RIBA International Awards for Excellence 2024 honour 22 extraordinary buildings
The RIBA International Awards for Excellence 2024 winners span from an art museum defying fire and flood in Australia to a school full of holes and sustainable strategies in Iran
The RIBA International Awards for Excellence 2024 have been announced, with the 22 winners providing a worldwide showcase of ‘exemplary architecture’, and spanning from sustainably minded schools to secluded private homes and a sculptural subway station entrance.
Together, emphasises RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects), the winners comprise standout architectural responses to contemporary social, cultural and environmental challenges – whether climate change, architectural re-use, or building for wellbeing and community – that represent a shift in the way buildings are conceived and constructed.
All 22 winners now go forward to compete for the RIBA International Prize 2024, to be announced in November this year. Here they all are – pick your own favourite for the overall prize.
RIBA International Awards for Excellence 2024: the winners
Light plays across the jali brickwork and remarkable cylindrical forms of the Shah Muhammad Mohsin Khan Mausoleum, by Sthapotik in Manikgonj, Bangladesh. Completed in the grounds of a family home to remember the client's father, this space of contemplation – striking and simple in its use of a single material, and full of allure – is open to the wider community.
Designed to foster appreciation of creative arts while responding to local risk of fire and flood, the Bundanon Art Museum & Bridge in New South Wales, Australia, comprises an underground art gallery and collection storage and a remarkable 165m ‘bridge'. The former is built from concrete to resist fire, while the latter is set above a gully, its structure allowing floodwaters to rise and pass beneath the learning centre, bedrooms and dining spaces that it contains.
Like a game of architectural peekaboo, the playful rebuilding of a school in rural Iran – Jadgal Elementary School by DAAZ Office in Sistan and Baluchestan – features a circular walled site with naturally ventilated classrooms around a central playground that also serves as a community space. Insulated concrete formwork meets local earthquake legislation, while local earth clay creates a flood-protective finish and is easy to repair.
At this rug-making facility – Green Field Factory in Bangladesh by Nakshabid Architects – workers' wellbeing is front of mind with extensive gardens and planting. The façade is covered in greenery that creates shade and filtered natural ventilation indoors, enhanced by pools that cool air as it passes through. The rooftop and surrounding outdoor spaces encourage socialising.
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
In Sydney, Punchbowl Mosque by Angelo Candalepas and Associates is a careful – and ‘magical’, notes its citation – insertion on a small suburban plot. The mosque is one of the first buildings in Australia to use a new low-carbon, high-fly ash concrete, made using a waste product of steel manufacturing, while its design encourages natural ventilation. Seen here, a circular, layered opening in the concrete roof reveals a timber dome seeming to float above a ribbon of natural light.
An example of reuse that captures the romance of the existing structure, Veemgebouw by Caruso St John Architects transforms a 1940s industrial storage building in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, into a vast, mixed-use complex, including a food market, a car park, energy-neutral apartments and maisonettes, as well as office space.
Housing, retail and cultural spaces combine in this revitalised city block, Morland Mixité Capitale – part of the wider ‘Reinventer Paris’ project – by David Chipperfield Architects Berlin and CALQ, which remodels and extends a 1964 16-storey administrative tower and two nine-storey wings.
Hailed in its citation as ‘a unique and pioneering model for urban village renewal’, ARCity Office’s Six Bricolage Houses in Nantou Ancient City, Shenzhen, China, sees six self-built houses by villagers given micro-updates and modifications by the architects. Old meets new in ‘bricolage architecture’, as the addition of cantilevers and the partial cutting of walls, for example, open up space, bring in natural light and create a connection to the outdoors.
Sharanam Centre for Rural Development by Jateen Lad, in Tamil Nadu, India, has transformed a desolate site into an inspiring and inclusive community centre and gardens, with sustainable architecture and innovation at their heart. The architect used recycled and local materials, including red soil, which was pressed into bricks, and contractors, and trained locals in building techniques; the project was completed with zero waste.
Liknon, on the Aegean island of Samos in Greece, is K-Studio’s sensitive restoration of a terraced landscape and construction of a new visitor centre at a vineyard by K-Studio (whose previous projects include the Costa Navarino Residences in the Peloponnese). The single-storey building is set into the hillside and maximises the connection with the land.
Thapar University Learning Laboratory by McCullough Mulvin Architects in Patiala, India, is geometrically bold – comprising three red Agra sandstone-clad towers, each set around a central atrium – and sensitive to the harsh local climate, with architectural shading from a massive canopy, and natural ventilation encouraged by cooling pools of water.
David Chipperfield Architects Berlin completed the conservation-led refurbishment of the city's Neue Nationalgalerie, an icon of the International Style designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1968, with a view to keeping ‘as much Mies as possible’ while also making enhancements to the building’s performance.
Located in Portugal’s Azores, Adega Pico Winery & Hotel by DRDH Architects and Sami Arquitectos, is at one with the natural and cultivated elements of its surrounding volcanic landscape. Almost receding into its Unesco World Heritage Site backdrop, the project is built of the lava rock that is also used for the manmade terraces of the vineyards and topped with sculptural concrete beams.
The Engineering Laboratories at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are designed by Juan Pablo Ortiz Arquitectos and TALLER Architects to encourage a sense of wellbeing and a connection with the surroundings, in the foothills of the Andes in Colombia. The project combines retrofitted and new structures, and features a focus on natural light, greenery including a vertical garden, and views to the landscape.
Of timber-frame construction, using no welded joints, Modulus Matrix - 85 Social Housing in Cornellà, Barcelona, by Peris + Toral Arquitectes, comprises socially rented homes in a courtyard setting, with a design intended to foster neighbourliness and a sense of community.
A preservation project that includes remnants of imperial ceramic workshops, Jingdezhen Pengjia Alley Compound by Beijing AN-DESIGN Architects in Jingdezhen City, China, retains and reveals layers of history for new generations of visitors.
In the medieval town of Paderborn, Germany, David Chipperfield Architects Berlin have reinvented and extended existing buildings – a chapel and 17th-century cloister – to create a new HQ for a family business. New concrete and timber elements repair existing stone and brick walls, and are left exposed in a delicate and harmonious patchwork of old and new.
In the Valle de Bravo, southwest of Mexico, Casa Catarina, a single-family home by Taller Hector Barraso, blends effortlessly with its natural surroundings, featuring stone and rammed earth walls, timber-beamed ceilings and volcanic rock floors. Volumes are staggered to accommodate the sloping site, while the house features spaces that maximises indoor-outdoor living.
College Hampate Ba by Article 25 is the refurbishment of an existing school in Niamey, Niger, using locally sourced materials, to create a new, low-carbon and passively ventilated school that offers a subsidised education to low-income families.
Another education project deserving of the RIBA nod, the Bioclimatic School in Guécélard, France, by Atelier Julien Boidot, brings a unifying extension to a kindergarten and primary school, that takes inspiration from local agricultural buildings in its choice of unfinished materials. It comes with solar chimneys – rectangular roof projections that contain large south-facing windows and vents – to create natural ventilation in classrooms.
The rebuilding of a subway station entrance, Jahad Metro Plaza by KA Architecture Studio in Tehran, Iran, creates a local landmark and a social public space. Mesh arches clad in 300,000 bricks made from local soil are sculptural, welcoming and low-budget.
Its exterior defined by a bold matrix of concrete and voids, the new Student Centre at India’s Ahmedabad University, by Stephane Paumier Architects is LEED Platinum-certified to boot. A concrete frame and brick partition infills act as heat sinks, helping to create a cool and comfortable environment for students to spend time in. Other sustainable features include water recycling, a solar roof, windows that are set deeply to avoid glare and heat, and a sewage treatment plant that maintains the central forest.
On the Wallpaper* staff since 2004, Bridget Downing worked first as production editor and then chief sub editor on the print magazine. Executive editor since 2017, she turned to digital content-editing in 2021 and works with fellow editors to ensure smooth production on Wallpaper.com. With a BA in French with African and Asian Studies, she began her career in the editorial research library at Reader’s Digest’s UK edition, and has also worked at women’s titles. She is the author of the (2007) first editions of the Las Vegas and Cape Town Wallpaper* City Guides.
-
This year's best luxury Christmas hampers for festive celebrations
The best Christmas hampers are a classic gift for a reason: everyone loves receiving a basket of beautifully curated pantry fillers just in time for the festivities. Here are our top picks for 2024
By Rosie Conroy Published
-
17 questions for Michael Kiwanuka
As he prepares to release his fourth album 'Small Changes', we ask Michael Kiwanuka some of life's important questions
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
Inside ‘M&OTHERS’, the experimental exhibition dissecting the relationship between fashion and motherhood
A new exhibition at Modemuseum Hasselt, Belgium explores the rarely examined link between fashion and motherhood, in all its forms
By Dal Chodha Published
-
Meet the 2024 Royal Academy Dorfman Prize winner: Livyj Bereh from Ukraine
The 2024 Royal Academy Dorfman Prize winner has been crowned: congratulations to architecture collective Livyj Bereh from Ukraine, praised for its rebuilding efforts during the ongoing war in the country
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
RIBA House of the Year 2024: browse the shortlist and pick your favourite
The RIBA House of the Year 2024 shortlist is out, celebrating homes across the UK: it's time to place your bets. Which will win the top gong?
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
2024 Obel Award goes to 36x36 by Colectivo C733 in Mexico
The 2024 Obel Award winner has been announced, crowning 36x36 by Colectivo C733 in Mexico as this year's recipients
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
The 2024 RIBA Reinvention Award, Muyiwa Oki, and making reuse ‘more special than ever’
The shortlist for the 2024 RIBA Reinvention Award has been announced today; we caught up with the institute’s president Muyiwa Oki to discuss the honour
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Shigeru Ban wins 2024 Praemium Imperiale Architecture Award
The 2024 Praemium Imperiale Architecture Award goes to Japanese architect Shigeru Ban
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
SANAA scoops 2025 Charlotte Perriand Award
The 2025 Charlotte Perriand Award has been awarded to Japanese architecture studio SANAA
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
2024 Stirling Prize goes to the Elizabeth Line: we speak to the winners
The 2024 RIBA Stirling Prize winner has been revealed, with the Elizabeth Line crowned as the year's best building project; find out about the design and what else made it into the running for the UK's most coveted architecture award
By Ellie Stathaki Last updated
-
2024 RIBA National Awards: browse the list of worthy winners
The 2024 RIBA National Awards have been announced, comprising 26 projects across the UK
By Ellie Stathaki Published