The Architecture Drawing Prize

John Hill

18. October 2018

Overall Winner: The Samsara of Building No.42 on Dirty Street by Li Han

The state of drawing in architecture is strong, if the winners of the second annual Architecture Drawing Prize are any indication. Winners and commendations have been chosen in three categories: Digital, Hand-drawn, and Hybrid.

An Overall Winner was selected from the winners in three categories: The Samsara of Building No. 42 on Dirty Street by Li Han, a founder partner of, fittingly, Drawing Architecture Studio in Beijing. Made up of four drawings (two shown here), the project is a visual narrative of a building in Beijing being converted from residential to commercial and back to residential again between 2008 and 2017. The axonometric drawings are dense with lines, color, and activity, both within the realm of the building and the city surrounding it. The judges of the 2018 Prize described the drawings' qualities well:

This drawing challenges preconceptions of digital presentation. It tells hundreds of stories over nine years in which architecture, cities and people's lives change. It's important for all architects to consider the life of buildings over the course of time. The drawing captures the energy of a project. You can feel the speed of the city and hear the noise. It's a modern day Archigram drawing but also a step into the future, which is why it's an overall winner.

The winning, highly commended, and shortlisted projects are listed below, with winners highlighted with images. All of the projects can be seen on The Architecture Drawing Prize website. The Architecture Drawing Prize 2018 is part of the World Architecture Festival (WAF) and has been carried out with the architecture practice Make and Sir John Soane's Museum. The winners and shortlisted drawings are on display at Sir John Soane's Museum in London until 2018, with the winners exhibited at WAF in Amsterdam from November 28th to 30th.

Digital

Overall Winner & Category Winner:
Li Han, The Samsara of Building No.42 on Dirty Street, 2017

Highly Commended:
Juan Alberto Arjona Belmonte, The Tower of Memory: the tower and the landscape, 2018
Daisy Ames, Other Medians: Perceivable Future, 2018

Shortlist:
Rishabh Khurana, [H]oax [A]ssemblies: Coherent Ontology, 2016
Viktor Gekker, [Re] Coding Athens in a ‘Festival of Time’: Archive of Temporality, 2017

Overall Winner and Digital Winner: The Samsara of Building No.42 on Dirty Street by Li Han

Hand-Drawn

Category Winner:
Carlijn Kingma, The Babylonian Tower of Modernity, 2017

Highly Commended:
Sarmad Suhail, Embassy Nation, 2017

Shortlist:
Muneeb Ali Khan, Art Recording House, Tarusa, Russia: Elevations of Ambiguity, 2018
Simon Kalajdjiev, Chuo Ward, Tokyo, 2017
Divakara Murthy V, Hiranyagarba, 2018

Hand-Drawn Winner: The Babylonian Tower of Modernity by Carlijn Kingma

Hybrid

Category Winner:
Lukas Göbl, City of Beautiful Bodies, 2016

Highly Commended:
Yue Ma, American Dream or American Nightmare: 2020, 2050, 2070, 2018
Vincent Perron, 6 Moments: Meaning through Repetition, 2018

Shortlist:
Reza Aliabadi, Spatial Cocktails (Day & Night), 2018
Roberto Boettger, Reconciling Infrastructural Artefacts: Section, 2017
Luke Erickson, Calendar House, 2018