Image of A+ Award by Snarkitecture

Last night on the West Side of New York City we celebrated the first annual Architizer A+ Awards. Altogether 55 winners flew in from all over the world to be with us to celebrate architecture.

But this wasn’t your typical architecture award event. We skipped the typical conversations of architects speaking to architects and, instead, had a diverse crew of honorees and presenters get up on stage to fete the world’s finest buildings. We had developers giving awards to architects, we had architects giving awards to presidents… it was an architecture love-fest!

Last night we introduced six special achievement awards designed to remind a world that loves buildings that architecture belongs to everyone. Great architecture takes advocacy to be relevant, and it takes patrons with visions to create spectacular projects. That is why we are proud to announce the 2013 Architizer A+ Awards Relevance Award, Advocacy Award and Patron of the Year Award. We also announced the Do Good Award, Lifetime Achievement Award, and Building of the Year.

And our Special Award Winners are …

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award in the Student Designed category. See the full list of winners here.

While New York City currently outlaws the rather harmless practice of beekeeping, urban beehives are abuzz in Buffalo, New York. Hoping to give a new home to a colony of bees living in an abandoned office building in the city, a group of students from the University of Buffalo developed the imaginative project Elevator B.

A 22-foot honeycomb steel tower, Elevator B is an iconic gesture that is part of the environmental and economic regeneration of a complex known as Silo City. Relocating the colony of honeybees in Elevator B served as a way to reoccupy the building, stimulate redevelopment of the site, and develop a new habitat for the bees—and our judges were absolutely buzzing over it. Click through to see more!

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Popular Choice Award in the Architecture + Self-Initiated category. See the full list of winners here.

For all the gains in sustainability that the architecture and construction industry have made in recent years, certain blind spots remain, including one area that should be a no-brainer: the expos and conferences that the profession puts on for itself. Expo CIHAC, the largest building-industry gathering in Latin America, attracts hundreds of exhibitors each year. But, as the architects at the Mexico City–based Bunker Arquitectura point out, “Almost all the pavilions of the different brands and products related to the architecture and construction industry end up in the trash.”

For the 2012 event in Mexico City, Bunker wanted to set an example for all those exhibitors. The architects approached the CIHAC organizers and made them an offer that was hard to refuse: Bunker would build a zero-waste cafeteria pavilion using 5,000 soda crates on loan from Coca-Cola. “Besides the aesthetic qualities and the environmental virtues they saw in it, our biggest selling point was that it would not cost them a cent,” recall the designers. With its curving, masonry-like walls and bold, graphic patterning of the Coke logo, Bunker’s Upcycled Pavilion won over our readers, too. The project is the, er, pop winner in the self-initiated category of the A+ Awards. Click through for more pictures!

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award in the Architecture + Self-Initiated category. See the full list of winners here.

The DIY thing is all well and good for folks who want to build their own tiny homes or renovate a row house. But for those of us who don’t know which way to point a hammer, design self-determination is a daunting prospect. It’s no wonder so many people live in condos!

Frustrated by the lack of choices in downtown Toronto’s housing stock, architects Kyra Clarkson and Christopher Glaisek decided to give archi-philes a readymade option. They formed a company, MODERNest, and began buying up centrally located lots and building sleek infill homes to sell on the market. “We thought, We can provide a turnkey solution for that sort of buyer, who wants something thoughtfully designed,” says Clarkson. “They know what they like when they see it, but they don’t necessarily know how to get it or make it or even find somebody who can make it for them.”

Our A+ Awards jurors took a shine to the duo’s first infill project, MODERNest House 1, which won the jury award in the Self-Initiated category. Read more!

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Popular Choice Award in the Memorials category. See the full list of winners here.

When designing the Minnesota Fallen Firefighters Memorial, Leo A Daly relocated an existing statue to the capitol grounds in Saint. Paul. Using the old statue as a guide, the architect designed an elegant, minimal statue of weathering steel, which will start rusting over time, to honor the sacrifice of those firefighters killed in the line of duty. Click through for more!

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Awards in Religious Buildings categories. See the full list of winners here.

The Capilla del Lago is a small lakeside chapel outside of Zamora, Mexico. Di Vece Arquitectos of Guadalajara designed the structure to embody simplicity and ephemerality, creating a worship space linked directly to nature. By day, the chapel is an unassuming landscape pavilion, but by night the structure is transformed into a glowing lantern floating on the lake. Read more.

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Popular Choice Award in the Religious Buildings category. See the full list of winners here. 

Designing a contemporary building in a historic setting is never easy—let alone when the structure is a mausoleum for a renowned cemetery. HGA Architects and Engineers accepted the monumentous challenge, and created a breathtaking spiritual space set in a tranquil landscape. The elegant Garden Mausoleum is partially sunken to preserve the serene parkland of Minneapolis’ Lakewood Cemetery, providing a myriad of distinct spatial experiences above and below the manicured grounds. Read more.

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Choice Award in the Architecture + Weather category. See the full list of winners here.

When submitting a design for an administrative office at the factory site of a cement plant in Rajasthan, India’s largest province, Sanjay Puri Architects were feeling the heat—heat in excess of 110°F (45°C), that is. Since Rajasthan features the Thar Desert, where temperatures during the summer months make the locale nearly inhospitable, the architects had to consider the climate and weather patterns for the proposed office’s design. To mitigate the effects of an extremely harsh climate, the architects turned to the traditional Indian design of incorporating open-air courtyards to create cooler internal spaces, and came up with a concept called BIOME. Read more!

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award and Popular Choice Award in the Health Care + Aging category. See the full list of winners here.

A lackluster pool is like a bad cheesecake. If it fails to supply delight and escape, its existence just seems pointless. The Hotel Castell dels Hams, on the Spanish island of Majorca, had a pool problem. Though it was housed in a glass and aluminum shell, “the pool was dark and thermally worked quite badly with a lot of heat loss through this enclosure,” writes architect Cristian Santandreu, whose firm Estudio A2arquitectos revamped the swimming situation—and added an adjacent spa—in 2011. The architects’ splashy new design wowed our A+ judges and our readers, garnering both the jury prize and the popular vote in the Health Care + Aging category of the A+ Awards.

The pool’s new wrapper is punctured with square windows and skylights on three sides (plus the roof). With all that light bouncing off the water and the pool floor, guests get a hint of topsy-turviness, as though they are swimming on the ceiling. Meanwhile, the really committed sunbathers can try for a geometric suntan! Read more.

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury and Popular Choice Awards in BOTH the Government & Municipal Buildings AND Parks categories. See the full list of winners here.

Rising above misty Norwegian fjords, the Trollstigen National Tourist Route provides unprecedented access to a sublime Scandinavian landscape. The bold forms and robust materiality employed by Oslo-based Reiulf Ramstad Architects evoke rugged modernism with a cinematic flair. This exquisite project astounded our esteemed jurors and avid fans alike, sweeping both the Jury and Popular Choice Awards in two different categories to become the most highly decorated Architizer A+ winner! A masterwork of composition and material, the project’s true beauty lies in its restraint and technical execution, perched atop the world. Read more.

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