The 2016 World Architecture Festival has come to a close. After a final round of presentations and jury critiques for the Day One and Two category winners, the National Museum in Szczecin in Poland made it to the top as the ninth recipient of the coveted World Building of the Year. Designed by Robert Konieczny/KWK Promes, the museum joins previous winners like The Interlace by OMA/Ole Scheeren in Singapore and a21studio's The Chapel in Vietnam.

During the Friday awards gala dinner, other winning announcements included South Melbourne Primary School by Hayball for Future Project of the Year, while the Kopupaka Reserve in Auckland, New Zealand by Isthmus scooped Landscape of the Year. Last but not least, the Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Architecture won Small Project of the Year for their ZCB Bamboo Pavilion.

WORLD BUILDING OF THE YEAR: National Museum in Szczecin, Poland by Robert Konieczny/KWK Promes

Jury chair David Chipperfield cited the National Museum as an “optimistic, poetic and imaginative” ode to the past. “This project enriches the city and the life of the city...,” Chipperfield said. “To go underground is to explore the memory and archaeology of the city, while above ground the public face of the building, including its undulating roof, and be interpreted and used in a variety of ways.”

FUTURE PROJECT OF THE YEAR: South Melbourne Primary School by Hayball

Accommodating 525 students, this new vertical school is proposed for the Fishermans Bends. WAF’s Future Project super-jury — Kim Nielsen, Ole Scheeren and Coren Sharples — selected the project for ‘the way the space interprets and promotes pedagogy’, and how it “overcame the challenges of designing a vertical school, using a central staircase as a point of interaction and as a gathering space.”

LANDSCAPE OF THE YEAR: Kopupaka Reserve in Auckland, New Zealand by Isthmus

The Kopupaka Reserve in Auckland is a hybrid park that combines a storm-water reserve with an urban park, playground and skate park. Judges praised the project as ‘a successful translation of Maori traditions in being both poetic and imaginative [resulting in the] creation of a landscape that captures the soul and nature of the area’.”

SMALL PROJECT OF THE YEAR: ZCB Bamboo Pavilion by The Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Architecture

The ZCB Bamboo Pavilion is a  350m2 public event space built for the Construction Industry Council’s Zero Carbon Building (ZCB) last summer in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong. The student-designed pavilion is a bamboo gridshell structure that is 4 stories high, spans 37 meters, and can seat 200 people. The 473 large bamboo poles were hand-tied with metal wire, using techniques from Cantonese bamboo-scaffolding.

All photos courtesy of 2016 World Architecture Festival.

Related:

The 2016 World Architecture Festival Day One winners

Latest from the 2016 World Architecture Festival: Day Two winners