From conceptual work to photographs and videos to drawings and more, the jury is reviewing entries to Architizer’s 2025 Vision Awards. Keep tabs on the world’s best architectural representation by clicking here.

A year ago, I made a third visit to the Scottish Parliament. This time, it was to see the process behind the building. In the lobby, there was a meticulously crafted exhibition filled with drawings and models by Enric Miralles. The work was breathtaking, immediately capturing my attention, even more so than the building itself. The material offered access to something the surrounding architecture could not fully reveal: the choices and possibilities behind its realization. When leaving the building, I pondered over a very specific question: why can the evidence of making hold our attention so strongly, even when the finished work is right there?

Traditionally, architecture already values process. Thinking back to architecture school, the work was never judged based on the finished product. Rather, each student was evaluated primarily on their capacity to show the process, the logic and the choices behind the design. In addition, there have been countless exhibitions and archives throughout the centuries that store and display architectural drawings and models — often viewed as a separate cultural and intellectual property from the materialized space.

In contrast, the architectural industry is exceptional in presenting the finished work through polished imagery that strips away any trace of production. There is no apparent struggle, no messiness and the building seems inevitable. Ironically, the “effortlessness” that architects aspire to communicate becomes the very thing that makes it harder to understand why they are needed in the first place.

Especially nowadays, when moving images shape so much of how we encounter the world (videos, reels, YouTube shorts), film offers architects an opportunity to make the hidden expertise even more visible. The catch, however, is to let the camera linger on how architecture happens and not use film as a medium that presents yet another ideal design realization. Using, for instance, duration and sequence, a film documents how an action meets resistance or how a test produces a discovery.

To promote and support this, the 2025 Vision Awards introduced a Making Of Video category. In Lemay’s Sketching Stories, Marie Parent explains the Montreal Irish Monument Park through drawings that unfold alongside her account of the site’s history. The arrangement of former temporary barracks informs the project’s layout, the gathering steps turn toward Ireland, and a commemorative wall incorporates Celtic crosses. As Marie Parent draws and explains, geometry acquires purpose, enabling viewers to follow the connections between research and spatial decisions and crafting a story that a finished render would never be able to communicate.

On the other hand, House of Shinsegae Heritage, by Shinsegae Art&Space Team, brings the camera closer to material production. Hands work thread and shape material across a worktable, giving attention to the people and the operations behind the objects. The majority of the sequence is filmed very closely, focusing on gestures, tools and materials, eventually zooming out to present the finished interior. By the time the film reaches the display space, its contents carry associations with bodies and accumulated skill, where making becomes part of what we see in the finished setting. Both films suggest that communicating architectural value involves giving the audience access to relationships that completion can obscure. For example, a line connects to a history, and an object connects to the knowledge of its maker.

Process films can also reveal how much architectural expertise goes into making complexity disappear. In Madison Taylor’s The Making of Home, architectural designer Greg Kirkpatrick walks through an unfinished house, explaining how concealed blind boxes were incorporated into the roof trusses and space reserved above the basement ceiling for services. In parallel, Buttcon’s film of the Spirit Garden at Nathan Phillips Square showcases a nighttime installation, where a crane lifts a canoe-shaped artwork while workers guide it into position. Suspended above the site, the object acquires a weight, scale and dependence on collective effort that its eventual placement could easily conceal.

These sequences go beyond the typical construction footage. They reveal the effort and the thinking behind each action instead of presenting a construction time-lapse that can make a building appear to assemble itself. Yet, this exposes a strange paradox in architectural communication: the more successfully the film resolves complexity, the less evidence of that achievement remains.

The challenge is ultimately editorial and asks architects to expand what their audience will witness. For a profession so concerned with communicating its value, this requires a small surrender of control. Making expertise visible also makes it available to question. But that may be precisely how architecture earns a more meaningful place in public life – by giving people enough understanding to do more than look.

From conceptual work to photographs and videos to drawings and more, the jury is reviewing entries to Architizer’s 2025 Vision Awards. Keep tabs on the world’s best architectural representation by clicking here.

Featured Image: Nathan Phillips Square IRSS Legacy Project – Spirit Garden by Buttcon, 2025 Vision Awards, Video – Making Of

The post Don’t Show Me the Finished Building: Why Architecture Needs the Making-Of Video appeared first on Journal.

We’re at a crossroads with recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI). As an industry, we’re looking at profound transformations in what we do, how we do it and how we compete. But we’re not just competing with other professionals who’ve gone through the same rigorous training as us; we’re competing with models that have read every building code and every award-winning portfolio ever published without ever attending a client meeting.

A Large Language Model (LLM) doesn’t know what’s at stake in a design review or planning committee. It hasn’t gone through the laborious process of working with thousands of other professionals to deliver a building that someone will one day walk through, celebrate in, live their life in. It might look like it knows the full picture to the untrained eye, but it doesn’t know what a space feels like, why negotiating certain aspects of a space is important, or how we might use judgment to deliver a better outcome for the built environment and the people who experience it.

Despite these limitations, this technology is undeniably seductive. When used right, it can help you articulate a design idea through a visual, a video or a 3D world (sometimes faster than you can finish thinking), research a specific aspect of a project, write code to generate geometry or run specialist sustainability simulations and help you make crucial decisions.

What This Means In-House

Towards the end of 2022 and early 2023, like a lot of people in the profession, Benoy was experimenting with tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT in protected sandboxes, away from live projects. As a business, we felt what this technology could do to our work. But we were also cautious.

When we rendered an image with D5 or Enscape from a Rhino or Revit model, we knew that this image was created using our own GPUs, the output file stayed on our servers, and we controlled the journey that this file took and how that worked with our confidential projects. For a mid-to-large design firm operating across the world for almost 80 years, trust from our clients is critical. We work on projects with strict confidentiality agreements and care deeply about intellectual property – both ours and our clients’.

This was around the same time that the industry started looking at SLAs and Terms of Service Agreements. High-profile industry peers, including May Winfield from Buro Happold and Shane Burger from Woods Bagot (now SOM), started highlighting the risks associated with these contracts.

As a business that was both excited about this technology yet deeply distrustful of ambiguous contracts, we arrived at these conclusions:

1. Enterprise AI will be as good as the data it can access and the tools it’s integrated with.
2. Some of the data it needs to operate on is highly sensitive.
3. We can’t wait for vendors and software companies to build it for us. We’ve got to do it ourselves.

A Word of Caution for Automation

We now sit on sophisticated AI infrastructure. We have a data lakehouse that stores our business data, which is supported by an ecosystem of AI tools that are integrated with design technology. This allows our design teams to remain at the center of this ecosystem.

To reach this point, we had to ask ourselves: what do we want to automate, what do we want the AI to do, and what’s got to remain undeniably and unequivocally human?

This brings me to a very important concept I often think about as we build our AI ecosystem: A centaur (human judgment, horse-like speed), versus a reverse-centaur (horse judgment, human-like speed).

In automation theory, this is an analogy that describes the relationship between humans and technology. In my world, a centaur is a human designer using AI to assist with dimensioning drawings or adding metadata to BIM models, while a reverse-centaur is an AI designing while humans struggle to keep up with validating its outputs.

As we build tools, we need to think about whether we’re building for the centaur model or the reverse centaur. While our tools are designed to be powerful, they need to function as subordinate co-pilots to our designers.

Creating Solutions to Real Problems

Our in-house Benoy Assistant breaks through the siloes of business data to answer powerful questions and surface information quickly. Team members ask it everything from how much annual leave they have left, to how to name a Revit model, to what we learned on a historical project. Separately, and just as importantly, it’s wired directly into our business intelligence workflows. It also manifests inside Rhino and Revit, helping automate processes or run computational design scripts.

Benoy VizAI allows our teams to articulate ideas faster than ever before. It’s built with encryption by default, bringing state-of-the-art visualization models to our design teams from Google, OpenAI, Black Forest Labs and other providers, and we fine-tune prompts and add prompt injections based on usage and contextual data, such as project information and SharePoint data, even client emails. A gallery showcases the best work from across our global studios, complete with prompts, configurations, and settings, as a key distribution mechanism so everyone in the company can effectively recreate something they like.

Our in-house tools like Atlas, RhinoFam and Revit Tools all reduce execution friction for things like setting up and printing hundreds of sheets, adding data to BIM models and running sustainability and computational design workflows at scale — things we would typically expect from a BIM or design technology specialist scaled across the practice.

The key here is that these tools are specifically built for how we work. Each tool communicates with the others, shifting our digital tools from a set of disparate parts to an ecosystem of connected workflows, allowing our teams to stay in the driver’s seat. These workflows are now deeply embedded in our design teams, with tools like VizAI performing over 100,000 runs since its launch just over six months ago. You’ll find it open on desktops in every studio, from graduate level through to directors.

This integration has been possible because we have practitioners in the cockpit, working hand in hand with our IT team, people who understand the value and challenges of the profession and the infrastructure it runs on, who’ve been burned trying to add data to 50 BIM models, or set up 10,000 sheets, or run sustainability simulations.

I believe this profession should be the one shaping its own evolution, not whoever sells the best demo. Losing control of what we build might very well lead to the reverse centaur scenario where the technology is in the driver’s seat while we become validators of mediocre design.

As someone who is building Design Technology and AI capability on a large scale, I’m confident that if we make the right decisions at this crossroads, we can create better outcomes for the profession. We can build a world where execution friction is reduced, where you spend your energy on the idea instead of wrestling the tool into doing what you meant, and where an outstanding built environment is crafted for future generations — the centaur scenario.

Ami Nigam, Global Head of Design AI & Technology at Benoy, is a speaker at RELEASE [AEC] — the first tech event designed to help professionals stay on the cutting edge of innovation and master the tools of the future. The next edition will be held in Paris on October 20, 2026. The event is 100% free for AEC practitioners: register today!

The post Team Centaur: How Benoy Built Its Own AI Ecosystem appeared first on Journal.

The jury and the public have had their say — discover the remarkable winners of Architizer’s 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.

Sports and recreation spaces have a particular ability to bring people together. After all, they offer a reason to show up, get moving and share the moment. There is something wonderfully simple about them: people come for the game, the workout or the activity, and often stay for everything around it. Good sports architecture gives people a place to play, but also a place to belong.

The following A+Award-winning projects put that idea into practice, from climbing walls and community centers to stadiums and equestrian facilities. Different scales, different sports, same basic instinct: bring people together and let the action unfold.

Sports and Cultural Center Marie-Jose Perec and Josephine Baker

By Onze04 Architecture, France

Jury Winner, Gyms & Recreation Centers, 14th Architizer A+Awards

A public walkway cuts directly through this sports and cultural center, turning the building itself into a passage between the city’s existing facilities. Rather than arriving at a hall as a destination, visitors move through it, crossing the complex at two levels. From the upper promenade, a belvedere looks down into the sports arena, bringing the energy of competition into the everyday experience of the building. At ground level, the route opens into a public hall and social space, creating opportunities to pause and gather along the way. Above it all, a white textile roof shelters the sports hall, while its softly glowing form becomes a lantern after dark, marking the center as a renewed civic presence.

Anlong Dushan Climbing Gym

By Yike Architects, Guizhou, China

Popular Choice Winner, Gyms & Recreation Centers, 14th Architizer A+Awards

Like a collection of rocks scattered through the Guizhou landscape, the Anlong Indoor Climbing Centre takes its cue from the karst formations surrounding it. The cluster of halls creates a setting where climbing can be watched, experienced, and shared, rather than contained within a single competition box. At the center, a soaring climbing wall rises beneath a large skylight, bringing daylight deep into the arena and giving the athletes an almost outdoor sense of space. The wall is also visible through the expansive glass façade, allowing the spectacle of climbing to reach beyond the building. Around the main hall, smaller spaces invite visitors to try the sport, rest, or spend time together, extending the experience beyond competition.

Roig Arena

By HOK and ERRE, València, Spain

Popular Choice Winner, Stadiums & Arenas, 14th Architizer A+Awards

Roig Arena is conceived as a place where the energy of an event can spill into the life of the city. Set within Valencia’s Quatre Carreres district, the arena opens its doors to a wide range of experiences, from major sporting events to concerts and everyday gatherings. Its seating bowl is shaped to bring spectators closer to the action, creating an atmosphere that feels intimate despite its capacity of up to 20,000 people. Beyond the stands, open terraces create places to linger, with local gastronomy extending the experience outside the arena itself. A 2,000-seat multi-purpose room adds another layer of activity, allowing the building to remain active between major events and giving the collective experience a presence throughout the day.

Xi’an International Football Stadium

By ZHA, Xi’An, China

Jury Winner, Stadiums & Arenas, 14th Architizer A+Awards

Xi’an International Football Centre is conceived as a stadium that remains connected to the city even when no match is taking place. Its open façades draw people into a network of shaded terraces and public concourses, where views across Xi’an accompany everyday recreation and dining. During matches, these same spaces become extensions of the stadium experience, bringing spectators together before and after they enter the bowl.

Inside, the sweeping roof gathers 60,000 seats around the pitch, with digital modeling used to bring every spectator close to the action. A lightweight cable-net structure allows the roof to stretch dramatically overhead, while its translucent membrane fills the bowl with natural light. The stadium turns football into a civic experience that can be shared year-round.

Shenzhen Guangming International Equestrian Center

By Tanghua Architects, Shenzhen, China

Jury Winner, Sustainable Sports & Recreation Building, 14th Architizer A+Awards

The Guangming International Equestrian Center places its arenas beneath a sweeping timber roof that opens toward the mountains of Shenzhen. Drawing from the sloped roofs of traditional Chinese architecture, the glulam structure is left exposed, allowing the layers of timber to become part of the experience as visitors move through the center.

The sloping site is embraced through a sequence of courtyards and covered passages, where views constantly shift between the landscape and the activity within. Rather than treating spectatorship as a fixed position, the architecture invites people to wander and discover the equestrian events from different vantage points. Beneath the shared eaves, the presence of horses, riders, and visitors becomes part of a shared encounter with the landscape.

Rouge Valley Community Recreation and Child Care Centre

By Perkins&Will, Toronto, Canada

Popular Choice Winner, Sustainable Sports & Recreation Building, 14th Architizer A+Awards

The Rouge Valley Community Recreation and Child Care Centre stacks an unusually broad community program into a compact footprint, keeping more of the surrounding park open. Placing the gymnasium above the pool allows the building to rise rather than spread, while a central circulation spine links the spaces vertically through daylight-filled atria.

The architecture grows from the needs of its neighborhood: community consultation led to a larger gymnasium that can accommodate cricket, while an urban skateboard park and connected paths extend activity beyond the building. Its layered façade takes cues from the surrounding landscape, giving the center a distinct presence within the neighborhood. Across the site, movement naturally leads from one activity to another, making recreation part of everyday community life.

Stade Hassan II — Casablanca Stadium

By Populous and OUALALOU+CHOI, Casablanca, Morocco

Jury Winner, Unbuilt Sports & Recreation, 14th Architizer A+Awards

Inspired by the Moroccan moussem, the Stade Hassan II imagines the stadium as a vast gathering place beneath a monumental tent. Its enormous roof rises from the landscape, sheltering a bowl designed to bring 115,000 spectators together around the spectacle of football. The architecture extends this sense of gathering beyond the stands: a ring of stairways forms dramatic gateways, leading upward to elevated gardens suspended beneath the translucent canopy.

From these platforms, spectators encounter the stadium from a different perspective, surrounded by greenery high above the ground. Botanical gardens continue beneath the outer edges of the roof, drawing the landscape into the public realm. The stadium’s defining gesture is therefore one of collective gathering, where sport unfolds within a shared civic landscape.

Lawrence Heights Community Recreation Centre & Child Care Centre

By CS&P Architects Inc., Toronto, Canada

Popular Choice Winner, Unbuilt Sports & Recreation, 14th Architizer A+Awards

The Lawrence Heights Community Recreation Centre places collective life at the center of a neighborhood undergoing major change. Conceived as an “urban treehouse,” the building follows the contours of the site while creating a welcoming place for residents to spend time together. Its spaces are shaped around everyday encounters, with youth areas opening toward shared community facilities and gathering spaces extending outdoors. Pools, fitness areas, and studios give the center an active character, while a food bank and ceremonial spaces reflect the needs and identity of the surrounding community. By replacing a car-oriented landscape with a more pedestrian-focused setting, the center makes movement through the neighborhood part of the social experience, connecting recreation with community life.

Baltimore Ravens, Under Armour Performance Center

By ZGF Architects, Baltimore, Maryland

Known as “The Castle,” the Baltimore Ravens’ performance centre turns training into a shared experience rooted in the team’s identity. At its heart, a newly expanded hydrotherapy suite creates a communal setting for recovery, with a long lap pool beneath a dramatic skylight that brings daylight into the space. The training room opens directly toward the practice field through a 135-foot operable glass wall, allowing players and staff to remain connected to activity outside. A central spine with looping circulation follows the natural movement of the team, while shared routes bring different parts of the facility into closer contact. Warm timber, stone-like surfaces, and raven-inspired graphics give these spaces a distinct character tied to the team.

The jury and the public have had their say — discover the remarkable winners of Architizer’s 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.

The post Not Just for the Game: The Expanded Brief of Contemporary Sports Architecture appeared first on Journal.

Cultural architecture is often understood as museums, theatres and libraries, but more deeply, it is a place that holds something for the community when its design makes that holding legible to people who arrive long after the original purpose has expired.

Adaptive reuse is where this definition gets tested. A factory, dormitory or a warehouse — none of these things are built as monuments; most of the time, they are built to do a job, with a responsibility assigned to them, but when they are done with their term and end up as junk storage or abandoned, sometimes a new journey starts for them. That journey is usually a commercial one.

A disused hall becomes a cafe, a workshop floor becomes studios, a locked courtyard becomes a place people can walk into and buy a coffee; and it is precisely these small, revenue-earning programs that make a building public again, because they give strangers a reason to cross the threshold. The investment case and the cultural one turn out to be the same case: a creative hub with paying tenants stays open, maintained and visited, while a preserved shell with no purpose stays shut. Reusing such a building well makes an argument about what a place values, and the architectural decisions involved (which walls stay, which bricks return, how a new addition addresses an old façade) are cultural before they are technical ones.

The following winners from this year’s A+Awards span the US, Sweden, Switzerland and China. They stand out with different scales and programs, but each treats the existing structure as a document to be read rather than a site to be cleared.

The Twenty Two New York

By BKSK Architects, Manhattan, New York

Popular Choice Winner, Commercial Adaptive Reuse Project, 14th Architizer A+Awards

BKSK transformed R. H. Robertson’s 1892 YWCA dormitory at the edge of Union Square into an exercise in reading a building’s incomplete biography. In this process, two moves define it. The first is corrective: the carved sandstone ground floor, stripped in the 1950s, has been reconstructed. The second is speculative. Robertson designed a gabled seventh floor that was never built, and BKSK re-realized it with a contemporary glass curtain wall screened in ultra-high-performance concrete, developed through full-scale mockups with the manufacturer.

The Spirit Factory

By LINK Arkitektur, Eslöv, Sweden

Popular Choice Winner, Residential Adaptive Reuse Project, 14th Architizer A+Awards

LINK Arkitektur’s transformation of an early-twentieth-century industrial complex into housing and offices makes its cultural argument through material continuity. Every existing façade is preserved and original windows restored; where structural intervention was unavoidable, dismantled brickwork was reused so that new work reads as continuous with old.

More than half the bricks in the extensions were reclaimed on site, and recovered structural timber reappears as a courtyard pergola. Cast iron, wrought iron, and Corten mark where the industrial gives way to the domestic. The former closed industrial block now opens onto a shared courtyard, converting a site of production into a site of neighborhood life.

Creative Factory Renens

By Bauart Architects and Planners, Renens, Switzerland

Jury Winner, Residential Adaptive Reuse Project, 14th Architizer A+Awards

In the west of Lausanne, Bauart rejected the tabula rasa in favor of revealing what was already there. Dismantling the interior fittings of a former logistics center and cutting two skylights through its depth exposed the expressive power of the existing structure and produced an interior street that organizes the whole building.

Wooden volumes and lightweight partitions insert lofts for living and working alongside workshops for training, crafts, and small businesses. Outside, the asphalt logistics platform has been broken up and planted as a park facing Rue du Chêne, turning infrastructural leftover into public ground.

The Yard, Dalian Cultural Center

By Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, Dalian, China

Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Adaptive Reuse, 14th Architizer A+Awards

Six buildings from a forty-year-old chemical research institute, mismatched in height and already altered by earlier renovations, presented Neri&Hu with a problem of coherence. Their answer draws on the Chinese garden: a continuous Corten figure wraps the plaza, framing a large rock feature and acting as a secondary façade that mediates between old and new. The compound’s introversion, once a liability, becomes the point, a contemplative refuge from the surrounding city, holding galleries, retail, cinema, theater, and offices, with a small public library at the entrance. Corten was chosen for its industrial lineage and its willingness to record time as it weathers.

Dali Transformer Theater Immersive Theatrical District

By Atelier Alter Architects, Dali, China

Jury Winner, Architecture +Adaptive Reuse, 14th Architizer A+Awards

Atelier Alter’s conversion of an abandoned transformer factory at the edge of Dali’s ancient citadel is the most explicitly theatrical project here, and the most theoretically ambitious. Workshops, storage, and offices become theater, multi-sensory art space, and new-media dining. According to its designer, every building surrenders part of itself to a small heterotopia, an illusory space set parallel to daily reality; linked together, these produce a field a visitor moves through like a section cut through the city.

Design Studies Collaborative

By O’Neill Rose Architects, Brooklyn, New York

Jury Winner, Commercial Adaptive Reuse Project, 14th Architizer A+Awards

The smallest project carries the longest memory. This Sunset Park building was a Boys and Girls Club, then a dancehall still recalled fondly by neighbors, then a Byzantine church, and for twenty-five years after that a storage space for the sausage factory next door.

O’Neill Rose retained as much as possible, including the façade and a wood joist ceiling, and extended the reuse ethic to the fit-out: rain-damaged wood became flooring and shelving, stone came from a defunct stone yard, and fifteen surplus green tiles set the kitchen’s design. New openings and a perforated steel stair bring light into a workspace that a non-profit uses to make design available to people who otherwise lack it.

The winners of the 14th Architizer A+Awards are live! Discover a global cohort of architects shaping the future of design, and subscribe to our Awards Newsletter for future program updates.

The post Open Again: How Adaptive Reuse Turns Empty Buildings Into Public Ground appeared first on Journal.

The winners of the 14th Architizer A+Awards are live! Discover a global cohort of architects shaping the future of design, and subscribe to our Awards Newsletter for future program updates.

The landscape was always an afterthought. Until recently, form and function took central stage, positioning the architect as the “mastermind” of a project – the most important piece of the puzzle – while roles such as interior or landscape architects were mostly seen as supporting players. However, current architectural problems are no longer primarily projects of form. They are problems of systems and relationships.

Once upon a time, buildings were doing the heavy lifting, situated on sites that had a relatively stable landscape. Now, climate change has introduced a different type of challenge, requiring architects to design the relationships between water, heat, habitat, materials, building forms and so forth. Suddenly, landscape starts doing the heavy lifting, because it is no longer viewed as an aesthetic addition but as infrastructure. For example, a wetland can provide flood protection while also restoring a habitat; or a park can hold stormwater as well as reduce urban heat and create additional civic space.

Green Field Park by Sichuan Ledao Landscape Design Co., Ltd, Chengdu, China, Jury Winner, Landscape & Planning – Public parks & Green Spaces, 14th Architzer Awards

Green Field Park is a mountain landscape in Chengdu, deliberately preserved during the city’s urban expansion. Located on the western side of Longquan Mountain, the park covers approximately 17.3 acres, offering citizens a recreational space, and retaining in parallel a real and continuous urban habitat for wildlife. The project focuses on ecological systems instead of architectural objects, where the landscape performs essential hydrological work by restoring micro-wetlands that drain or replenish rainwater. Strangely, the project’s most pivotal architectural strategy is restraint: paths follow existing ridgelines, rest areas occupy natural clearings, and the overall construction happens within the smallest footprint possible, without disturbing the flora and fauna within the site.

Yet how does this new “landscape infrastructure” differ from traditional systems? Consider a traditional water filtration installation – a wall holds water back, pipes remove it and mechanical systems ensure that the conditions remain the same throughout the year. On the other hand, landscape architects take advantage of the variability present on site. They work with succession, seasonality, adaptation and overlapping ecological processes. They construct “operating systems” that pair water filtration with people and flower species with energy.

Ecoparque: Ciénaga De Mallorquín by DEB ARCHITECTURE, EL EQUIPO MAZZANTI, Barranquilla, Colombia, Landscape & Planning – Urban & Masterplans, 14th Architzer Awards

One strong example is the Ecoparque: Ciénaga De Mallorquín, which replaces a fixed barrier with a living boundary. Its network of paths limits urban expansion into the mangroves and manages the movement between Barranquilla and the wetland. Specifically, it gives the previously altered and polluted wetland the time and space to regenerate rather than “forcing” recovery through mechanical systems. The “landscape” then consists of multiple layers including ecological flows, more than 200 bird species, artisanal fishing, public circulation and civic activities –  and infrastructure becomes the mediator between their relationship.

Finally, this new  type of infrastructure also has a public face. In other words, landscape architecture is not reduced to environmental engineering. Unlike much conventional infrastructure, landscapes can perform technically but also remain accessible, pleasurable and culturally relevant. They inhabit dual identities: a park can manage water and still be a place for play. In that sense, ecological performance and human experience need not be separate agendas and in contrast this multifunctionality needs to be celebrated because, frankly, it reveals landscape architecture’s greatest asset: its ability to solve several problems with the same spatial system.

Downtown Cary Park by OJB Landscape Architecture, Machado Silvetti, Cary, North Carolina

Downtown Cary Park in Cary, North Carolina functions as both civic infrastructure and a public destination. The seven-acre landscape anchors a rapidly growing community while providing accessible space for recreation. Its most “loud” multifunctional piece may be an oversized rainwater scupper, situated in the Bark Bar Pavilion, whose technical function also becomes a visual centerpiece. In parallel, the whole complex also mediates between the town’s built fabric and its open public realm, shifting from the more historic downtown edge to a more naturalistic environment. Lastly, the site becomes home to five pavilions that expand the landscape’s social capacity, turning it into flexible social infrastructure rather than a passive green space.

Ultimately, there is a change in hierarchy. The discipline that was once treated as the final layer now provides the first set of instructions. The reason? The world itself has changed the order of operations: instead of designing an object and then addressing its surroundings, teams are increasingly asked to begin with watersheds, ecosystems, climate patterns and community needs, where architecture becomes one component within a larger, living framework. Unfortunately, we are crossing an age defined by environmental uncertainty. Fortunately, landscape architects have long understood what the rest of the profession is now discovering: the future of design depends less on isolated objects than on the relationships that allow them – and the communities around them – to endure.

The winners of the 14th Architizer A+Awards are live! Discover a global cohort of architects shaping the future of design, and subscribe to our Awards Newsletter for future program updates.

Featured Image: Ecoparque: Ciénaga De Mallorquín by DEB ARCHITECTURE, EL EQUIPO MAZZANTI, Barranquilla, Colombia, Landscape & Planning – Urban & Masterplans, 14th Architzer Awards

The post Beyond the Object: How Landscape Architecture Became the Framework for Contemporary Practice appeared first on Journal.

The winners of the 14th Architizer A+Awards are live! Discover a global cohort of architects shaping the future of design, and subscribe to our Awards Newsletter for future program updates.

The landscape was always an afterthought. Until recently, form and function took central stage, positioning the architect as the “mastermind” of a project – the most important piece of the puzzle – while roles such as interior or landscape architects were mostly seen as supporting players. However, current architectural problems are no longer primarily projects of form. They are problems of systems and relationships.

Once upon a time, buildings were doing the heavy lifting, situated on sites that had a relatively stable landscape. Now, climate change has introduced a different type of challenge, requiring architects to design the relationships between water, heat, habitat, materials, building forms and so forth. Suddenly, landscape starts doing the heavy lifting, because it is no longer viewed as an aesthetic addition but as infrastructure. For example, a wetland can provide flood protection while also restoring a habitat; or a park can hold stormwater as well as reduce urban heat and create additional civic space.

Green Field Park by Sichuan Ledao Landscape Design Co., Ltd, Chengdu, China, Jury Winner, Landscape & Planning – Public parks & Green Spaces, 14th Architzer Awards

Green Field Park is a mountain landscape in Chengdu, deliberately preserved during the city’s urban expansion. Located on the western side of Longquan Mountain, the park covers approximately 17.3 acres, offering citizens a recreational space, and retaining in parallel a real and continuous urban habitat for wildlife. The project focuses on ecological systems instead of architectural objects, where the landscape performs essential hydrological work by restoring micro-wetlands that drain or replenish rainwater. Strangely, the project’s most pivotal architectural strategy is restraint: paths follow existing ridgelines, rest areas occupy natural clearings, and the overall construction happens within the smallest footprint possible, without disturbing the flora and fauna within the site.

Yet how does this new “landscape infrastructure” differ from traditional systems? Consider a traditional water filtration installation – a wall holds water back, pipes remove it and mechanical systems ensure that the conditions remain the same throughout the year. On the other hand, landscape architects take advantage of the variability present on site. They work with succession, seasonality, adaptation and overlapping ecological processes. They construct “operating systems” that pair water filtration with people and flower species with energy.

Ecoparque: Ciénaga De Mallorquín by DEB ARCHITECTURE, EL EQUIPO MAZZANTI, Barranquilla, Colombia, Landscape & Planning – Urban & Masterplans, 14th Architzer Awards

One strong example is the Ecoparque: Ciénaga De Mallorquín, which replaces a fixed barrier with a living boundary. Its network of paths limits urban expansion into the mangroves and manages the movement between Barranquilla and the wetland. Specifically, it gives the previously altered and polluted wetland the time and space to regenerate rather than “forcing” recovery through mechanical systems. The “landscape” then consists of multiple layers including ecological flows, more than 200 bird species, artisanal fishing, public circulation and civic activities –  and infrastructure becomes the mediator between their relationship.

Finally, this new  type of infrastructure also has a public face. In other words, landscape architecture is not reduced to environmental engineering. Unlike much conventional infrastructure, landscapes can perform technically but also remain accessible, pleasurable and culturally relevant. They inhabit dual identities: a park can manage water and still be a place for play. In that sense, ecological performance and human experience need not be separate agendas and in contrast this multifunctionality needs to be celebrated because, frankly, it reveals landscape architecture’s greatest asset: its ability to solve several problems with the same spatial system.

Downtown Cary Park by OJB Landscape Architecture, Machado Silvetti, Cary, North Carolina

Downtown Cary Park in Cary, North Carolina functions as both civic infrastructure and a public destination. The seven-acre landscape anchors a rapidly growing community while providing accessible space for recreation. Its most “loud” multifunctional piece may be an oversized rainwater scupper, situated in the Bark Bar Pavilion, whose technical function also becomes a visual centerpiece. In parallel, the whole complex also mediates between the town’s built fabric and its open public realm, shifting from the more historic downtown edge to a more naturalistic environment. Lastly, the site becomes home to five pavilions that expand the landscape’s social capacity, turning it into flexible social infrastructure rather than a passive green space.

Ultimately, there is a change in hierarchy. The discipline that was once treated as the final layer now provides the first set of instructions. The reason? The world itself has changed the order of operations: instead of designing an object and then addressing its surroundings, teams are increasingly asked to begin with watersheds, ecosystems, climate patterns and community needs, where architecture becomes one component within a larger, living framework. Unfortunately, we are crossing an age defined by environmental uncertainty. Fortunately, landscape architects have long understood what the rest of the profession is now discovering: the future of design depends less on isolated objects than on the relationships that allow them – and the communities around them – to endure.

The winners of the 14th Architizer A+Awards are live! Discover a global cohort of architects shaping the future of design, and subscribe to our Awards Newsletter for future program updates.

Featured Image: Ecoparque: Ciénaga De Mallorquín by DEB ARCHITECTURE, EL EQUIPO MAZZANTI, Barranquilla, Colombia, Landscape & Planning – Urban & Masterplans, 14th Architzer Awards

The post Beyond the Object: How Landscape Architecture Became the Framework for Contemporary Practice appeared first on Journal.

The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer’s 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.

What makes the office worth coming to? Perhaps it is an unexpected conversation in passing, a quick exchange that sparks an idea, or simply the feeling of being part of a shared environment. These A+Award-winning projects place those everyday experiences at the heart of the workplace. Gardens become places to pause together, while terraces open the workday to the outdoors. Atriums and shared spaces turn movement through the building into opportunities for encounter. Each project approaches connection through its own architecture, creating workplaces where interaction can happen naturally throughout the day and where being together becomes part of the experience of work.

270 Park Avenue

By Foster + Partners, New York City, New York

Jury Winner, Office High Rise (16+ Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

Designed as JPMorganChase’s global headquarters, 270 Park Avenue introduces a new model for the high-rise workplace in the heart of New York. Its 60 stories contain 2.5 million square feet of flexible, collaborative space, supported by smart technology and advanced environmental systems. The design places people and interaction at the center of a highly vertical workplace, creating opportunities for employees to connect across a vast corporate campus in the sky. Communal spaces are woven throughout the tower, while flexible work environments support different forms of collaboration and interaction. The building’s all-electric operation and exceptional indoor air quality further shape the workplace experience, making health and wellness an integral part of its design. At an extraordinary urban scale, 270 Park Avenue turns the corporate tower into a social workplace.

FriendTimes Suzhou Headquarters R&D Building

By ARTS GROUP CO., LTD., Suzhou, China

Popular Choice Winner, Office High Rise (16+ Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

Located in Suzhou Industrial Park, the FriendTimes Headquarters R&D Building explores the idea of a highly engaging and playful workplace rooted in local culture. Its “landscape vertical axis” draws from the layered spaces of Chinese landscape painting, turning the tower into a sequence of places to pause, explore, and interact. Cylindrical public installations punctuate different floors, housing spaces such as a game museum, art exhibition areas, and a library. These interventions bring unexpected moments of activity into the working environment, allowing employees to encounter culture and recreation as part of their daily routines. On the west facade, projecting “social cells” give the building a distinctive outward expression, reinforcing its character as a lively workplace and urban landmark.

LinkedIn Middlefield Campus

By STUDIOS Architecture, Mountain View, California

Jury Winner, Office Mid Rise (5-15 Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

LinkedIn’s headquarters brings several new and existing buildings together as a one-million-square-foot campus centered on connection to the outdoors. Across the site, terraces and courtyards create places for employees to step away from their desks, while walking loops encourage movement between buildings. A full-height illuminated staircase becomes a social route through the workplace, leading toward a landscaped terrace suited to lunch or informal meetings. At ground level, a steel and mass-timber pavilion takes the form of a treehouse, with a coffee bar and space for community events. Its flexible character allows it to support everyday work as well as larger gatherings. Together, these shared spaces give the campus a distinctly social character, where work naturally extends into the landscape.

Fourth Ward Office Project

By Olson Kundig, Atlanta, Georgia

Popular Choice Winner, Office Mid Rise (5-15 Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

Fronting Atlanta’s BeltLine, the Fourth Ward Office Project uses its 1.1-million-square-foot development to create a direct relationship between the workplace and public life. Two towers frame the site while the Appalachian Steps negotiate the changing grade, forming a pedestrian route through a landscaped open space. At the center, a broad thoroughfare doubles as a civic plaza, bringing office workers into contact with ground-level visitors and retail. The stepped landscape also creates informal places to pause along the route, making movement through the development part of the social experience. Connections to the BeltLine and Old Fourth Ward Park extend beyond the building itself, positioning the workplace within a larger network of public spaces and everyday urban activity.

Yamato Headquarters Building A, Building B

By NIKKEN SEKKEI LTD, Tokyo, Japan

Yamato’s headquarters brings two buildings, separated by a city road, together as a single workplace open to the surrounding community. The space above the road becomes a central atrium, with shifting floor levels creating diagonal views between the two buildings and encouraging visual connections between colleagues. Inside, stepped wooden platforms introduce different settings for work and informal interaction, while a free-address layout allows employees to choose where they work throughout the day. At ground level, a café and parcel delivery center create a publicly accessible threshold between the company and the city. A timber canopy extends from the street into the interior, giving the entrance a warm, welcoming character and reinforcing the building’s connection with everyday urban life.

Ibira Work

By FGMF, São Paulo, Brazil

Popular Choice Winner, Office Low Rise (1-4 Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

Located near Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo, Ibira Work places the workplace in close contact with its surrounding landscape. The building uses its sloping site to create a sheltered, heavily planted ground level, with a walkway passing above the greenery toward the central entrance. Large terraces extend from the offices on every floor, offering outdoor settings for informal meetings or time away from the desk. Open staircases connect these spaces vertically, leading to a rooftop overlooking the park. Hanging planters, pergolas, and metal brises are integrated into the slender steel structure, providing shade while contributing to a cooler microclimate. With landscape woven through its circulation and shared spaces, Ibira Work encourages employees to move outdoors and experience the workplace as a more social environment.

KItoNOKO, A workplace designed at the scale of the human body

By ure, Japan

Set within Hiroshima’s reclaimed industrial district, KItoNOKO brings the feeling of home into a landscape of warehouses and factories. Designed for Nikko Home Group, the building is conceived as a “house for everyone,” creating a welcoming setting where employees, clients, and visitors can gather and stay. A 38-inch (910 millimeter) timber module derived from traditional Japanese housing establishes familiar proportions throughout the building, while a central atrium forms a shared social space and circulation spine. The building’s 45-degree rotation creates planted pockets along the street, drawing people toward the entrance. Inside, exposed timber frames and over 5,000 wooden slats give the workplace a tactile warmth, making the office feel closer to a communal domestic setting than a conventional workplace.

The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer’s 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.

The post The Social Workplace: 7 Award-Winning Offices Designed for Connection appeared first on Journal.

The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer’s 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.

What makes the office worth coming to? Perhaps it is an unexpected conversation in passing, a quick exchange that sparks an idea, or simply the feeling of being part of a shared environment. These A+Award-winning projects place those everyday experiences at the heart of the workplace. Gardens become places to pause together, while terraces open the workday to the outdoors. Atriums and shared spaces turn movement through the building into opportunities for encounter. Each project approaches connection through its own architecture, creating workplaces where interaction can happen naturally throughout the day and where being together becomes part of the experience of work.

270 Park Avenue

By Foster + Partners, New York City, New York

Jury Winner, Office High Rise (16+ Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

Designed as JPMorganChase’s global headquarters, 270 Park Avenue introduces a new model for the high-rise workplace in the heart of New York. Its 60 stories contain 2.5 million square feet of flexible, collaborative space, supported by smart technology and advanced environmental systems. The design places people and interaction at the center of a highly vertical workplace, creating opportunities for employees to connect across a vast corporate campus in the sky. Communal spaces are woven throughout the tower, while flexible work environments support different forms of collaboration and interaction. The building’s all-electric operation and exceptional indoor air quality further shape the workplace experience, making health and wellness an integral part of its design. At an extraordinary urban scale, 270 Park Avenue turns the corporate tower into a social workplace.

FriendTimes Suzhou Headquarters R&D Building

By ARTS GROUP CO., LTD., Suzhou, China

Popular Choice Winner, Office High Rise (16+ Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

Located in Suzhou Industrial Park, the FriendTimes Headquarters R&D Building explores the idea of a highly engaging and playful workplace rooted in local culture. Its “landscape vertical axis” draws from the layered spaces of Chinese landscape painting, turning the tower into a sequence of places to pause, explore, and interact. Cylindrical public installations punctuate different floors, housing spaces such as a game museum, art exhibition areas, and a library. These interventions bring unexpected moments of activity into the working environment, allowing employees to encounter culture and recreation as part of their daily routines. On the west facade, projecting “social cells” give the building a distinctive outward expression, reinforcing its character as a lively workplace and urban landmark.

LinkedIn Middlefield Campus

By STUDIOS Architecture, Mountain View, California

Jury Winner, Office Mid Rise (5-15 Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

LinkedIn’s headquarters brings several new and existing buildings together as a one-million-square-foot campus centered on connection to the outdoors. Across the site, terraces and courtyards create places for employees to step away from their desks, while walking loops encourage movement between buildings. A full-height illuminated staircase becomes a social route through the workplace, leading toward a landscaped terrace suited to lunch or informal meetings. At ground level, a steel and mass-timber pavilion takes the form of a treehouse, with a coffee bar and space for community events. Its flexible character allows it to support everyday work as well as larger gatherings. Together, these shared spaces give the campus a distinctly social character, where work naturally extends into the landscape.

Fourth Ward Office Project

By Olson Kundig, Atlanta, Georgia

Popular Choice Winner, Office Mid Rise (5-15 Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

Fronting Atlanta’s BeltLine, the Fourth Ward Office Project uses its 1.1-million-square-foot development to create a direct relationship between the workplace and public life. Two towers frame the site while the Appalachian Steps negotiate the changing grade, forming a pedestrian route through a landscaped open space. At the center, a broad thoroughfare doubles as a civic plaza, bringing office workers into contact with ground-level visitors and retail. The stepped landscape also creates informal places to pause along the route, making movement through the development part of the social experience. Connections to the BeltLine and Old Fourth Ward Park extend beyond the building itself, positioning the workplace within a larger network of public spaces and everyday urban activity.

Yamato Headquarters Building A, Building B

By NIKKEN SEKKEI LTD, Tokyo, Japan

Yamato’s headquarters brings two buildings, separated by a city road, together as a single workplace open to the surrounding community. The space above the road becomes a central atrium, with shifting floor levels creating diagonal views between the two buildings and encouraging visual connections between colleagues. Inside, stepped wooden platforms introduce different settings for work and informal interaction, while a free-address layout allows employees to choose where they work throughout the day. At ground level, a café and parcel delivery center create a publicly accessible threshold between the company and the city. A timber canopy extends from the street into the interior, giving the entrance a warm, welcoming character and reinforcing the building’s connection with everyday urban life.

Ibira Work

By FGMF, São Paulo, Brazil

Popular Choice Winner, Office Low Rise (1-4 Floors), 14th Architizer A+Awards

Located near Ibirapuera Park in São Paulo, Ibira Work places the workplace in close contact with its surrounding landscape. The building uses its sloping site to create a sheltered, heavily planted ground level, with a walkway passing above the greenery toward the central entrance. Large terraces extend from the offices on every floor, offering outdoor settings for informal meetings or time away from the desk. Open staircases connect these spaces vertically, leading to a rooftop overlooking the park. Hanging planters, pergolas, and metal brises are integrated into the slender steel structure, providing shade while contributing to a cooler microclimate. With landscape woven through its circulation and shared spaces, Ibira Work encourages employees to move outdoors and experience the workplace as a more social environment.

KItoNOKO, A workplace designed at the scale of the human body

By ure, Japan

Set within Hiroshima’s reclaimed industrial district, KItoNOKO brings the feeling of home into a landscape of warehouses and factories. Designed for Nikko Home Group, the building is conceived as a “house for everyone,” creating a welcoming setting where employees, clients, and visitors can gather and stay. A 38-inch (910 millimeter) timber module derived from traditional Japanese housing establishes familiar proportions throughout the building, while a central atrium forms a shared social space and circulation spine. The building’s 45-degree rotation creates planted pockets along the street, drawing people toward the entrance. Inside, exposed timber frames and over 5,000 wooden slats give the workplace a tactile warmth, making the office feel closer to a communal domestic setting than a conventional workplace.

The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer’s 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.

The post The Social Workplace: 7 Award-Winning Offices Designed for Connection appeared first on Journal.

Toronto, Canada’s largest city, underwent an unprecedented building boom during the 20th and 21st centuries. From impressive condominiums, such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Toronto-Dominion Centre, to historic structures like the Flatiron Building, Toronto is considered one of the most diverse architectural settings in the Western world. In the early 2000s, the city became an alluring site for postmodernist architects such as Daniel Libeskind and Frank Gehry. Their designs: the Royal Ontario Museum’s extension, the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal and the Art Gallery of Ontario showcase architecture that is far from conventional.

Unsurprisingly, the focus of today’s Toronto-based architects has shifted to sustainability and natural materials. Mass timber construction has become the go-to material for mid-rise and high-rise buildings, such as the 80 Atlantic and T3 Bayside, while the city’s environmental goal to achieve net zero by 2040 is already underway. Social housing has also developed, introducing the concept of the “missing middle”, where architects design mid-scale residential projects, creating neighborhoods that sit in between the towers and the suburban single-family homes, thus monitoring urban sprawl.

With so many architecture firms to choose from, it’s challenging for clients to identify the industry leaders that will be an ideal fit for their project needs. Fortunately, Architizer is able to provide guidance on the top design firms in Toronto based on more than a decade of data and industry knowledge.

How are these architecture firms ranked?

The following ranking has been created according to key statistics that demonstrate each firm’s level of architectural excellence. The following metrics have been accumulated to establish each architecture firm’s ranking, in order of priority:

• The number of A+Awards won (2013 to 2026)
• The number of A+Awards finalists (2013 to 2026)
• The number of projects selected as “Project of the Day” (2009 to 2026)
• The number of projects selected as “Featured Project” (2009 to 2026)
• The number of projects uploaded to Architizer (2009 to 2026)

Each of these metrics is explained in more detail at the foot of this article. This ranking list will be updated annually, taking into account new achievements of Toronto architecture firms throughout the year.

Without further ado, here are the 25 best architecture firms in Toronto:

25. Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects

Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects is a Toronto‑based design firm led since 1995 by principals Ralph Giannone and Pina Petricone.

We are architects with work that extends from the scale of “the spoon to the city.” We are committed to contributing to a vibrant environment and see our projects as a careful choreography of architectural design, interior design, environmental design, and public realm experiences. Regardless of scale, our measure of quality is a project’s ability to positively transform and better everyday life.

Some of Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Snider House, Toronto, Canada
• Assembly Park: Gardens, Plaza, and Studios, Vaughan, Canada
• STOCK T.C, Toronto, Canada
• Wellington Market, Toronto, Canada
• Regent Park Block 22, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects achieve 25th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

24. AGATHOM Co. Ltd

Established in 2005, AGATHOM is an award-winning architectural studio and workshop. Located in a landmark building in Toronto’s Corktown neighborhood, the firm is a union of two distinct, yet complementary voices. Adam Thom and Katja Aga Sachse Thom – partners in work and life – started the firm as an extension of a finely calibrated collaborative process built on a foundation of broad technical expertise and a dedication to craftsmanship. During its first ten years, the firm received more than its fair share of media attention. Contradictory words like intimate, monumental, playful, daring, rugged, graceful, idiosyncratic and familiar were often used to describe the work.

Some of AGATHOM Co. Ltd’s most prominent projects include:

• Dove, Toronto, Canada
• Rainforest Retreat, British Columbia, Canada
• WASAGATHOM, Ontario, Canada
• Cogs
• Still Point

The following statistics helped AGATHOM Co. Ltd achieve 24th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

23. WZMH Architects

WZMH Architects is committed to the pursuit of design excellence delivered with exceptional technical competency. Based in Toronto, we have been providing innovative and effective solutions for our clients for over six decades on a broad range of projects both in Canada and overseas. Fresh approaches to problem-solving are encouraged and rewarded in our design studio. This philosophy has motivated us to constantly adapt, evolve, and reinvent ourselves to produce architecture that is contemporary, relevant, and meaningful. Our aim is to create timeless places that harness the full potential of their site and benefit the people who will use and experience them.

Some of WZMH Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• 33 Bloor East, Toronto, Canada
• Abbotsford Law Courts, Abbotsford, Canada
• Toronto Police Service – Division 41 Police Station, Toronto, Canada
• T3 Bayside, Toronto, Canada
• Parkway Forest Re-Urbanization, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped WZMH Architects achieve 23rd place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

22. dkstudio architects inc.

dkstudio is a Toronto-based architectural firm specializing in projects in luxury retail, corporate interiors, and unique contemporary residential designs.

Some of dkstudio architects inc.’s most prominent projects include:

• White Box, Toronto, Canada
• Bungalow Renovation, Toronto, Canada
• Tao Sangha Healing Centre, Toronto, Canada
• Hong Kong Villa, Hong Kong
• Coty Fume Scent Lounge, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped dkstudio architects inc. achieve 22nd place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

21. Paul Raff Studio

Paul Raff Studio is a creative practice that incorporated as a full-service architecture firm in 2003. Its collaborative environment is dedicated to a creative vision of the highest caliber. Based in Toronto, the Studio assists clients locally and internationally to create projects where art becomes life.

The Studio is an internationally recognized leader in sustainable architecture, art, and design. Each project is uniquely conceived for its particular situation, and advanced with proficient project management to achieve exceptional value and architectural quality. Projects and experience range in scale and scope, including residential, cultural, and commercial architecture, master planning and urban design, environmental and public art, private gardens and special features.

Some of Paul Raff Studio’s most prominent projects include:

• Cascade House, Toronto, Canada
• Counterpoint House, Toronto, Canada
• Madrigal House, Toronto, Canada
• Echo House, Toronto, Canada
• Garden Pavilion

The following statistics helped Paul Raff Studio achieve 21st place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

20. Yabu Pushelberg

We design places and products: immersive environments, compelling destinations, and considered goods.

Some of Yabu Pushelberg’s most prominent projects include:

• Ports Shanghai, Shanghai, China
• YPTO Studio, Toronto, Canada
• 280 Art Boulevard, São Paulo, Brazil
• Amagansett, Private Residence, Amagansett, New York
• Lane Crawford Yintai, Beijing, China

The following statistics helped Yabu Pushelberg achieve 20th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

19. Reflect Architecture

At Reflect Architecture, each project begins with a search for what inspires — something specific to each client, discovered through dialogue, context and careful attention. This foundation shapes the work, allowing spaces to reflect the values and perspectives that define them. Each project is a consideration of its people and place. Through thoughtful conversation, contextual references and design exploration, a clear narrative direction is established, informing how space, material and light are developed throughout the architectural process.

Grounded in progressive materials and techniques, the work responds to intersecting conditions — ecology, culture and community — while remaining attentive to how architecture is experienced and inhabited. Committed to clarity in aesthetic, communication and intent, the studio imagines architecture that reflects the realities of today while considering the needs of tomorrow.

Some of Reflect Architecture’s most prominent projects include:

• North Drive House, Toronto, Canada
• Lumea, Toronto, Canada
• Retreat, Ontario, Canada
• Permission, Toronto, Canada
• Rejuuv, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped Reflect Architecture achieve 19th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

18. BDP Quadrangle

BDP Quadrangle is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary architecture, design, and urbanism practice founded in 1986 and the North American headquarters of BDP, a global interdisciplinary design firm.

Our team delivers innovative and strategic solutions across the built environment, encompassing mixed-use, housing, workplace, retail, transit, media environments, education and healthcare projects, all focused on promoting wellbeing, inclusivity and sustainable futures.

Some of BDP Quadrangle’s most prominent projects include:

• Yonge Sheppard Centre, Toronto, Canada
• Bata Shoe Factory, Quinte West, Canada
• 1181 Queen Street West, Toronto, Canada
• Samsung Experience Store at CF Toronto Eaton Centre, Toronto, Canada
• Corus Quay, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped BDP Quadrangle achieve 18th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

17. B+H Architects

B+H Architects is a global, award-winning firm with a 70+ year legacy of building creative solutions for clients through the delivery of architecture, interior design, landscape, planning, and other consulting services. We’ve worked with clients across the globe to design buildings and environments that are inspiring, memorable, functional, and contextual.

Founded in 1953 in Toronto, our firm operates from studios in 8 cities around the world: Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Singapore, and Ho Chi Minh City. Our multidisciplinary team collaborates to deliver strategic consulting and high-value design solutions that shape spaces, communities, and economies.

Today, our team includes more than 300 curious designers, placemakers, strategists, storytellers, and creative human beings who believe in embracing change and challenging the status quo to deliver resilient, healthy environments that positively contribute to their communities and are characterized by vibrant human experiences.

Some of B+H Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• SickKids Patient Support Centre, Toronto, Canada
• Zhongtai Retail Store, Beijing, China
• First Canadian Place – Recladding, Toronto, Canada
• University of British Columbia – AMS Student Nest, Vancouver, Canada
• Abilities Centre, Whitby, Canada

The following statistics helped B+H Architects achieve 17th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

16. Altius Architecture, Inc.

Altius has continued to move forward towards a complete, holistic and collaborative approach to building. We believe that the best buildings are achieved when architects, engineers, consultants, constructors and clients come together to achieve something greater than the sum of their individual parts. We subscribe to a team approach to building and believe that the confluence of architecture, structure, mechanical systems and building technology must meet at the commencement of the design process in order to successfully meet the needs of our clients, their budgets and respond to our modern times. We have established close relationships and continue to share knowledge with the best consultants available to us in the fields of structural, mechanical and sustainable systems design.

Some of Altius Architecture, Inc.’s most prominent projects include:

• Hewitt Avenue House
• Clearview Residence, Collingwood, Canada
• 360 Winnett, Toronto, Canada
• Ellis Park House, Toronto, Canada
• Beech House, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped Altius Architecture, Inc. achieve 16th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

15. CORE Architects Inc.

CORE Architects is an award-winning architectural and interior design firm based in Toronto, Canada. Since our inception in 1994, we have provided our clients with a complete range of integrated services for the planning, design and creation of built environments.

CORE has been responsible for the design of 160 residential projects; 45,000 residential units; the urban master planning of over 200 million square feet of residential development; numerous private residences; recreational and sports clubs; restaurants; hotels; resorts; offices; and over 1500 retail rollouts.

As responsible professionals, we consider our projects to be more than discreet objects. In all our projects, we advocate appropriate densities that make the best use of the site, support mass transit options and provide healthy living environments for people.

Some of CORE Architects Inc.’s most prominent projects include:

• 210 Bloor, Toronto, Canada
• Six50 King, Toronto, Canada
• M City – Phase 1, Mississauga, Canada
• Five Hundred Wellington, Toronto, Canada
• Cabbagetown Coach House, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped CORE Architects Inc. achieve 15th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

14. AAmp Studio

AAmp is a BIPOC-led architecture & design studio committed to creating beautiful, informed and transformative experiences. We focus on design at multiple scales, ranging from commercial, cultural & residential architecture to branding and graphic identity.

We pride ourselves on an innovative, thoughtful, and collaborative approach to design: from initial concept through realization, we work closely with our clients to find creative solutions tailored specifically to their needs. In short, we believe design is a cultural experience that is layered, democratic and fun — so, let’s do it!

Some of AAmp Studio’s most prominent projects include:

• Tower House
• Jones Commons, Toronto, Canada
• Sunnyside Townhouse, Toronto, Canada
• Compartes Melrose, West Hollywood, California
• Ell House, Prince Edward, Canada

The following statistics helped AAmp Studio achieve 14th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

13. PLANT Architect Inc.

PLANT Architect Inc. is an award-winning practice that branches into the domains of architecture, landscape, and design. Our studio operates across spatial scales and disciplinary borders to reveal a site’s potential, distill client needs into a clear design vision, and create timeless spaces that heighten one’s experience of a site, city, building, or natural landscape.

We specialize in institutional, commercial, and residential architecture and landscape architecture, interiors, urban infrastructure, feasibility studies, and master planning. We also offer a broad range of value-added services that include furniture and lighting design, public facilitation, and integrated graphics. Our interdisciplinary design approach allows us to build important connections between people, places, and ideas, and it remains central to our firm’s ongoing commitment to public engagement.

Some of PLANT Architect Inc.’s most prominent projects include:

• Face to Face | Tête à Tête, Toronto, Canada
• The Sara Jackman Playground, Toronto, Canada
• Canadian Firefighters Memorial, Ottawa, Canada
• East Point Park Bird Sanctuary Pavilions, Toronto, Canada
• Walmer Residence, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped PLANT Architect Inc. achieve 13th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

12. PHAEDRUS Studio

PHAEDRUS Studio is an award-winning Toronto-based design and architecture practice working across and between disciplines to design and create objects, spaces, and architecture.

​Design is a process. Our role as designers is to foster that process through open-minded inquiry and dialogue while seeking to understand the dreams, desires, and values of those we design for. Through playful exploration and guided collaboration, we reveal solutions that could not initially or individually be imagined. Driven by an understanding and passion for art, craft, and technology, we emphasize design solutions that perform over preconceived notions of style. We recognize that performance is relative to a given project’s unique constraints and opportunities and create physical expressions of the ideas and inspirations exposed by the design process.

Some of PHAEDRUS Studio’s most prominent projects include:

• ODIN Cafe + Bar, Toronto, Canada
• FIX Coffee + Bikes, Toronto, Canada
• THOR Espresso, Toronto, Canada
• TWO-WAY House, Toronto, Canada
• MODEL 4-PLEX + 1, York, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped PHAEDRUS Studio achieve 12th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

11. RDH Architects

RDH Architects Inc. (RDHA) is a Toronto-based studio specializing in architecture for the public realm. Founded in 1919, it is one of Canada’s oldest architectural practices and the recipient of the 2018 Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) Architectural Firm Award. Led by Principals Bob Goyeche, Tyler Sharp, and Geoff Miller, the firm of over 30 professionals has developed an extensive portfolio of experience encompassing library, industrial, office, recreation, post-secondary education, transit, and secure facility design.

Since 2005, the firm has focused on producing intelligent, concept-driven architecture of the highest caliber. RDHA now feels and acts like an emerging design studio, while our 100+year legacy provides a solid backbone of technical and managerial experience.

Some of RDH Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Springdale Library and Komagata Maru Park, Brampton, Canada
• Guildwood GO Station, Toronto, Canada
• Scott Street Interlocking Signal Tower Generator, Toronto, Canada
• Waterdown Library and Civic Centre, Hamilton, Canada
• Idea Exchange Old Post Office, Cambridge, Canada

The following statistics helped RDH Architects achieve 11th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

10. Diamond Schmitt

Diamond Schmitt is a global architecture firm designing transformative, purpose-driven and highly sustainable buildings from its four studios located in Toronto, New York, Vancouver and Calgary. Creating innovative design solutions while drawing inspiration from each site’s surrounding community, architectural, and historical contexts, Diamond Schmitt’s visionary designs can be found in more than 50 cities around the world.

Some of Diamond Schmitt’s most prominent projects include:

• United Kingdom Holocaust Memorial – International Design Competition
• Mirvish Village, Toronto, Canada
• Waterworks, Toronto, Canada
• Ingenium Centre, Ottawa, Canada
• David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City, New York

The following statistics helped Diamond Schmitt achieve 10th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

9. PARTISANS

PARTISANS designs objects, designs architecture, designs cities, designs concepts, and even ideas. We strive to make the improbable possible and the impossible viable, at all scales and media. Our curiosities are insatiable, and our drive to create them is central to our project. We are an award-winning, internationally published studio founded in 2012.

Some of PARTISANS’ most prominent projects include:

• Canvas House, Toronto, Canada
• Grotto Sauna, Ontario, Canada
• Fold House, Hamilton, Canada
• Royal De Versailles’ Rolex Boutique Toronto, Toronto, Canada
• Windsor Peace Fountain

The following statistics helped PARTISANS achieve 9th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

8. Teeple Architects

Teeple Architects shapes buildings through an open and collaborative process. Founded in 1989, our practice integrates sustainability and technical expertise with formal exploration to create buildings that are representative of the communities they serve. Our Toronto and Vancouver studios draw on the collective skills and expertise of a diverse and talented team of design professionals. Under the leadership of Principals Stephen Teeple (Founder), Chris Radigan (Emeritus), Myles Craig, Tomer Diamant, Avery Guthrie, Richard Lai and Wes Wilson, we work with discipline and imaginations to shape ideas into places that bring aspirations to life.

Some of Teeple Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Morgan State University Calvin & Tina Tyler Hall, Baltimore, Maryland
• Stanley A. Milner Library Renewal, Edmonton, Canada
• UBC MacLeod Renewal, Vancouver, Canada
• University of Manitoba Desautels Concert Hall, Winnipeg, Canada
• University of Toronto Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus West, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped Teeple Architects achieve 8th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

7. Atelier RZLBD

Reza Aliabadi (born 1974), known as RZLBD, is a Canadian artist and architect of Persian origin. He is the founder and principal of Atelier RZLBD, an art and architecture practice based in Toronto, named after a pseudonym he adapted that reflects his interest in abstraction and reduction. His repertoire of work extends to making art, crafting objects, designing buildings, curating installations, and publishing a zine called rzlbdPOST.

His work has been distinguished with numerous accolades, exhibited in many venues, and celebrated in more than 100 print publications. In 2017, RZLBD was selected among the top emerging design talents in Canada. In the same year, the UK publisher Artifice released a monograph, RZLBD Hopscotch, that recognizes Aliabadi’s selected built projects by collecting essays, project profiles, and annotated drawings.

Some of Atelier RZLBD’s most prominent projects include:

• Opposite House, Toronto, Canada
• Shaft House, Toronto, Canada
• 5/6 HOUSE
• Whale House, Toronto, Canada
• The Gallery House, Markham, Canada

The following statistics helped Atelier RZLBD achieve 7th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

6. Hariri Pontarini Architects

Established in 1994, Hariri Pontarini Architects is a leading Canadian full-service architectural practice known for creating modern landmarks such as the award-winning Bahá’í Temple for South America, the acclaimed McKinsey & Company headquarters in Toronto, the international competition-winning Ivey School of Business and the Governor General’s Medal-winning Schulich School of Business. Founded by Siamak Hariri and David Pontarini, the firm has delivered a broad range of institutional, commercial and residential projects, libraries, schools and academic buildings. Hariri Pontarini Architects has become known for designing projects of exceptional quality, with a strong conceptual basis derived from the specific needs and aspirations of each client.

Some of Hariri Pontarini Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• 7 St. Thomas, Toronto, Canada
• Nicol Building, Sprott School of Business, Ottawa, Canada
• The Bahá’í Temple of South America, Santiago, Chile
• Riverdale, Lake Joseph, Canada
• Ontario’s Celebration Zone, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped Hariri Pontarini Architects achieve 6th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

5. MJMA Architecture & Design

MJMA is a Toronto, Canada-based design practice of 60+ designers and architects. MJMA has evolved from a 30-year-strong legacy of making community buildings to building communities — in towns and cities, on campuses, within organizations, and across playing fields. Our increasingly diverse portfolio speaks to an innovation culture at MJMA that drives all our designs. This spirit of innovation, cultivated with clients who are enthusiastic about creating meaningful architecture that positively contributes to the built environment, has resulted in more than 75+ national awards, including the Governor General’s Medal in Architecture and the 2016 RAIC Architectural Firm Award.

Some of MJMA Architecture & Design’s most prominent projects include:

• Queen’s University John Deutsch University Centre, Kingston, Canada
• John Innes Community Recreation Centre, Toronto, Canada
• Neil Campbell Rowing Centre, St. Catharines, Canada
• Churchill Meadows Community Centre and Sports Park, Mississauga, Canada
• UBC Aquatic Centre, Vancouver, Canada

The following statistics helped MJMA Architecture & Design achieve 5th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

4. Dubbeldam Architecture + Design

Dubbeldam Architecture + Design is a multi-disciplinary design studio committed to creating thoughtful projects that embody sustainable approaches. Led by fourth-generation architect Heather Dubbeldam, the studio has garnered acclaim for its forward-thinking approach, design research endeavors, and dedication to crafting sustainable environments. They are recognized as one of Canada’s leading architecture practices for their commitment to architectural excellence and dedication to social responsibility through advocacy.

Dubbeldam’s work exemplifies bold design and meticulous craftsmanship. With a diverse portfolio incorporating a wide range of project types, their work ranges from homes, multi-unit residential projects, workspaces, hospitality and mixed-use buildings to landscape design and architectural installations.

Some of Dubbeldam Architecture + Design’s most prominent projects include:

• Dubbeldam Office, Toronto, Canada
• Bunkie on the Hill, Muskoka District Municipality, Ontario
• Bata Shoe Factory, Quinte West, Canada
• Skygarden House, Toronto, Canada
• Binary Spectrum, Kitchener, Canada
• Top image: Long Lake Cottage, Muskoka District Municipality, Canada

The following statistics helped Dubbeldam Architecture + Design achieve 4th place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

3. Moriyama Teshima Architects

Moriyama Teshima Architects (MTA) is a team of architects and designers collaborating with visionary clients to build inspiring and enduring spaces that transform communities. Their extensive portfolio of Canadian and international projects comprises museums and art galleries, university buildings, schools, corporate and government headquarters, recreational facilities, libraries, restoration and renovation projects, and urban/campus planning.

The studio is made up of individuals who reflect the cultural diversity that defines our global present—a combination of industry leaders and young designers working together to design and deliver exceptional projects. They believe that the success of design is rooted in collaborative processes that approach challenges and solutions holistically, and that work at all times to integrate site, building, context and a plurality of perspectives into a built reality of which we can all be proud.

Some of Moriyama Teshima Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Limberlost Place, George Brown College, Toronto, Canada
• Makwa Waakaa’igan Indigenous Centre of Cultural Excellence, Sault Ste. Marie, Canada
• Place des Arts, Greater Sudbury, Canada
• Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) Headquarters and Multi-Tenant Complex, Toronto, Canada
• CREATING THE OSSTF WITH MASS TIMBER, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped Moriyama Teshima Architects achieve 3rd place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

2. KPMB Architects

For more than three decades, KPMB has evolved in response to a changing world and worked to change it for the better.

Established in 1987, KPMB is an internationally recognized architectural practice based in Canada. Our wide-ranging work has earned over 400 respected awards, including 18 Governor General’s Medals, Canada’s highest honor. Our founding partners, Bruce Kuwabara, Marianne McKenna, and Shirley Blumberg, have all received the Order of Canada for their personal achievements and for KPMB’s collective contributions to improving people’s lives through the built environment. In 2021, we expanded our leadership team, including the naming of seven new partners: Kevin Bridgman, Steven Casey, Phyllis Crawford, Andrew Dyke, Mitchell Hall, Paulo Rocha, and Bruno Weber.

As a full-service practice, we provide expertise in building design, interior design, master planning, workplace strategy, project management, stakeholder engagement, and sustainable design.

Some of KPMB Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Center for Computing & Data Sciences at Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts
• Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Harrison McCain Pavilion), New Brunswick, Canada
• Isttaniokaksini/Science Commons – University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Canada
• Downsview, Toronto, Canada
• Massey Hall Renovation and Expansion, Toronto, Canada

The following statistics helped KPMB Architects achieve 2nd place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

1. Omar Gandhi Architects

Omar Gandhi Architects is a Canadian practice working globally, with a diverse portfolio that spans residential, hospitality, civic and cultural projects, as well as large-scale landscape interventions and innovative urban in‑fill. The firm’s work ranges from region-defining public projects to intimate interior and product design, demonstrating a rare fluency across scales. Founded in Halifax in 2010 and formally registered in 2012, the firm expanded to Toronto in 2016 and opened its Berlin studio in 2025, extending its reach into Europe while continuing to lead projects across Canada, the US and the Caribbean.

Raised in Brampton, Ontario, Omar Gandhi studied architecture at the University of Toronto and Dalhousie University before working in Toronto and Halifax.

Some of Omar Gandhi Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• OG House, Halifax, Canada
• Prime Seafood Palace, Toronto, Canada
• Brar Residence, Toronto, Canada
• The Outlier Hotel, Eureka Springs, Arizona
• White Rock, Wolfville, Canada

The following statistics helped Omar Gandhi Architects achieve 1st place in the 25 Best Architecture Firms in Toronto:

Why Should I Trust Architizer’s Ranking?

With more than 30,000 architecture firms and over 130,000 projects within its database, Architizer is proud to host the world’s largest online community of architects and building product manufacturers. Its celebrated A+Awards program is also the largest celebration of architecture and building products, with more than 400 jurors and hundreds of thousands of public votes helping to recognize the world’s best architecture each year.

Architizer also powers firm directories for a number of AIA (American Institute of Architects) Chapters nationwide, including the official directory of architecture firms for AIA New York.

An example of a project page on Architizer with Project Award Badges highlighted

A Guide to Project Awards

The blue “+” badge denotes that a project has won a prestigious A+Award as described above. Hovering over the badge reveals details of the award, including award category, year, and whether the project won the jury or popular choice award.

The orange Project of the Day and yellow Featured Project badges are awarded by Architizer’s Editorial team, and are selected based on a number of factors. The following factors increase a project’s likelihood of being featured or awarded Project of the Day status:

• Project completed within the last 3 years
• A well-written, concise project description of at least 3 paragraphs
• Architectural design with a high level of both functional and aesthetic value
• High-quality, in-focus photographs
• At least 8 photographs of both the interior and exterior of the building
• Inclusion of architectural drawings and renderings
• Inclusion of construction photographs

There are 7 Projects of the Day each week and a further 31 Featured Projects. Each Project of the Day is published on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Stories, while each Featured Project is published on Facebook. Each Project of the Day also features in Architizer’s Weekly Projects Newsletter and shared with 170,000 subscribers.

We’re constantly looking for the world’s best architects to join our community. If you would like to understand more about this ranking list and learn how your firm can achieve a presence on it, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at editorial@architizer.com.

The post 25 Best Architecture and Design Firms in Toronto appeared first on Journal.

The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer’s 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.

In today’s architectural discourse, the significance of a project extends far beyond form and function. It is increasingly defined by how it resonates with cultural context, human experience and the spirit of the era.

As the world’s largest architecture and design awards program, Architizer’s A+Awards celebrates meaningful design from across the globe, bringing together diverse voices that continue to define the future of the built environment.

With a portfolio of award-winning projects spanning diverse spatial typologies, Kuang Ming (Ray) Chou, founder and creative director of Vermilion Zhou Design Group, was invited to serve as a juror for the 14th edition of Architizer A+Awards. From the futuristic Intercity Bar and the dreamlike ‘Green Message’ spa to the culturally rooted Song Art Museum, Chou’s diverse spatial practices reveal an ongoing exploration of how design responds to different contexts.

In this interview, Chou shares his perspectives as both a juror and a design practitioner, exploring what defines excellence in design, how ideas take spatial form, and how design continues to evolve in today’s context.

Reflections on What Makes Great Design

Song Art Museum by Vermilion Zhou Design Group, Beijing, China

Over the years, have there been any spaces that have left a lasting impression on you? What qualities do you believe these exceptional spaces share?

Kuang Ming Chou: Certainly. Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, for example, and the Luce Memorial Chapel at Tunghai University have left a deep impression on me. What truly moves me about these places is not simply their visual spectacle, but the immediate sense of light, air, and spatial order that unfolds upon entering.

Great spaces often share certain qualities: they follow an inherent logic, stay closely connected to nature, and never seek to overstate design itself. Instead, they invite people to pause, to feel, and to truly engage with the space—and that is what makes them memorable.

As Chinese projects increasingly gain recognition at Architizer’s A+Awards, what do you see as the key strengths of Chinese design today? And in your view, how can Chinese design develop a stronger voice internationally?

What stands out most in Chinese design today is a deeper cultural self-awareness. After years of drawing from international design languages, more designers are now returning to Eastern cultural roots, rethinking the connections between people and space, scale, order and nature. This cultural grounding is what gives Chinese design its distinctive identity.

Building an international presence is not about following global trends, but about understanding our own cultural identity and finding ways to express it. The key lies in moving beyond literal cultural references and translating deeper cultural insights into a design language relevant to today.

Design Practice: A Shared Logic Behind Diverse Spatial Expressions

Intercity Bar by Vermilion Zhou Design Group, Shenzhen, China

From the futuristic Intercity Bar to the dreamlike ‘Green Message’ spa and the Eastern-rooted Song Art Museum, you’ve received A+Awards recognition for three consecutive years. Working across such diverse typologies, how do you shape the atmosphere and experience each space intends to convey? What is the underlying logic that anchors your design approach?

Everything begins with understanding the project at its core — who it serves, what it seeks to convey, and what experience the user truly needs. Style is never the starting point. Once these fundamentals are clear, the atmosphere begins to take shape.

The underlying logic behind these projects is consistent: starting with user needs and translating them into spatial language. From light and materiality to scale, circulation, or even emotional rhythm, every design decision serves what the space aims to convey, rather than pursuing form for its own sake. For me, the essence of design is not to create a space that simply appears distinctive, but to accurately express what the space is meant to convey.

Through your extensive practice in hospitality design, you’ve shaped a philosophy grounded in clarity, tranquility, and a deeper sense of inner calm. How are these ideas embodied in the recently completed Grand Ji Hotel?

The philosophy unfolds through different layers of experience. It begins with clarity — an environment shaped by order, refinement, and restraint, free from distraction. Tranquility then emerges through the interplay of light, material, sound, and scent, inviting a slower, more settled rhythm. Beyond these layers lies a deeper experience, where the space moves beyond function and fosters a sense of inner calm. These ideas are not approached as separate gestures, but are woven into a coherent experience that anchors the hotel’s spatial logic.

In today’s increasingly standardized and homogeneous hotel market, what do you see as the key to creating a distinctive experience through design? Where can design make a difference, and does it have limits?

The starting point is always the brand’s vision and identity. Understanding what the brand believes in, who it serves, and what kind of experience it seeks to deliver gives design its direction. Without this clarity, design risks creating only superficial differences rather than authentically expressing the brand itself.

At its core, hospitality is still about three essentials: a refreshing shower, a restful sleep, and a satisfying meal. The role of design is to build upon these fundamentals — to articulate the brand’s identity, translate its ethos into space, and shape a distinctive experience.

Yet, the role of design has its limits: it cannot replace operations or service. It plays an important role, yet it is not the whole story.

H World Group Global Headquarters by Vermilion Zhou Design Group, Shanghai, China

As the Chief Designer for H World Group, you’ve played a key role in the design evolution of its diverse hospitality portfolio—from economy hotels like HANTING and NI HAO to mid-scale and upscale brands including JI, MERCURE, and JOYA. Beyond individual projects, you have established holistic design frameworks that refine each brand’s identity to create consistent spatial experiences across properties. From your perspective, what is the underlying design logic behind H World Group’s diverse hospitality brands? And how does it support the group’s ambition to redefine hospitality in China?

I believe the answer still lies in returning to the fundamentals. Across H World Group’s brand tiers, the underlying design logic remains consistent: starting not with style, but with contemporary Chinese lifestyles and the essential needs of guests. This approach is rooted in a genuine understanding of Chinese culture and contemporary living.

It is not about expressing culture through visual symbols alone, but about translating deeper cultural insights—such as Chinese perspectives on order, proportion, comfort, and human relationships — into contemporary hospitality experiences. This depth is central to H World’s vision — ensuring each brand speaks precisely to its audience while establishing a design language rooted in the Chinese context.

As China’s leading hospitality group, H World now has a presence in 21 countries worldwide. In a globalized market, what do you see as essential for hotel brands to establish international relevance and competitiveness across diverse cultural contexts?

Global competitiveness begins with a clear sense of identity. A brand needs to define its core values — what it believes in, what it offers, and what experience it promises consistently — before engaging with different cultural contexts. Markets may vary, but strong brands adapt without losing their essence.

Going global is not about becoming more like others, but about staying true to a brand’s own identity. Only then can it truly resonate with people around the world.

Design Sensibility: Creating Value in an Ever-evolving Context

Enhance International Medical Center by Vermilion Zhou Design Group, Hainan, China

A designer’s creative vision is built upon sustained observation, experience, and reflection. What has most deeply shaped your design sensibility, and how is it translated into spatial language within your projects?

For me, the most meaningful input comes from observing the world around us. Design is not only about design itself; it is rooted in a deeper understanding of life. The way we perceive people, cities, nature, light, materials and emotional shifts within a space shapes our design sensibility.

Within a project, these observations are not directly reproduced, but translated into spatial language through scale, light, materials, circulation, and rhythm — to create a spatial expression unique to each project.

Vermilion Zhou Design Group has been dedicated to interior design for more than two decades. What core philosophy has guided the studio’s growth? And with AI and new technologies increasingly influencing the design industry, what remains irreplaceable about designers?

The philosophy that has guided us throughout this journey is actually very simple: to create design that people can truly feel — its beauty, its value and its presence in everyday life. Design is never about form alone; it must ultimately return to human experience, everyday use and the test of time.

AI and new technologies will undoubtedly reshape many aspects of the design process and enhance efficiency. But what remains irreplaceable for designers is their sensitivity — the ability to understand people, perceive space and discern what is essential and what is excessive. These insights are rooted in years of observation and reflection—something technology cannot replace.

Looking ahead, what matters for designers is not how well we use tools, but how deeply we perceive, understand and respond to the world around us. It is this depth of perception that allows design to resonate and endure.

The jury and the public have had their say — feast your eyes on the winners of Architizer’s 14th Annual A+Awards. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive future program updates.

The post Cultural Grounding Over Global Trends: Kuang Ming Chou on Where Chinese Design Finds Its Identity appeared first on Journal.