Just what is it that makes this year’s winners so different, so appealing? Jurors Lise Anne Couture, AIA, Nataly Gattegno, Sasa Radulovic, and Marcelo Spina, Intl. Assoc. AIA, focused on innovation, but not for its own sake. Out of more than 150 submissions, the jurors recognized 10 projects, each of them “able to achieve its potential,” as Couture put it. More specifically, what won over the jury was a holistic approach to design with an eye toward practical realization.

The winners:

First Award
Tianjin EcoCity Ecology and Planning Museums 
Steven Holl Architects
Tianjin, China

Awards
Kaohsiung Port Terminal
RUR Architecture
Kaohsiung, Taiwan

National Music Centre of Canada
Allied Works Architecture
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Citations
Liverpool Department Store - Insurgentes
Rojkind Arquitectos
Mexico City

Faculty of Architecture, Building & Planning, University of Melbourne
John Wardle Architects and NADAAA in collaboration
Melbourne, Australia

Soccer Centre at St. Michel Environmental Complex
Saucier + Perrotte Architectes / Hughes Condon Marler Architects
Montreal

The Broad
Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler
Los Angeles

Honorable Mentions
Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario
The University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Fayetteville, Ark.

TBA 21
Xefirotarch / Hernan Diaz Alonso
Patagonia, Argentina

Albuquerque Rail Yards Master Plan
Eric Owen Moss Architects
Albuquerque, N.M.

Jury

Nataly Gattegno
Gattegno received her M.Arch. from Princeton University. She is co-founder and managing partner at Future Cities Lab, a San Francisco–based firm focused on experimental design. In addition to being an associate professor of architecture at the California College of the Arts, Gattegno is also chair of the school’s graduate program in architecture.

Marcelo Spina, Intl. Assoc. AIA
Spina earned his M.Arch. from Columbia University before working with Reiser+Umemoto and Keller Easterling in New York. He has since migrated to Los Angeles and opened his own firm, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, with partner Georgina Huljich. He now teaches graduate studios and seminars at the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Lise Anne Couture, AIA
Couture earned her M.Arch. from Yale University. She is a managing partner of Asymptote Architecture, the New York–based firm that she co-founded with Hani Rashid, and currently she serves as associate professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.

Sasa Radulovic
Radulovic received his M.Arch. at the University of Manitoba, and is co-founder of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada–based 5468796 Architecture with Johanna Hurme. The firm collaborated with designer Jae-Sung Chon on the Canadian pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.