Our A+ trophy, designed by Snarkitecture!

NYCxDESIGN, New York City’s first design festival, is in high gear—establishing the Big Apple’s reputation as the Design Capital of the World. And Architizer is a part of it.

Bookended by the Frieze Art Fair at the beginning and the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) near the end, NYCxDESIGN, which runs through May 21, brings together culture, education, commerce, and entertainment with hundreds of events ranging from exhibitions and installations to trade shows, talks, and open studios. But more than that, the festival aims to merge culture with commerce, and to bring design to all audiences.

That’s where Architizer comes in. As the world’s largest architecture website, Architizer is similarly committed to connecting design with the people by bringing architecture out of the echo chamber. Which is why we launched the Architizer A+ Awards, the biggest architectural awards program in the world, with 50+ categories and more than 200 jurors. Instead of celebrating one architect and making architecture into something rarefied and arcane, the A+ Awards celebrate the diversity of architecture around the globe, with entrants coming from more than 100 different countries. More after the jump!

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award in the urban transformation category. See a full list of the winners here.

One of the great strengths of architecture is its ability to bring together multiple layers of time, to build upon the past, engage with the present, and inspire ideas of the future all at once. Constructed at the former 2,000-acre site of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation plant—an industrial Pennsylvania landscape marked by 285-foot blast furnaces—the Artsquest Center by Spillman Farmer Architects does exactly this. Its raw industrial aesthetic embraces the history of the site and the steel empire that shaped it, its mixed-use spaces welcome the activities of contemporary artists and community members, and as the catalyst building for a larger urban renewal project, the Artsquest Center adumbrates a bright future for this storied Pennsylvania neighborhood. Learn just how after the jump.

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

Rows of cubicles, the din of fluorescent lights, packets of instant powdered coffee—you won’t find any of these things at the Pasona Group’s new headquarters in downtown Tokyo. Instead, you’ll see open workspaces, natural sunlight, and plants, everywhere: tomato vines suspended over conference rooms, lemon and passion fruit trees scattered between meeting spaces, and tiny sprouts growing under benches. Best of all, these delectable flora are later harvested, prepared, and served at the building’s cafeterias. Lucky Pasona employees!

NYC-based firm Kono Designs has transformed Pasona’s nine-story, 215,000-square-foot corporate office into an omnivore’s delight, with a double-skin green facade, offices, an auditorium, cafeterias, a rooftop garden, and urban farming facilities integrated within the building. The green space comprises 43,000 square feet with 200 species, including fruits, vegetables, and rice. (Seriously, the main lobby has a rice paddy—and a broccoli field!) “It is the largest and most direct farm-to-table of its kind ever realized inside an office building in Japan,” says Kono in a statement.

Pasona HQ also offers public seminars, lectures, and internships, hoping to boost Japan’s dwindling farming industry and equip a new generation of growers with the business acumen and hands-on experience to start their own traditional or urban farms. It’s a truly unique workplace environment that creates a better working environment and engages the wider Tokyo community by showcasing the benefits and technology of urban agriculture. And it’s beautiful. Click through to see more photos from this amazing A+-winning project!

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Popular Vote Award in the office low-rise category. See the full list of winners here.

Istanbul’s Vakko Fashion Center, with its trippy, kaleidoscopic interiors and rectangular glass facade, is the perfect home for a fashion brand and hip media company—in this case Vakko (Turkey’s leading fashion brand) and Power Media (the Turkish MTV). Which is why it’s so surprising that the building’s plan was actually drafted for another project entirely.

NYC-based REX, led by Joshua Prince-Ramus, had originally developed the design for the Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, but the project had been canceled just before construction was about to start. So, when Vakko and Power Media’s CEO audaciously asked the firm to construct a new headquarters in less than a year using an unfinished, abandoned hotel, REX barely blinked an eye. “The unfinished building fortuitously had the same plan dimension, floor-to-floor height, and servicing concept as … [the] Annenberg Center project,” reads the firm’s statement.

You have to imagine the resulting interior, however, is a bit wilder than originally planned. Devised as a sort-of three-story donut perched above an open ground floor, it contains an auditorium, showrooms, meeting rooms, and executive offices arranged in a maze of slanted steel boxes cloaked in funhouse-like mirror-glass. No wonder our readers chose it as their favorite low-rise office building in the Architizer A+ Awards public voting poll. Click through to see the amazing photos!

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This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award in the office low-rise category. See the full list of winners here.

Few objects convey suburban malaise as succinctly as the office park. You know, those drab clusters of concrete buildings situated in vast parking lots that have come to define sprawl.  Well, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates wants to rehabilitate the much-maligned office park—starting with Centra at Metropark, a sustainable steel-and-glass stunner located in (of all places) Iselin, New Jersey.

“We wanted to attack the question of the suburban office,” says KPF Design Principal Hugh Trumbull. “What could it be? How could we create a great, productive experience for the users?” Read more!

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Twenty-two years after her partner and husband, Robert Venturi, won the Pritzker Prize, in 1991, Denise Scott Brown is asking for acknowledgment from the Pritzker committee. Speaking in a recorded address at the Architects’ Journal Women in Architecture Awards luncheon in London last week, Scott Brown called the judges’ oversight of her collaboration with Venturi a “very sad” situation. “They owe me not a Pritzker Prize but a Pritzker inclusion ceremony,” she said. “Let’s salute the notion of joint creativity.”

Architects’ Journal columnist Rory Olcayto also called on the Pritzker’s handlers to retroactively name Scott Brown a winner in 1991, asking, “Is the Pritzker Prize bold enough to acknowledge past mistakes?”  Read more.

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The past few years has been quite a doozy for storms, with Hurricane Sandy ravaging much of the Northeast this past summer, the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2011, and many more natural disasters plaguing the planet. Scientists say that climate change will only lead to more frequent, longer-lasting extreme weather. The five finalists in the A+ Awards’ Architecture + Weather category explore how architecture can not only protect communities from flooding, but also from extreme heat, sun exposure, and other climate concerns. Click through to see them all!

And remember to vote for your favorite project!

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If you haven’t noticed, we’ve made sort of a big deal about education in the past couple days. Between nurseries and all-around learning, it’s more than an important topic. Today we are featuring all of the facilities that have been shortlisted for the A+ Awards’ “School” category. From kindergartens to higher education buildings, all of these projects create an environment that encourages the advancement of knowledge— plus they’re fun to look at! Click through to see them all.

Spot a favorite? Make sure to vote for it over at the A+ Public Voting site!

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Education isn’t just about what you learn in the classroom, or in the pages of a textbook, but has much to do with your surroundings. Buildings can play a big role in engaging the mind, which is why the Architizer A+ Awards includes a learning category. From university buildings to open learning centers to solar-charging rockers, these five finalists stimulate learning and creativity. Click through to see them all!

Spot a favorite? Make sure to vote for it over at the A+ Public Voting site!

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“Help the aged ’cause one day you’ll be older too,” so goes the song. It’s true, but the need to design aging goes beyond cautionary measures or calculated self-interest. The world is getting older, and architects should strive to build new spatial frameworks that allow us to age in better and smarter ways.

The five finalists for the Architizer A+ “Aging” Plus award go way beyond the nursing home. Click through to see all the projects!

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