Grafton Architects wins World Building of the Year Award in Barcelona

The new faculty building for the Luigi Bocconi University in Milan, designed by the Irish practice Grafton Architects, has won the first World Building of the Year Award at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona. It was selected as from 224 shortlisted buildings and 17 finalists. The building includes offices for 1,000 professors, five conference halls, lecture theatres and various courtyards, accessible to the public. Speaking at the award ceremony, the judges praised the building for its relationship with the landscape of Milan and Paul Finch, the Festival director and editor of Architectural Review, described the building as ‘a totally 3d piece of design’. The project was selected by a super-jury chaired by Robert Stern, Dean of Yale School of Architecture, which included Cecil Balmond, Deputy Chairman of Ove Arup & Partners, Richard Burdett, Centennial Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the London School of Economics, and Suha Ozkan of the XXI Architecture Centre, Ankara.

The World Architecture Festival is one of the biggest architectural events, celebrating the work, concerns and aspirations of the international architectural community. Other winners from the 16 different award categories include the Oslo Operahouse by SNØHETTA, Mountain Dwellings in Denmark by Bjarke Ingels Group, the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard at the Smithsonian Institution in USA by Foster + Partners, BMW Welt in Germany by Coop Himmelb(l)au and the Final Wooden House in Japan by Sou Fujimoto Architects.