Photo: Mikkel Frost

We’ll make this quick. It’s T-minus 10 hours until Public Voting for the A+ Popular Choice Awards closes — not much time at all! So here’s the plan: head on over to the awards site, sign in with any one of your social media accounts, and start voting. There are 50+ categories to cover, each with 5 shortlisted projects to choose from. (That’s a lot of architecture.) Of course, you don’t have to go through them all, but, trust us, you’ll find it hard to stop once you get going. So, awards site, login, vote vote vote. Easy enough, right? Onwards!

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Landscaping is the butt of many an undergraduate architecture student joke. But what do undergrads know about anything, right? At its best,  landscaping melds structure and context, ensuring that the best attributes of the site — or the sense of “place,” if you prefer — are preserved while still accommodating the new building. This relationship can be very literal (i.e. a “green-lawned” building) or more general, functioning in more subtle ways (i,e, a park). In both senses, landscaping — in which we include gardens and parks — is an essential component to the making of architecture.

The finalists for the Architizer A+ “Landscaping” and “Parks/Pavilions” awards make a great case for the indispensability of landscape design. Click through to see them all!

(Psst. You’ve got just 2 days left to vote for your favorites! Head over to the Awards site to vote now.) 

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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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Two weeks ago, we launched this little thing called Public Voting to close out the first annual Architizer A+ Awards. All modesty aside, the initiative has really taken off in a way that brings architects, designers, and fans together to talk about architecture like never before.

Public Voting is a crucial part of the awards program because it lets design fans vote for the best architecture of the last three years. More important, it does so in an easy, fun, and oh-so addictive way. (We’d make a “crack” joke, but “crack” jokes aren’t always funny…) No crazy pop-ups or surveys, no slow load times or ugly interfaces. Just great architecture, presented to you in consumable “bites.” Plus, the platform makes it easy for firms and fans to share their votes on their Facebook walls, Twitter streams, Pinterest boards, and Tumblr logs. Architecture + social media for the win!

There are 50+ categories, each containing five shortlisted projects for your perusal. Click on your favorite to see if your taste matches up with the rest of the 100,000 votes cast so far. But don’t wait! Public Voting ends this Friday, March 8, after which all the votes will be tabulated for the Popular Choice Awards. The Jury and Popular Choice winners won’t be announced until March 19, so you still have some time to put in your two cents!

VOTE HERE.

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Today’s A+ finalist spotlight includes museums, theaters, and cultural centers around the world. And trust us, these buildings are as beautiful and rich as the art that they hold. 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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Voting for the Public Choice Winners is now live, so keep checking back for roundups of the best-in-class projects! Today’s finalist spotlight covers the “Architecture + Collaboration” category. These projects exemplify the strategic partnership that goes into producing high-quality architecture, but is often overlooked in favor of a single attributed author. From architects teaming up with charities to realize schools in developing nations to designers joining forces with artists to explore narrative and poetics in building, the following projects push the boundaries of the discipline with all their judicious teamwork. Click through to see them all!

Like what you see? Make sure to vote for it over at the A+ Public Voting site!

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In case you haven’t heard, Public Voting for the Architizer A+ Awards Public Choice Winners is live! Today we’re spotlighting the amazing finalists in the residential categories — which encompass everything from super-sleek skyscrapers to rectangular ski lodges, from urban housing to remote hideaways. We’ve also included some pretty rad interiors, including a cozy mountain villa (with spectacular views) and a NYC penthouse that residents can fly through via harnesses attached to the ceiling. 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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Despite its many charms, the single-family home’s days are numbered. The new American dream? Living small! As cities become more dense, people will have to learn how to live smaller. Developments are already afoot, if initiatives like adaptNYC are any indication of the future of housing. This isn’t to say that smaller apartments need be a drab affair. After all, there’s always room for good architecture.

These new downsized studios and apartments should be supplemented with plenty of collective spaces open for use by all residents, along with the typical amenities, such as access to shopping and mass transport. And, lest we forget, the units themselves should offer aesthetic respite from the world outside. Each of the five finalists for the Architecture + Living Small award do all of these things and more. 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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This morning we launched Public Voting for the Architizer A+ Awards Public Choice Winners, giving you—architects, designers, and fans—the chance to select your favorite buildings and spaces of the past three years! Now, we’re kicking off our “Finalists Spotlights,” which will feature the top five shortlisted projects from each of the 50+ categories eligible for voting.

We’re starting things off with one of the strongest A+ categories: Residential–Single Family Home. Each of these five houses make fantastic use of the typology’s hallmarks—namely, sculptural form, surprising spatial sequences, bold colors, and stunning locales (plus a pool or two). Every one of these houses combine all these ingredients to create small but potent architectural statements. Click through for a look at each! And remember to vote!

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The first phase of the inaugural Architizer A+ Awards is over, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the response from you guys! Since launching the awards program in mid-October, we received a phenomenal number of projects by architects from all over the world, all vying for the top prize in 50 categories.

We’re now onto Phase Two:  every single one of the projects you submitted to us has already been sent to our illustrious jurors, who have 2 weeks to spend with the entries before selecting their top picks. That means architects like Steven Holl and Jeanne Gang, innovators like Neri Oxman and Aaron Koblin, designers like Rem D. Koolhaas and Eckart Maisse, developers like Ian Schrager and MaryAnne Gilmartin, curators Barry Bergdoll and Paola Antonelli, and even celebs like Moby and Elle Macpherson are looking at your projects right now. They’ll choose the top 5 buildings and spaces from each category (both architectural typologies likes “Residential Housing” and Plus typologies like “Urban Transformation”), and we will announce their shortlist on February 14. The jury’s final selections will be kept under wraps for one month, just until phase three of the awards has concluded.

Phase Three might be the most fun of all: public voting. The shortlisted projects will all be posted to the A+ Awards site, where starting February 14 you can vote for the Public Choice winners! Voting is open to everyone and will run through March 8. The best architecture of the last 3 years is in your hands, so don’t forget to vote!

After the public voting period is closed, we’ll tally the numbers and announce both the jury award winners and the public choice winners on March 19. We’ll continue to roll out A+ content thereafter, but that date will mark the end of the first year’s awards. All of the winners are invited to a big gala event on May 16 to celebrate with the architectural community. That’s smack dab in NY Design Week, so we expect a lot of people to be there. We’re still working out the deets, so stay tuned for more.

Finally, thanks to you architects, designers, and fans for making the first annual Architizer A+ Awards such a great success!

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