World Architecture Awards 10+5+X Submissions

Cities are physical structures, continually growing and evolving. In cities that experience high levels of migration due to natural disasters and socioeconomic diversity, the demand for housing consistently rises. Accordingly, a new residential development encourages the formation of a new community. This project aims to bring together various family types, developing a community spirit and place attachment. Moreover, viewing the project’s initial impact on its silhouette as a structure, with site entrances placed across from each other on the same street, allows the feel “arrival home” experience begins along the street.
The site's sloped terrain allows the buildings to orient toward the surrounding forest views, ensuring that blocks do not obstruct each other’s facades. The location of the buildings creates a central courtyard designed for relaxation, entertainment, and leisure activities, where the landscape featuring urban furniture and water elements integrates the city’s natural elements into residential life. The plazas and reflection pools between the blocks create sensual experiences that enable all users to interact with the design. Green spaces at various levels and grass hills create activities like reading and socializing while also offering areas for recreation and children’s play.

In landscape design, the spatial arrangement of structures and compositional elements have been considered. In seasonal transitions, elements of color, texture, fragrance, and aesthetics are designed to create a visual impact, with the intent of appealing to each resident through the landscape features. The planned road around the blocks separates social life from traffic, also ensuring safety for children. An uninterrupted walking path is integrated into the landscape to support physical activities. The social facilities attached to the residential units, featuring cinema and activity rooms, further strengthen neighborhood connections.

Designed to serve both individual lifestyles and the broader community “Beytepe Residences” accommodates diverse family sizes and meets the demands of social life, aiming to strengthen the connection between people and nature.


Site Area: 20717,62 m²
Gross Floor Area (GFA): 73803,54 m²
Net Floor Area (NFA): 41435,24 m²
Number of Floors: 30
Orçun Ersan, Sedef Yıldız, Berkay Ünal, Gökçe Yıldız, Nazlı Zeynep Köse, Başak İpek, Melis Ezgi Uygun, İrem Göktaş, Zeynep Akkoyunlu

Inspired by an experimental process of inflating and deflating a balloon to explore form and movement, the Art Omi Design Gallery reinterprets kinetic gestures into architectural space. The design transitions from a linear system of tensioned strings to a centralized spherical volume, carved out and preserved as the main exhibition space and public entrance. This void becomes the anchor of spatial experience, emphasizing a fluid internal circulation that guides visitors across the site.

A pivoting circulation path runs from west to east, generating a continuous sequence of gallery spaces. Flanking this core are two studio wings that host art workshops and public programs, while the journey culminates in an immersive lakeside experience. The artist studios are suspended above in a series of smaller circular volumes that appear to hover—echoing the floating sensation captured in the original folly experiment.

The curved concrete structure is informed by a conceptual yarn grid developed through balloon deflation studies. As the balloon contracts, the attached strings shift in shape and position, forming a responsive, landscape-integrated framework. The building retains this language through its curvilinear roof and spatial transitions. Material choices reinforce this transformation: warm wood-lined interiors contrast with the cool, monolithic concrete shell, offering diverse sensory experiences as visitors move through the space.

More than a gallery, this project is an architectural meditation on lightness, movement, and material memory—transforming a conceptual folly into a grounded cultural landmark.


Type: Art Omi Culture & Art Museum
Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Client: World travelers to Art Omi Park
Size: 12000ft²
Daria Yang DU

Dracula Land Arena is a multifunctional venue designed for flexibility, precision and performance. The project responds to the growing need for urban infrastructure that can host large-scale events in one coherent architectural system. Sports, concerts and digital competitions can all take place within the same spatial framework, without compromising visibility, acoustics or circulation.

The form follows a radial geometry that organizes audience, athletes, media and logistics on distinct routes. Each path operates independently, ensuring safety and clear movement at all times. The arena accommodates 22,500 visitors with compact tiers, providing direct sight lines to the central field. The lower levels contain training, service and technical areas, while upper levels integrate food zones, lounges and control rooms.

The envelope uses glass and aluminum layers to filter light and maintain thermal balance. The roof combines steel trusses, lighting grids and acoustic panels, forming a unified technical shell that supports quick event transformation. Retractable seating and mobile partitions allow rapid reconfiguration of the space.

Green terraces and observation decks extend the arena’s public role. Controlled ventilation, water reuse and energy-efficient lighting ensure sustainable operation. Each component was designed for clarity and purpose, resulting in a system that performs under pressure and adapts to change.

Dracula Land Arena expresses a pragmatic architectural vision built on movement, light and human experience.

An architectural vision by Razvan Barsan Partners.

Project name: Dracula Land Arena
Project type: Sports and cultural arena
Location: Brașov, Romania
Site area: 100,000 sqm
Built area: 60,000 sqm
Seating capacity: 22,500
Structure: Reinforced concrete and steel frame
Envelope materials: Glass and aluminum panels
Roof system: Integrated structural grid with acoustic and lighting equipment
Sustainability features: Natural ventilation, rainwater reuse, energy-efficient lighting
Parking: Approx. 1,200 spaces
Project status: Concept / Designed
Design team: Răzvan Bârsan Partners
Project year: 2024
arch. Razvan Barsan
arch. Stefan Sterian

"Everything we have contemplated in this house ultimately returns to its context — to the land it stands on, to the sun that shines upon it, to the breeze that passes through it, and to the human being who inhabits it."

Through studying Oman, and specifically the city of Muscat, one realizes that despite all the elements this society has been affected by the contemporary world, many of its cultural and social values remain deeply preserved. An exploration of contemporary Omani architecture—particularly residential architecture—reveals that the spatial diagram of dwelling in this city is often a reproduction of a modernist diagram that has spread globally. Consequently, there exists a contradiction between the lifestyle of the people and the architectural container that defines it. We are witnessing an architecture that addresses the socio-cultural needs of its users merely through surface treatments and ornamentation.
This raises an essential question:
How can we envision a model of dwelling in Oman that genuinely responds to the needs of the contemporary Omani man?
We approached this house through three interrelated layers: Climate, Culture, and Life.


1. Climate
Situated in a hot climate, the design strategy departed from the conventionally compact massing typical of Muscat’s contemporary architecture. Instead, we proposed a porous massing, allowing the intense sunlight to be filtered through a network of courtyards and layered envelopes, softly reaching the interior spaces and lending them a timeless, poetic quality.
By interweaving mass and void, we sought to draw the sea breeze into the house, creating an internal current of air—a spatial artery of life that animates the dwelling.

2. Culture
At the outset, by studying the region’s traditional architecture, we observed how cultural structures once manifested spatially through introversion, hierarchy, and privacy. A closer look at contemporary Omani architecture, however, revealed an absence of spatial responses to these cultural dimensions. Therefore, we aimed to reintroduce these qualities by designing with introversion, spatial hierarchy, layered sequencing, and a secondary skin, crafting an architecture that meaningfully resonates with the user’s cultural and traditional needs.

3. Life
If we consider architecture as a vessel for living, then that vessel must be responsive to its inhabitants’ evolving needs—needs that transform over time as people and lifestyles change; yet structure of architecture remains static and rigid. We explored how a house might enable its user not merely to consume space but to act within it—to participate in the ongoing organization of their dwelling.
The spatial organization of the house is structured across three levels of privacy—public, semi-private, and private—distributed respectively across the ground floor, first floor, and roof terrace. By situating service and wet areas within fixed spatial envelopes and introducing raised floors, we created opportunities for the users to actively reconfigure their living environment based on their needs. In essence, we did not design predefined spaces labeled as “bedroom,” “living room,” or “kitchen.” Instead, we designed a possibility within which modes of living could unfold.


In this house, we tried to create a flexible space by using a raised floor so that the user can organize the space according to their needs. Also, the main material of this house is exposed concrete, which makes it belong to the present time and makes it more beautiful. We also tried to have appropriate thermal comfort and privacy for these spaces by using portable shades in the interior architecture.
Maryam Mahdavieh Studio Implicit Space Studio

Architects: Maryam Mahdavieh, Mostafa Sadeghi
Design Team: Parisa Rasaie, Homa Salimi

Physical Model: Parisa Rasaie
Presentation: Mostafa Sadeghi, Parisa Rasaie, Parinaz Torkian
Visualization: Mohammad Salehi

The lakeside area of Lan Che (≈24 ha) in Chi Linh, Hai Duong is currently facing two parallel pressures. On the one hand, rapid urbanization and spontaneous tourism development are bringing in non-contextual building types that level the terrain and blur the traditional Northern Vietnamese village structure—axis, courtyard, alley, garden, sloped roof, deep veranda, stone walls and fruit gardens—resulting in a loss of rural/lakeside identity. On the other hand, forest clearance and conversion of forest land to agriculture have reduced native tree cover, broken ecological corridors around the lake, destabilized the microclimate, and exposed the lake ecosystem to siltation and pollution. In this situation, the project is framed as a response: to develop tourism and hospitality without sacrificing the ecosystem and local cultural memory.

The project is built on two main ideas. First, transforming the traditional village and vernacular architecture into a hospitality layout while preserving identity: the fishbone village structure is reinterpreted as a central landscape–water axis; the village community core becomes the arrival, restaurant and event courtyard; the small village alleys become permeable walkways leading guests to private lodging clusters. Second, re-establishing the native ecosystem: the whole site is planted in a 3-canopy forest model with green corridors along the water to reconnect restored forest to the lake; hardy native species are used for easy establishment; water is reorganized into a retention pond and bio-swale/wetland system so it both cools the site and feeds aquatic vegetation. Together, these two ideas make the project “read” like a village but “operate” like a resort.

The project is human-centred because it does more than create a tourist destination—it repairs damaged landscape and culture. Restoring forest and the lakeside ecosystem brings back habitats for native species and improves the local microclimate. Keeping and re-expressing the village structure mitigates the impact of urbanization on rural identity, proving that development does not have to erase memory. Ecological trails, plant ID signage, and the preserved lychee/fruit gardens create a layer of environmental and cultural education for visitors. Passive microclimate design and rainwater collection/reuse help save energy and water, aligning with sustainability goals. Because it relies on local materials, plants and labour, the model can be replicated, it creates economic opportunities for the community, and it becomes a vehicle to showcase Hai Duong’s local culture.

What makes the project distinctive is that ecological solutions are not add-ons; they are the design structure itself. The rainwater harvesting – retention pond – ecological wetland system turns technical infrastructure into a living landscape, retains water on site and irrigates the restored forest. The water/garden wind corridor running east–west uses the lake as a “wind duct” to bring cool air deep into the site, delivering a passive microclimate rarely seen in northern Vietnamese lakeside resorts. Local materials enhanced by simple technology—stone, earth, fired brick, bamboo, plantation timber—are upgraded with concealed joints and protective finishes to achieve larger spans while keeping a tactile, vernacular character. Most importantly, the project reworks traditional spatial logic for tourism: instead of copying an old house, it re-narrates the village sequence (core – alley – garden – lake) as a layered hospitality experience, making it legible for local users.


Project Type: Hospitality
Location: Hai Duong, Vietnam
Site Area: 42000m2 (240000m2 lake)
Construction area: 3800m2

Architecture Firm: NaP architects
Lead Architect: Nguyen Viet Anh, Pham Ngoc Son
Design Team: Trinh Dang Huy, Nguyen Thien Thao, Nguyen Hoai Linh