New Zealand practice founded by the iconic architectural partnership of Miles Warren and Maurice Mahoney took home three awards in total at WAF 2024.

A category winner in Completed Projects for Higher Education & Research is the purpose-built Waimarie Lincoln University Science Facility (also a NZIA 2024 Canterbury Architecture Awards Winner).

The trans-Tasman practice won two further WAF awards for the University Technology of Sydney, National First Nations College. The College received the prestigious WAFX Award for Cultural Identity.

WAFX Award winners are selected from “projects that best use design and architecture to tackle major world issues, including health, climate change, technology, ethics and values” says organisers, and are chosen from the 2024 WAF Future Projects shortlist — this year comprising 150 leading projects from all over the world.

Waimarie Lincoln University Science Facility

• Higher Education & Research, Completed Projects – Winner

University Technology of Sydney

• WAFX Award Winner
• Highly Commended - Future Projects - Education

Māori architecture in the spotlight

Quay Stadium, announced earlier this year as a WAFX winner in the ‘Cultural Identity’ category, is an unrealised project multinational practice HKS designed in collaboration with Buchan, TOA Architects and Boffa Miskell (landscape architects), with close consultation with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. The project received a Highly Commended in this year’s Awards under the Competition entries category.

Founding director of TOA Architects Nicholas Dalton, travelled to Singapore this year with  Matekitātahi Rawiri-McDonald having had two projects shortlisted this year, including Te Taumata o Kupe, which was shortlisted for a WAF Special Prize for Best Use of Colour.

Further celebrating Aotearoa’s Indigenous architecture on a world stage was The Pā, a modern mass-timber structure on the University of Waikato campus in Hamilton by Architectus, Jasmax and DesignTribe in association. The inherently Māori architecture is inspired by and showcases Māori design technologies, culture and customs to create a “bicultural gateway” to the campus.

The Pā by Architectus, Jasmax and DesignTribe in association

• Higher Education & Research, Completed Projects – Highly Commended

Auckland Stadium at Quay Park, Te Tōangaroa by HKS

• Competition Entries – Highly Commended

Nightingale Village wins GROHE Housing Award

Nightingale Village in Australia by Architecture architecture, Austin Maynard Architects, Breathe, Clare Cousins Architects, Hayball, and Kennedy Nolan was honoured with the 2024 WAF Award for Housing.

The housing development, designed by the above five Melbourne practices, was led by architects with a focus on affordability and sustainability and has been widely lauded for creating community connections and beautiful neighbourhoods while remaining economical.

Clare Cousins, founder of the eponymous practice was invited to speak in Wellington as part of last year’s New Zealand Architecture Awards, where she spoke at length about the rewards and challenges of working as a developer-architect on the Nightingale Village project.

The Village, located in the trendy Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, is now home to more than 200 families and community housing residents, and serves the architecture and urban planning community as a successful urban housing model.

Find all 2024 World Architecture Festival winners at worldarchitecturefestival.com.

See related ArchitectureNow articles on New Zealand projects shortlisted for WAF 2024 and those that were up for WAFX or Special Prizes.