London’s Design Museum has released the shortlist for its annual design exhibition and awards program and it includes a host of architecture projects.

The awards celebrate the world’s best designs across a number of categories including, Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Graphics, Product and Transport, and will culminate with the announcement of the overall winner in January 2017.

The architecture category has projects from high-profile architects like Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaus/OMA, Bjark Ingels and MAD Architects, but they’ll be up against a number of social projects like Ikea’s mass-produced ‘Better Shelter’ flat pack housing and the Granby Workshop, a social enterprise making experimental products for homes in London’s Granby neighbourhood by 2015 Turner Prize winners, Assemble.

Below is the full list of architecture projects in the running this year.

A category winner and one overall winner will be announced on 26 January 2017.

Arena for Learning, UTEC, Lima, Peru by Grafton Architects

Photography by Iwan Baan

Taking inspiration from the surrounding landscape, this university building is designed as a man-made ‘cliff’ over the city of Lima. Due to the temperate climate, all the building circulation is external. The lecture rooms, laboratories and teaching spaces are terraced, so that their roofs resemble cascading gardens, reminiscent of the cultivated terraces of Machu Picchu. The climate, multiple levels and social interaction make the building feel like the inside a form of articulated mountain.

Better Shelter

Image: IKEA Foundation

Founder & Interim MD: Johan Karlsson
Designer: Dennis Kanter
Industrial Designer: Christian Gustafsson
Engineer and Industrial Designer: John van Leer
Head of Technology: Tim de Haas
Partner: IKEA Foundation
Partner: UNHCR

Better Shelter is a social enterprise driven by a mission to improve the lives of persons displaced by armed conflicts and natural disasters. Aiming to be the leader in emergency and temporary shelter innovation, they continuously develop their products together with partners, customers and, most importantly, the people who live in the shelters. Through innovative methods, they aim to create a safer, more dignified home away from home for millions of displaced persons across the world.

Design That Saves Lives by Arup

In April 2013, a textile factory building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing over 1,100 workers. A rapid visual assessment methodology, Design That Saves Lives, was developed to prevent further tragedy. Buildings were classified according to perceived risk of structural failure and recommendations were given on immediate and longer term actions. This methodology was adopted nationally throughout approximately 4,000 factories, ensuring a high level of consistency and quality across the industry

Dreamland Margate by Hemingway Design

The old amusement park at Margate had fallen into disrepair and was about to be demolished when the community came together to save it. Now it has been reimagined as Dreamland Margate, a vintage style amusement park with retro rides, eateries and amusements.

Fondazione Prada by OMA

The new Fondazione Prada is projected in a former industrial complex with an unusual diversity of spatial environments. It features three new buildings–a large exhibition pavilion, a tower, and a cinema–so that the new Fondazione Prada represents a genuine collection of architectural spaces in addition to its holdings in art.

Granby Workshop by Assemble

Granby Workshop is one of a set of projects that are the result of an ongoing collaboration between the design collective Assemble and Granby residents. The resourceful, creative actions of a group of residents were fundamental to bringing their streets out of dereliction and back into use after decades of ‘regeneration’ initiatives that saw a once thriving community scattered.

Harbin Opera House by MAD Architects

Photography by Adam Mork

The Harbin Opera House is located on land reclaimed from the north side of the Songhua River’s floodplain. The river contributes to Harbin’s cultural, economic and spiritual identity. The façade reveals hidden paths that allow visitors to ascend the building, providing access for entry and viewing platforms.

Nida house in Navidad (Chile) by Pezo von Ellrichshausen

Photography by Pezo von Ellrichshausen

This detached house is located in the Chilean coastline, on top of a gentle hill and surrounded by trees. In order to capture the distant Pacific Ocean, the house is elevated in three levels. The social space is an open plan; a panoramic platform that floats on top of the foliage. The sleeping areas are distributed in the second and ground floor, facing the branches and the tree trunks. Considering the seismic condition of the country, this anti-gravitational effort is carefully balanced by a strictly symmetrical system of rigid concrete frames.

SL11024 by Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA)

Through its materiality and form, LOHA’s design for SL11024, seamlessly engages its historically sensitive site and challenging hillside topography and creates a new model for urban development that enriches an academic community. This housing complex of 31 units and recreational amenities provides the community with much-needed housing for students, faculty, and others.

Sustainable Housing by Tatiana Bilbao Estudio

Social housing has become one of the most important issues in the present day architectural agenda. A project was developed to create a housing prototype with spatial and material qualities at an affordable price, and had to be suitable for the people who were actually going to live in the house in terms of materials, form, function and appearance. The end result was adopting the form of the archetypical house (two slanted roofs) which adapts to different geographical, social and cultural variations.

The Green, Nunhead by AOC

The Green is a new public building which accommodates the events, exchange and collaboration that constitute contemporary Nunhead’s community life. The project creates a freestanding building over-looking Nunhead Green, a historic village green in an inner-city suburb in south London. The timber-framed structure creates a family of discrete rooms arranged around a double height space, providing acoustically separate spaces to accommodate different activities. Each room has a unique character, enjoying windows and views on two or all of its sides, a connection to the rear garden or front terrace and a pitched ceiling animated by exposed painted glulam structure and the lantern.

Tate Modern Switch House by Herzog & de Meuron

This reinvention of The New Tate Modern combines the old and the new, expressed as a whole. As well as doubling the gallery space, this project has created a diverse collection of public spaces dedicated to relaxation and reflection, making and doing, group learning and private study. These spaces are spread over the building and linked by a generous public circulation system rising through the building. The vertical orientation of these spaces is clear in the same way that a horizontal orientation is evident in the first phase of the Tate Modern.

VIA 57 West by Bjarke Ingels Group

VIA combines the advantages of both the European perimeter block and the traditional Manhattan high rise; the compactness, density, and intimacy of a classic courtyard building, with the airiness and the expansive views of a skyscraper. By keeping three corners of the block low and lifting the north-east corner up towards its 467-ft peak, the courtyard opens views towards the Hudson River, bringing low western sun deep into the block and graciously preserving the adjacent tower’s views of the river.

Nathan Johnson

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