Emerging Architecture: this year's AR Awards programme yielded its customary crop of invention, sensitivity and optimism.

This is the eighth annual cycle of the AR Awards for Emerging Architecture. Since 1999, the programme has celebrated and nurtured the talent of an emerging generation of architects from all over the world, and is now firmly on the radar of those under 45 striving to make their mark in professional practice. A crucial aspect of the Awards' appeal is their extraordinary and unrivalled geographical diversity. This year, 462 submissions were received from 53 countries and new country 'entrants' included Nepal, Kuwait and the Dominican Republic. Winning schemes are spread over a remarkable range of locations, from the remote Great Sandy Desert in Australia to a Copenhagen beach and a Thai forest. Other premiated projects come from Japan, Bangladesh, Brazil and Norway, among others.

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As always, the jury also reflected a lively mixture of nationalities. Chaired by AR editor Paul Finch, it comprised Benedetta Tagliabue of EMBT Architects (an Italian living and working in Spain), Christine Binswanger of Swiss practice Herzog & de Meuron, Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham (an Englishman based in Tokyo), Kim Nielsen, of Danish firm 3XNielsen and former AR editor Peter Davey (an extremely well travelled Yorkshireman). The liveliness of the jury's conversations owed much to different experiences and world views, but all were agreed on the importance of certain unshakeable assessment criteria: environmental and social responsibility, connectedness to place and appropriate use of materials and technology. Projects had to demonstrate a clear commitment to improving human life and should not merely be preoccupied with form and the simplistic notion of architecture as an autonomous art.

Before we consider the winners, a quick word from our sponsors who, like the jury, embody an enlightened international outlook. This year the award has attracted two new supporters in the form of German furniture manufacturer Wilkhahn and American company Interface Flor, both of whom manifest an admirable commitment to developing ways of making products and manufacturing processes more sustainable. In welcoming these new sponsors we are also enduringly grateful to the distinguished engineers Buro Happold, who celebrated their 30th anniversary earlier this year, for their loyalty and generosity which makes possible not only the awards programme, but also an associated exhibition and series of lectures at the RIBA. Such estimable activities help to spread the Emerging Architecture gospel and carry on the debate begun in these pages. The exhibition opens on 1 December and full details of the spring lecture series can be found in the forthcoming-January issue. Following much animated discourse and a convivial lunch, the jury decided on three first prizewinners who share a prize fund newly increased this year to [pounds sterling]15000. They also made seven highly commended awards and selected a further 16 projects for honourable mentions. All are shown in this issue.

Concern for community

Of the three winning schemes, two were broadly concerned with community--a centre for the treatment of disturbed young people in Hokkaido by Sou Fujimoto Architects (p46) and a school in Bangladesh, by Anna Heringer and Eike Roswag (p40)--but the differences in context and the societies they serve, from prosperous, modern Japan to impoverished, underdeveloped Bangladesh, could not be greater. Though the architecture responded accordingly--the Hokkaido project is a sophisticated exercise in geometrical disposition in order to maximise the provision of personal space, the Bangladesh school an admirable and moving example of how to combine robust, simple technology with local traditions of making and building--in some ways they are two sides of the same coin. One is concerned with healing in an internalised environment (Sou Fujimoto was premiated in last year's awards for a residential care unit for mental health patients) and the other with activating and sustaining a celebratory and public approach to learning in a marginalised community. Both are also examples of architecture transcending programme, budget and fashion to connect more deeply with the human condition.

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The third winner, an eye-catching bridge across Lake Austin in Texas by Miro Rivera Architects (p44), has an altogether lighter touch. Modest materials (mainly steel reinforcing bars) are employed to create a highly poetic structure that mimics and merges with nature. This approach--responsive and respectful but with its own distinct architectural integrity--found an echo in other projects, such as a dramatic viewing platform in a Norwegian fjord by Todd Saunders and Tommie Wilhelmsen (p86) and the remarkable Windshape by nArchitects (p70), an elaborate tensile construction that billows lightly above the roofscape of Lacoste.

For obvious reasons, it is usually harder for younger architects to get the chance to tackle projects of substantial scale. So it was particularly pleasing when projects could be seen to have progressed beyond the familiar inventory of follies, houses and noodle bars which, though delightful, tend to dominate submissions. Schemes such as Emre Arolat's new airport terminal for Dalaman (Turkey's third largest airport) (p52) and +Arch's new headquarters and showroom for Dolce & Gabbana in Milan (p90) were appropriately ambitious in scale and confident in execution. Both showed their young designers more than capable of thinking through the requirements for very large, complex projects.

However, this is not to disparage the imaginative array of houses that caught the jury's eye, proof that the small private residence is still an important testbed for experimentation and the consolidation of ideas. Japan is still a rich source of invention in this regard; Yuko Nayagama's Hill House (p50) inventively maximises its cramped urban site, while Loco Architects explore the potential of rammed earth (currently prohibited by Japanese building codes) in a project for prototypical, sustainable dwelling (p60). Closer to home in Dublin, Boyd Cody's addition to the end of a historic terrace was a skilled and thoughtful essay in contextuality.

Larger residential projects were also well represented with WOHA Architects' apartments and mixed-use block (p82)--a dense, complex reinterpretation of Singapore's traditional shophouses--and Dorte Mandrup's resourceful conversion of a redundant water tower into flats (p80). The notion of using existing structures as a framework for addition, insertion or colonisation was further explored in Naoto Yamakuma's flower shop ingeniously slotted into a car park in Osaka (p89) and Xavier Font's bold restoration of a Catalan bridge destroyed during the Peninsular War (p58). But perhaps the most intriguing of these was the Topographical Amnesias project in Belo Horizonte by Vazio S/A (p66), in which the concrete undercrofts of the city's buildings are transformed into modern hanging gardens and performance spaces.

This sense of creative civitas found resonance in other public projects, such as the pier-cum-lido in Kastrup by White Architekter (p76), a generously conceived, free facility to encourage communal recreation, and Iredale Pedersen Hook's community centre for the Walmajarri people on the edge of Australia's Great Sandy Desert, which addressed challenging issues of social and environmental responsibility (p72). And in the Ligurian town of Santo Stefano al Mare, architects Aldo Amoretti, Marco Calvi and Giancarlo Ranalli sensitively reinterpreted the traditions of the Catholic necroplis to create a dignified extension to an existing cemetery.

Pushing boundaries

On a smaller scale, experiments with materials yielded some intriguing results and showed architects tactfully pushing technical boundaries. Martti Kalliala and Esa Ruskeepaa's Mafoombey project (p62) employs stacked layers of cardboard to form an acoustically efficient cavern and Kazuyo Morita's micropod (p56) is a charming exercise in thin concrete technology allied to the traditional skills of Japanese plasterers.

Finally, never underestimate the role of the visionary client, without whom such flights of youthful architectural imagination would not be possible. Bau/Kultur's daringly radical Seifert House (p88) was commissioned by 63 year old Frau Seifert after her original nineteenth-century home burnt down. And in a Thai jungle, a community of Buddhist monks inspired Suriya Umpansiriratana to produce a series of buildings of utter simplicity and modesty threaded delicately through a forested site. Rarely has such a reciprocity with place, nature and the divine been so movingly articulated.

From Buddha to Dolce & Gabbana, the AR Awards continue to manifest a richly impressive diversity, united by common concerns. Even after eight years, AR staff and awards juries continue to be amazed by the depth, ingenuity and responsiveness of the architectural thinking demonstrated not only in these pages, but also in the many schemes that did not quite make the cut. Paul Finch rightly notes that 'an architect's attitude of mind can help change the world for better or worse' (p33). Hearteningly, the attitudes of the young minds shown here should give great hope for the future.