Emerging Architecture: The ar+d awards 2001 received an astonishing number of entries from more than 60 countries. The range of ideas and invention is stronger than ever. (Comment).

This is the third year of the ar+d awards, and the results show that we were right to found a way of recognizing emerging talent with an award for built work. (1) This year we had more than 700 entries from all over the world (2) and the jury (3) had to struggle to get the award winners and commended schemes down to a reasonable number. We are most grateful to our colleagues d line, the distinguished Danish architectural ironmongery firm, for helping make the award available again.

We were overwhelmed with talent from countries as different as Serbia and Singapore, Peru and Portugal, Japan and Jamaica, Uruguay and the Ukraine. Without doubt, the quality of this time's entries was better than that of the previous two years. There was such a range of ideas, such a variety of invention, that we were hard put to make a short list. And in the end, we failed because we had many more prizewinners and highly commended schemes than in the previous two years. A splendid result.

The search for tenderness

We had great difficulty in deciding which of the many excellent works should be in what category. In the end, we decided to make two kinds of prizewinners, and gave four of the eight distinctions. All the prizewinners share the [pounds sterling]10 000 premium, so that they each get [pounds sterling]1250. The authors of the 18 commended schemes receive no money, though we publish them here, as we do the winners, with great pleasure.

This year's jury was entirely new, (4) and discussions were sometimes extremely vigorous. But we were a very happy group, often crawling over the floor (5) disagreeing, yet in the end united in our decisions. As usual, one of the criteria was ecological appropriateness. Another was response to site. Another, obviously, of command of technology and construction. But above all, there was a search for human tenderness: in handling of places, and our relationship (personal or communal) to the world - natural or artefactual. We were all concerned with the notion of human beings in space, time, temperature and transition: the way in which everyone feels through all the senses about human-made volumes and forms. It was a hard task because we were faced by only two A2 boards for each scheme. We were not looking for powerful images or flashy gestures. But we could all read drawings and words, as well as being able to look at photographs, and I believe that the results show an amazing range of ingenuity and sensitivity .

Poetic interactions

One of the most fascinating perceptions we gained was of the extraordinary understanding of some young Japanese architects for the poetic possibilities of interaction between ourselves and the planet we live on. See for instance Taiko Shono's very strange cross between landscape and a musical instrument played by the sea (p40). Nothing like this has ever been invented before. It combines a thorough understanding of the possibilities of modern technologically produced materials and an atavistic understanding of our sensual relationship to the smell, sight and sounds of the ocean. See also Ryo Yamada's installation at Kumamoto (p70) where the natural forest is framed and focused by portals made out of its very substance.

We were very pleased to celebrate entries from some of the poorest places, as well as the richest. I was astonished to find that Jae Cha (p46) had won another prize, after her stunning church in Urubo, Bolivia was honoured last year and subsequently published all over the world. Again, cha has seized the chance of working with an impoverished group of people in a developing country, this time, Honduras, and using appropriate technology she has made a place that shimmers with numinous light. In Europe, Thomas Forsthuber has built a centre for the deprived youth of Salzburg (p64) which shows remarkable human and formal invention. In Korea, Byungsoo Cho Architects with Helen Park have made a village for the mentally handicapped (p76) which offers stability, security and stimulation to people who are often t lie most impoverished and unhappy in society.

Rites of passage

At the other end of the economic scale, we recognized the excellent Biosphere and flower pavilion by Barkow Leibinger Architeckten in Potsdam (p48), and the new organization of the heart of Namur in Belgium by Atelier 4D (p58). Here are two contributions to revitalizing rich cities. They use technology with great sensitivity to enhance daily life and connect urban elements dissected and destroyed by the hard-hearted army and civil--engineer driven functionalism of the '60s and '70s.

Tenderness implies an understanding of death, and all our responses to it. Two buildings concerned with the dead, and our feelings about them have been recognized. The very ingenious mortuary in Leon by BAAS (p43) makes what could have been a municipal and dreary institution in the middle of an apparently tin reconstructed and growing '60s--inspired housing estate into a place of calm and dignity by floating a pool on top, and most cleverly introducing daylight into what is essentially an underground building. The funerary complex at Munich--Riem (p56) by Andreas Meck and Stephan Koppel is a distinguished addition to the modern northern European tradition of buildings that honour rites of passage with quiteness and thoughtfulness.

The possibilities of exploiting technology for enhancing urban life were explored in many schemes, notably TEN Arquitectos, whose conversion of a block of flats in central Mexico City into a hotel (p52) shows great command of both glass techniques and environmental control. In a completely different way, Silja Tillner has picked up the opportunities offered by contemporary structures and fabrics to make a new physical and social dimension to Vienna's Town Hall and enjoyment of the city (p55). From Japan, we have two projects, the little restaurant at Kawasaki--shi by Naya Architects (p63) and the scheme for affordable housing at Kamishinjo by Coelacanth & Associates (p66) that offers tenants a great deal of flexibility. Both these schemes in different ways show the immense potential of industrialized building components manipulated with sensitive architectural imagination.

The importance of diversity

I hope that some of the excitement and wonder that the jury felt can he sensed in these pages. And I hope that they show something of the great diversity of the entries: from cities to furniture, urban sites to the wildest countryside, renovation to innovation. I was very pleased that Cha (p46) was honoured again this year, but it was perhaps even more cheering to be able to find so many new talents.

The jury met after 11 September, so the work we celebrate is perhaps a portrait d)l times past. Yet it offers much hope. All the work shown in the issue speaks of kindness, not violence. All shows how the world can get better for us to live in. And all shows invention and pleasure in construction; in our happiest moments, we should he able to float to the sunny sky on Worapan Klampaiboon's magic balloon-powered carpets (p98).