Emerging Architecture: the AR's annual survey of youthful global architectural activity manifests great diversity and invention.

Now in their seventh successive year, the AR Awards for Emerging Architecture continue to consolidate their position as the world's leading awards programme for younger architects. Conceived partly as a gentle riposte to the often overhyped gongs and prizes doled out to those who have already bagged a place on the world stage, the AR Awards recognise design talent in a generation at the beginning of their careers, still lurking shyly in the wings, as it were, rather than basking in fame's glaring spotlight. We hope that this programme will help many more of them to move centre stage.

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As in previous years, we were immensely heartened by both the quantity, quality and geographical diversity of the entries. In all there were 463 entries from 52 countries, from Chile to China, Slovenia to South Africa. Countries new to the awards programme this year included Costa Rica, Bermuda and the Reunion Islands. We are grateful to Buro Happold for their continuing loyalty and generosity, which makes possible not only the awards programme, but also supports an associated exhibition and lecture series at the RIBA. Such activities are vital in helping to broaden and enrich the debate begun in these pages. The exhibition opens on 7 December and full details of the lecture series will be published in the January issue.

This year's jury, a lively mixture of opinions and experience, included Luis Mansilla, of Madrid-based partnership Mansilla & Tunon; Annette Gigon from Swiss practice Gigon/Guyer and Sean Godsell from Melbourne, a former AR Awards winner (ARs December 2000 and 2002). It was an especial pleasure to coax former AR editor Peter Davey out of his retirement to lend his singular insight to proceedings. Current AR editor Paul Finch was chairman. Regrettably, Thom Mayne who was also due participate in the Jury at the end of September was unable to do so because of the pressure of practice commitments.

After some animated discussions, the jury agreed on three first prize-winners, who share the [pounds sterling]10 000 premium. They also made seven highly commended awards and singled out six schemes for commendation. A further eight gained honourable mentions. All are shown in this issue. Though the formal and geographic diversity makes for a pleasing visual richness, the projects are united and distinguished by their engagement with and exploration of certain crucial concerns. These include the inventive and appropriate use of materials and technology, environmental and social responsibility, placemaking, consideration of context and how to respond to often challenging sites and climates.

Responding to challenges

The three first prize-winners interpret these concerns in very different ways. Taira Nishizawa's gymnasium hall in Kumamoto prefecture (p42) draws on the main local industry of forestry to create a lyrically arboreal timber and steel space-frame structure (engineered by the Japanese division of the ever resourceful Arup). Trahan Architects' oratory in an educational campus in Louisiana (p48) had a different kind of architectural assurance distilled from a remarkably sensitive handling of space and light. Almost Japanese in the austerity of its conception and execution (jurors commented that it recalled the work of Tadao Ando, especially his famous Church of Light), the little chapel is a potent and moving embodiment of the numinous. It did, however, divide the jurors. Annette Gigon observed that without the Christian symbolism, it could be a fashionably minimal boutique, but in the end its simplicity and serenity proved enough to win the joint top award.

The third main prize-winner, a showroom by German practice FNP Architekten (p46) was applauded for its economy of thought and clarity of execution. And, of course, its sheer wit. An eighteenth-century pigsty (Saustall) is punningly and practically transformed into a showroom (Schaustall) by the simple expedient of placing a timber structure inside the original crumbling stone shell. Other projects that shared this offbeat spirit of intelligence and humour were the delightful urban balloon installation in a Vancouver alleyway by Satoshi Matsuoka and Yuki Tamara (p98) and ex-studio's riotously colourful (and beautifully pointless) Tambabox inspired by the exuberance of Senegalese textiles (p90). Barcelona-based ex-studio won a further honourable mention for an extraordinary cocoon-type tree house (p87), clearly culled from sci-fi imagination. However, jurors could not agree on whether this surreal suspended structure was seductive or simply sinister.

The notion of architecture as structure, as most convincingly developed by Taira Nishizawa's winning gymnasium, proved to be a recurring theme. K2S Architects' graceful new grandstand roof at Helsinki Olympic Stadium (p64), is an elegant and economical marriage of architecture and engineering, while Shuhei Endo's latest experiments with corrugated metal, this time for a car showroom in Nagoya, showed typical flair (p72). And there could be no greater contrast between an utterly basic, community-built bridge in Gansu province designed by the architecture department at Hong Kong's Chinese University (p66) and Thomas Heatherwick's show-off, showpiece feat of kinetic engineering at London's Padddington Basin (p56).

A sense of community

Jurors were particularly encouraged to note that many winning submissions tackled briefs for marginalised or impoverished communities. The work of the Rural Studio is well known, and a forest pavilion in the poorest county of Alabama (p80) showed that its mission triumphantly continues, but there were other surprises such as Brendeland & Kristoffersen's housing in Trondheim (p70) which provides accommodation for former squatters; Li Xiaodong's school and community centre in a remote part of China (p52) and Sou Fujimoto's humanely judged residential care unit for mental health patients in Hokkaido (p60).

The often extreme range of sites and climates prompted some intriguing responses, from the Arctic wastes of Spitzbergen, where Jarmund Vigsnaes' research centre must cope with alarmingly intense snow blizzards (p78), to the tropical latitudes of Bali, where Budi Pradono envelops a restaurant complex in a lightweight bamboo skin to filter light and air (p84). Some dull building types were also successfully reworked, such as Zechner & Zechner's boldly sculptural air traffic control tower at Vienna airport (p76) and Pool Architekten's public housing blocks on the edge of Zurich (p88), which aside from being predictably well made, have great spatial variety and generosity.

Surprisingly, since private house commissions tend to be the mainstay of many young practices, only two houses, in quite contrasting settings, were premiated. Sou Fujimoto's radical, radial urban house in Maebashi City (p86) prompts new ways of thinking about domestic life, and Pezo von Ellrichshausen's clifftop retreat on Chile's Pacific coast (p74) is a simple but powerful abstract statement (and constructed by locals using only one concrete mixer and a quartet of wheelbarrows).

As a heartening barometer of the state of youthful architectural activity around the world, there was much to admire about this year's awards programme. Compared with other similar awards, the under 45 age limit might seem like an optimistically elastic definition of young, but since only built work is eligible for consideration, the mid forties cut-off point acknowledges the length of time it takes to study, qualify and become established as a serious practising architect. No amount of seductive paper or electronic theorising can deflect or distract from the fundamental purpose of architecture which is to build; moreover to build well and to build responsibly. The winning schemes in this issue, as well as many more unpremiated and unpublished projects, all testify to this. We hope that they will be an inspiration and incentive to others to go out and do better.