The winning projects of this year’s Ammodo Architecture Award have been announced, with 26 recipients selected from 168 entries across more than 60 countries. Now in its second year, the award showcases exemplary contributions to socially and ecologically responsible architecture.
In the Social Engagement category, which recognises projects where designers have used their skills as the primary tool to support social and ecological responsibility, NMBW Architecture Studio was one of 12 practices to receive an award. Their winning project, Sanders Place, involved the adaptive reuse of a two-storey brick factory in Melbourne into a co-working hub for developer Tripple.
The award’s advisory committee noted that transforming the closed industrial building into an open, welcoming space reconnects people with nature and community.
“The project skilfully reimagines an existing factory through acts of careful subtraction and reuse, introducing five courtyards – including a central garden where trees grow through the floor – that bring light, air and life into the building,” the committee said.
“With rooftop solar panels, heat recovery ventilation and extensive material reuse, Sanders Place exemplifies how sustainability and human wellbeing can be integrated with beauty and restraint. It demonstrates how architects can ‘liberate themselves from chains’ to create meaningful, ecological and socially engaging architecture, even in highly regulated urban contexts.”
The award includes a €50,000 grant to support the further development of the practice’s projects, which, according to a media release, NMBW intend to use to “fund a design-research initiative exploring how architecture in Melbourne and Sydney can be revitalised through decolonising design, adaptive reuse and multi-sensory engagement.”
“Focusing on disused colonial-era buildings often located on significant Indigenous sites, NMBW will investigate how to transform these structures into inclusive, living public spaces,” the release notes.
The Ammodo Architecture Award advisory committee was chaired by Joumana El Zein Khoury, executive director of the World Press Photo Foundation, Amsterdam, and included Andrés Jaque, architect, dean and professor, Columbia University GSAPP, New York; Anupama Kundoo, architect and professor, TU Berlin; Floris Alkemade, architect and former Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands; Mariam Issoufou, architect and professor, ETH Zurich; and Loreta Castro Reguera, architect and professor, UNAM Mexico City. To ensure global representation, projects were sourced through an invitation system organised by regional ambassadors.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
