INTBAU Architecture Challenge Winners Announced

Magdalena Garbarczyk, Mathew Hay and Min Hall of ‘Strawlines’ and Laia Gemma Garcia Fernandez and Carlos Bergillos Soler from Un Refugio Colectivo have been jointly awarded first prize in the INTBAU Architecture Challenge. The Strawlines team are awarded for their housing proposal for Te Waipounamu, New Zealand. Laia Gemma Garcia Fernandez and Carlos Bergillos Soler are recognised for their participatory women’s shelter in Bafatá, Guiné-Bissau.

Gabriel Banks and Lea Hirschmann are second prize winners for their housing solutions for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. They share second prize with Abhishek Chandarana, who developed a school proposal for Ras Al Khaimah, UAE.

The international jury, consisting of Farrokh Derakhshani, Yasmeen Lari, Alireza Sagharchi and Marcel Vellinga, awarded both first prize teams £3,000, and both second prize teams £1,000.

Five further projects receive commendations and will be exhibited online alongside the winners from an initial pool of submissions from 21 countries.

The jury selected entries that demonstrated a deep understanding of local building traditions, and showed how these could be adapted, advanced and replicated to meet community needs. Participants had to demonstrate a keen knowledge of material palette, provenance and the practicalities of construction relevant to their chosen location.

The joint winners demonstrate two very different, very local solutions to the same global challenge of a lack of suitable housing. The teams in New Zealand and Guiné-Bissau showed significant knowledge of their chosen context, its climate and building traditions, appropriate materials, and, crucially, the needs of the local communities. Equally, the second prize-winning designs for the UAE and Ethiopia are both excellent examples of the learning from and innovative adaptation of traditional forms and techniques, intended to bring together local people in a self-sufficient co-building strategy.

On the winning and commended schemes, jury chair Alireza Sagharchi commented, “the jury was particularly impressed by the entries which responded specifically to context, whether this was the availability of local materials, or the state of local knowledge and skill in the