Practice Quiz 109 | B1 – Intermediate

Winners Announced for This Year’s British Architecture Awards

LONDON (15 December)—Fifty extraordinary structures chosen from around 250 shortlisted candidates have won the prestigious British Architecture Awards this year for the most innovative architecture by British architects or foreign architects with offices in Britain. Now in their twenty-second year, the British Architecture Awards are jointly presented by the London Museum of Architecture & Design and the British Centre for Urban Planning & Art. They recognize the architects of exceptional contemporary structures that shape our lives in a wide variety of ways, including skyscrapers, corporate headquarters, bridges, park pavilions, hospitals, private residences, and academic institutions.

Among this year’s biggest winners were Simon Thorpe for Maitland Street Car Park, a stunning 9-level, 768-space car park with various eco-friendly features in Central Manchester; Marcus Fryer for Horizon Bridge, a breathtaking 195-meter-long pedestrian bridge uniquely equipped with 4,500 blinking LED stars synchronized with music; and Isobel McDuff for The Spire, an elegant 28-floor apartment building with a heated rooftop swimming pool that is located near Edinburgh’s busy shopping areas.

As in previous years, because of the sheer number of winners, the awards were given out over the course of three evenings and three ceremonies from Friday, 12 December to Sunday, 14 December. The opening night saw the awards presented in the Corporate and Commercial categories, Saturday's awards were for the Residential and Urban Planning categories, and the final night recognized those in the Institutional category. Maitland Street Car Park made history by being the first structure to win its architect two awards in the same year: one in the Urban Planning category and the top honour, Most Innovative Design of the Year.