As the Canadian Wood Council's annual North American Wood Design Awards demonstrate, building with wood easily fuses aesthetics, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability for various projects. Aiming to push for more demand in wooden design and construction, the prestigious awards program scopes out projects that best exhibit contemporary design excellence and good ol' innovation in wood architecture.

The three-member jury -- Larry McFarland, Principal of McFarland Marceau Architects;     Brigitte Shim, Principal of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects; and Keith Boswell, Technical Partner at SOM -- selected 24 out of 166 online submissions. Winners were selected in Honor, Merit, and Citation categories for North America, and a few International projects were recognized as well. Despite the categories, one could say these projects are on the same level.

Here's a glimpse of the winning projects:

↑ Refuge on the Bay of Fundy, Red Bank Farm, Hants County, NS, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects. (Founding partner Brian MacKay-Lyons recently won the RAIC 2015 Gold Medal -- another prestigious Canadian architecture award)

↑ Wood Innovation Design Centre, Prince George, BC, Michael Green Architecture.

↑ Vineyard at the Lake of Constance, Hattnau 62, Germany, Elmar Ludescher Architekt.

↑ Sport Center Sargans, Sargans, Switzerland, Blue Architects and Ruprecht Architekten

↑ Serlachius Museum “Gösta Pavilion” Mänttä, Mänttä, Finland, MX - SI architectural studio and Huttunen - Lipasti - Pakkanen Architects Oy

↑ Timber Dentistry, Mino Osaka, Japan, Kohki Hiranuma Architect & Associates.

Find the full list of winners in the press release.