The World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards has released its shortlist for 2021, celebrating some 200 buildings and landscapes created between 2019 and 2021.

Being the world’s biggest architectural awards program, some of the entrants on show most certainly live up to the grand scale. A stylised urban landscape linking Abu Dhabi’s desert to its modern city grid; Heatherwick Studio's Singapore skyscraper, Eden’ China’s Culture Exhibition Centre featuring a sun and a moon pavilion; and a tourist development on a Persian Gulf island built to empower the local community, are all in the running for awards within their respective categories.

WAF’s theme for 2021 is ‘Resetting the City: Greening, Health and Urbanism’, with the awards attracting 732 entries from 55 countries, submitted across 20 completed buildings and landscape categories. The event will be held in Lisbon in December, the first time the event has been hosted in the Portuguese capital.

The 20 completed buildings and landscape categories range from Housing, Office, Transport, Health and School to Civic and Community, Sport, Religion, Culture, and Production Energy and Recycling, with entries representing the most beautiful to the most innovative in contemporary architecture.

Winners of each category are chosen through the architects and designers of the projects making presentations to more than 100 international juries in front of festival delegates. Category winners then compete against each other on the final day of the festival, to compete for the ultimate accolades of World Building of the Year, Future Project of the Year, Interior of the Year and Landscape of the Year.

WAF Programme Director Paul Finch says the ceremony for 2021 is one of unprecedented proportions.

"We are delighted with both the quantity and quality of this year’s entries. This promises to be the most competitive awards programme we have ever run, and we look forward to meeting the shortlisted architects in Lisbon."

The WAF Awards ‘Super Jury’, which will decide the World Building of the Year 2021, includes: Jeanne Gang, Founding Principal and Partner, Studio Gang; Abdelkader Damani, Artistic Director, Frac Centre-Val de Loire | Biennale d'Architecture d'Orléans; Kim Herforth Nielsen, Co-Founder & Principal, 3XN Architects and Christina Seilern, Principal, Studio Seilern.

The ‘Super Jury’ for the Landscape of the Year includes: Robert Schäfer, Landscape Architect & Journalist; Brita von Schoenaich, Principal, Bradley-Hole Schoenaich Landscape; Lily Jencks, Founder, LilyJencksStudio | JencksSquared; Todd Langstaff-Gowan, Landscape Architect, Historian, Author and Collector, and Todd Longstaffe-Gowan Landscape Design.

The full shortlist for this year's completed buildings and landscape project awards can be viewed here.

For more details on the 2021 World Architecture Festival and the WAF Awards please visit worldarchitecturefestival.com.

Jarrod Reedie

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