WAF 2019 Building of the Year

Before it won World Building of the Year in WAF's Best in Show format, LocHal was winner of the Culture - Completed Buildings category on the first day of the three-day festival. Designed by Civic architects with Braaksma & Roos Architectenbureau and Inside Outside / Petra Blaisse, the project is described as "a new living room for Tilburg." Judges in the Culture category celebrated the project for its "fine details and the use of textiles which create the necessary intimacy for the human scale, while considering the old steel structure." 

Members of the Super Jury (Ben van Berkel, Aaron Betsky, Anuradha Mathur, Murat Tabanlioglu, Maria Warner Wong) were impressed by the way "this project transformed a significant building which had been planned for demolition" and how "the result has created a physical facility in which a variety of users can meet for multiple purposes. In this sense, the building has become a social condenser."

Some of the other winners announced at the conclusion of WAF 2019 are highlighted below with images, though see also our post on the AR Emerging Architecture award. This year's event was the second in Amsterdam after four years in Barcelona, four years in Singapore, and two years in Berlin. Next year WAF will head to Lisbon for its 13th edition.