2020 WIN Awards: interiors winners

Cultural venues

Gold:

Models in Model by Wutopia Lab

This project is the first museum for architectural models in China.

The chief designer decided to make this museum a mega-model of a future city and all included models become a part of the city merging their prophecies into one, which, in the perspective of the architect, is the Last Redoubt of the future city.

Construction of Invisible Structures: a total of 5,653 steel pipes were used to build the vertical city of Last Redoubt. Wutopia Lab made structural and decorative pillars uniform in size and visual impression, to deliberately weaken the existence of the structures. These continuing steel pipes together form a rhythm and compose interfaces that partition different areas in the vertical city.

Silver:

Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum by Atelier Alter Architects

The Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum sites at the office headquarter of a stone manufacture in Xiamen, a coastal city in Southern China. Over the years of stone mining, the manufacture has established a private archaeological team and discovered numerous fossils, from insect amber to dinosaur egg. The manufacture decides to dedicate the atrium along with the first and second floors of the headquarter and convert it to a fossil museum to house their archaeological finds. The museum gives a new definition to industry. It presents a new model for manufacture to upgrade to an “industry + culture” mode.

The project transforms the principal of stone dissection, which is specific to stone mining, into a spatial division mechanism, to cut the cubical space accordingly. Besides that, the geometric logic of crystal is also introduced as a way to tight the irregular spatial parts together. The orthogonal office space is transformed into a mysterious triangulated space. As the heavy mass floating up, the anti-gravity space places the audience in an unknown space seemly coming straight from a Sci-fi film.

Bronze:

The Macallan Visitor Experience by Atelier Brueckner GmbH

Conceived as a cultural venue and visitor experience, the home of one of the world's most famous single malt whiskies lies at the foot of the Scottish Highlands, at Craigellachie. Here, a new light-flooded distillery building by the architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has been embedded in the landscape. Up to 15,000 sq m are dedicated to pre-booked guided tours. They include a brand wall to welcome the visitors and a tasting area as well as the 'Cave Privée' containing 150 original barrels staged with light.

The visitor routing leads through the spectacular production hall, which is impressive in terms of architecture and content. A persuasive experience of The Macallan Brand is provided.

Learning

Gold:

The Schoolhouse by Rapt Studio

The Google School for Leaders, a unique initiative within Google, helps executives develop not just the skill sets but the mindsets needed to lead effectively in the 21st century.

Rapt Studio worked with The School to develop an experience framework for a new way of learning that’s tailored to each individual leader. As part of this effort, The Schoolhouse was born - a flexible, adaptable, and customizable space designed for in-person learning that shifts how participants engage. Located at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, The Schoolhouse draws company leaders from around the world for classes, workshops, and training.

Silver:

Academy Of Global Competency by Tom Mark Henry

A multifaceted space for year 9 and 10 students of Knox Grammar School, located in Sydney's Upper North Shore. Designed by Tom Mark Henry and constructed by The Rohrig Group with flexibility and innovation front and centre, enabling students to exceed their potential.

The functionality and diversity of the space echo the designs key theme of giving agency over the space to the students whilst setting them up for their futures and entry into the working environment, with a strong student-lead focus, one that is highly flexible and easily adaptable in order to future proof against changing student and teacher needs. The space needed to be both functional and adaptable, seeing furniture choices carefully considered, selecting pieces which are easily moveable where necessary to open up sections of the space. The durability of such pieces along with selected finishes and materials were also key to the design, ensuring longevity.

Bronze:

Dr. George Yee Laboratory of Anatomical Sciences by Stantec Architecture Ltd

The Department of Human Anatomy was established in 1883 at the University of Manitoba. As part of the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, the Laboratory of Anatomical Sciences supports five disciplines (Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Rehabilitation Sciences) by providing a facility for undergraduate and graduate students to undertake anatomical studies, connecting the study of anatomy with clinical practice, advancing knowledge and skills through collaboration for students, residents, and practicing professionals. Located in an under ventilated, poorly lit, and dilapidated basement space, the laboratory had not seen upgrades since opening in 1975.

The University brief was to revitalize the Laboratory as a leading education and research centre in Canada. With a fundamental repurposing of the space, the project was to include advanced technologies accommodating current learning styles, remote instruction, and significant ventilation, lighting, and infrastructure upgrades.

Experiential design

Gold:

Yunshan Art Museum by CROX

Simian Mountain located on the distinctive Danxia landforms, assisted by the surrounding vegetation, composes a special, though natural, heart-shaped waterfall.

The flowing waterscape welcoming visitors with its dynamic mirroring surface with the new media and directing people to come into this new space.

Sunlight penetrates the slanting roof through the side windows, interplaying the falling Chinese characters and calligraphy installation to form the extraordinary “love waterfall.” The ground, coated with stainless steel, interacts with the romantic ancient poems, delivers an immersive feeling that inspires imaginations.

Silver:

Shin Kong Place Departmental Store by Studio Illumine & Light IQ

This unique and extravagant retail environment was intended to disrupt the way we experience luxury retail. Gentle Monster and Sybarite were engaged to design a futuristic utopia to showcase global luxury brands.

The team from Light IQ & Studio Illumine were challenged to design to a programme of 12 months from concept to completion and full coordination with the teams in Beijing.

Lighting design lead by Light IQ, had to be innovative but practical and flexible as the retail avenues are intended to change content every four months.

Bronze:

Times Garden by W.DESIGN

When visiting, it goes from outdoor to indoor, and from indoor to outdoor, forming a sensory switch. Sometimes the long corridor is deliberately narrowed and elongated, and sometimes the square pavilion is suddenly enlightened. There is a water court outside the square pavilion, which is the landscape implication of China's miniature universe. The closed and open space rhythm, as well as the deliberate narrowing and farthening of the line of sight, are the quintessence of the Chinese garden.

The design takes the Chinese garden as the design clue, organizing three boxes in series with long corridors, surrounded by the central water court in the middle, and the spatial rhythm is relaxed. Moreover it ingeniously combines western modern architectural language and oriental garden experience.

Lighting projects

Gold:

TongLu Conrad by Beijing PRO Lighting Design Co., Ltd

In any way, the hotel, situated on the other side of the river, is the most standard resort hotel, with a verdant landscape on the other side.Seen from the top, the buildings standing in the distribution of 5 height difference of the mountain looks like a medieval town hidden among the trees.

And an idea of illumination design appears, which is the sample of architectural lighting - the Lake Santorini.

We analyzed the features of Santorini’s nocturnal scene and found that light is most abundant in the recesses, creating an unusually rich variety of light and shade as the buildings stack up. Therefore, in this project, we placed the light mostly in the recesses of the building or on the inside of the building, so that the main structural feature of the building can be reflected, while the exterior and the surface are in shadow.

Silver:

Muh Shoou Xixi by Beijing PRO Lighting Design Co., Ltd Muh Shoou Xixi - Beijing PRO Lighting Design Co., Ltd

Muh Shoou Xixi Resort Hotel covers an area of 7,000 sq m with a landscape area of 36,000 sq m. It is located in Xixi wetland of Hangzhou.

Five adjacent buildings are reconstructed from the buildings left behind there. Lighting design was involved at the beginning of this project. The architecture and landscape were built relating to the mountains and rivers, and the hotel's demand for lighting was the same. On the basis requirement, the needs of lighting, the "natural" feeling was restored to the greatest extent, which was the soul of lighting design throughout all stages of the project.

Bronze:

Glass Library by Licht. Associates Limited

In order to fulfill the dual goals, as a sales office and later as a library. The common key point is coziness: a place which one will lingers. The fixtures and furnishings are from the physical world, while mood and tone will dive deep to tickle our soul. The magic spell for this connection is light.

The external glass structure gives rise to the aesthetic issue in providing electricity for lighting, supple lighting covering the spacious and non-partitioned three split levels construction and budget constraint that banned the usage of dimming system which caused the difficulties on balanced of light intensity.