'Split Lives' Wins TRANSFER Architecture Video Award 2021

Announced on Friday, October 29, in the framework of the cinema encounters Écrans Urbains, the winning short film in the second TRANSFER Architecture Video Award tells "stories from the underground house," which is also the subtitle of Split Lives. Employing a split screen with underground courtyards below and urban street scenes above, the film argues that transformation of the few remaining underground houses in Chinese villages is preferable to erasure. As Joshua Bolchover and John Lin of Rural Urban Framework state in the short film:

"In the past, many rural communities collectively built houses for their individual members. The process of house-making directly strengthened the community. The design of vernacular dwellings embodied the ingenuity of everyday house-builders and explored their ability to respond to a rich diversity of challenging environments with limited resources. Today, processes of urbanization have transformed how people live together."

• Split Lives (Winner), Joshua Bolchover and John Lin, Hong Kong, 2021
• A Short History of the Elevator Pitch (Honorable mention), Ines Weizman, United Kingdom, 2020
• Not by Bricks Alone (Honorable mention), Archie Cantwell, Ireland, 2019
• Grounded (Honorable mention), Tapio Snellman, United Kingdom / Philippines, 2019
• Art Barn (Honorable mention), Jim Stephenson, United Kingdom, 2020
• Dear John, Nuno Cera, Portugal, 2021
• La Loza Multi-purpose Building by Alonso Sosa Architects, Javier Callejas, Spain, 2020
• American Fence, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Bar Tyrmi and Pal Ulvik Rokseth, Norway, 2020
• MigraTouriSpace, Stefanie Bürkle, Janin Walter, Ilkin Akpinar and Tae Woon Hur, Germany, 2021
• Linear City I, Thomas Forget, United States, 2021