American Hardwood Export Council sponsors World Architecture Festival's wood excellence prize, to be awarded for first time on Oct. 3 in Marina Bay Sands, Singapore; organizers say any type of project featuring wood as an integral part can be entered

Wendy Lisney

LONDON , June 6, 2014 (press release) – The World Architecture Festival (WAF) has announced that this year’s WAF awards programme will feature a Wood Excellence Prize for the first time. Sponsored by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), any type of project can be entered, the only criteria is that wood is an integral part of the project.

Entry into the prize is free and if shortlisted, the designers or architects responsible will be invited to present their project to the prize judges live at the festival. The prize winner will be announced at the WAF awards ceremony on Friday 3 October 2014.

Architect, designer and champion of wood in architecture, Matteo Thun, will chair the jury for the Wood Excellence Prize.

Matteo Thun comments: "Wood, as a renewable resource material, is indispensable in architecture and design. Our daily challenge is to achieve projects and products that are sustainable, of timeless beauty, pure and simple, but at the same time technically and environmentally innovative. The new Wood Excellence Prize will reinforce this intention and I am very pleased to be involved in this very prestigious event."

David Venables, European Director of the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) comments: “As one of the most globally recognised promotion campaigns for wood, it makes perfect sense for AHEC to be collaborating with the World Architecture Festival to create a new award for design excellence in wood. Wood is one of the world’s truly sustainable natural materials and we have innovative industries around the world that work with it, but without the creativity and inspiration of the international design community we will never realise its full potential."

The WAF awards sit at the heart of the festival, and will see practices from around the world compete across 28 individual award categories for global recognition. Competing across three category groups of completed buildings, landscape projects and future projects, previous WAF award entrants have ranged from renowned global architectural firms to small local practices. Architects of every shortlisted project are invited to attend the festival to give a live presentation to a panel of judges, asserting their case for why their project should win. The winners of each category are put forward to compete for the coveted World Building of the Year award, presided over by the festival’s ‘super-jury’, with the presentation of the award being the culmination of WAF 2014.

For more information visit: www.worldarchitecturefestival.com

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