Buildner has launched the Unbuilt Award 2026, the third edition of its annual competition, offering a €100,000 prize fund. At the same time, the results of the Unbuilt Award 2025 have been announced, marking the second competition in a series that celebrates architectural designs that have yet to be realized. The initiative provides a global platform for architects and designers to showcase their most compelling unbuilt projects—whether conceptual, published, unpublished, or fully developed.
The Unbuilt Award 2026 invites participants to submit visionary proposals across three categories defined by scale: small, medium, and large projects. The competition recognizes the importance of unbuilt work as a critical space for experimentation, innovation, and advancing architectural discourse beyond the constraints of construction. It is open to professionals and students worldwide and its key objectives involve:
- Creative exploration: Highlight bold ideas and design thinking unconstrained by construction limitations.
- Innovation: Encourage new approaches to program, form, technology, and spatial strategies.
- Relevance: Address contemporary global challenges through speculative or research-driven proposals.
- Clarity of vision: Reward strong conceptual narratives and well-communicated architectural ideas.
The total prize fund of €100,000 is distributed across three categories based on project scale: Small (up to 100 m²), Medium (101–999 m²), and Large (over 1,000 m²). Each category winner receives €20,000, while five honorable mentions in each category are awarded €1,000 each. Student winners in the Small, Medium, and Large categories are awarded €5,000 each. In addition, a Best Presentation Award, open to all categories, grants €10,000. Beyond the monetary prizes, each category winner also receives the Continuum trophy, a specially designed object by Germans Ermičs that reflects the fluid and evolving nature of architectural ideas, celebrating creativity, transformation, and the lasting impact of unbuilt work.
The competition is evaluated by an international jury of leading architects, designers, and academics, representing diverse perspectives across practice, research, and education. The jury includes Manuela Gatto, Director at Zaha Hadid Architects (UK); David Gianotten, Managing Partner at OMA (Netherlands); Melodie Leung, Director at Zaha Hadid Architects (UK); Amanda Levete, Founder of AL_A; Jürgen Mayer H., Founding Partner of J.MAYER.H und Partner (Germany); Michael Meredith, Co-Founder of MOS Architects and faculty member at Princeton University (USA); Jennifer Newsom, Co-Founder of Dream The Combine (USA); Carlo Ratti, Director of the MIT Senseable City Lab (USA); and Nader Tehrani, Principal at NADAAA (USA).
Together, the panel brings a balance of professional practice, academic leadership, and experimental design research to the evaluation of unbuilt architectural work. Advance registration is open from February 27, 2026, to July 9, 2026, followed by a last-minute registration deadline on September 23, 2026. The deadline to submit questions is September 28, 2026, and all entries must be submitted by October 20, 2026. Winners will be announced on December 1, 2026. To register, visit the competition site.
Buildner has also announced the results of the competition's 2025 edition. Discover the projects below.
Projects:
Small Scale Category Winner + Student Winner
Project title: Architecture as Resilient Machine
Author: Yuanyuan Cao, Harvard Graduate School of Design, from Canada
Nomadic Permanence presents a climate-adaptive framework set within desertified landscapes, combining resilient shelter with ecological regeneration. The proposal introduces a modular, self-sufficient architecture designed as a reconfigurable machine that integrates food production, stormwater retention, sand stabilization, and habitation. Constructed from lightweight metal framing and locally sourced sandbags, it minimizes permanent infrastructure while making use of on-site materials. Organized around a sloped roof with solar panels and tensile fabric skins, the design supports flexible interior functions that respond to changing environmental conditions. It redefines permanence as an evolving system shaped by cycles of use, weathering, and stewardship.
Medium Scale Category Winner
Project title: The Wine Path
Author: Tigran Danielian, KET Bureau, Armenia
The Wine Path is conceived as a continuous architectural gesture embedded within a vineyard landscape, transforming circulation into an immersive spatial and cultural experience. Rather than introducing a single object, the project unfolds as a linear pavilion that gently follows the topography, connecting existing buildings while preserving the integrity of the agricultural terrain. Lightly elevated above the ground, the structure integrates wine production, tasting, and social spaces beneath a sweeping roof, creating shaded environments that open to panoramic views. The design emphasizes minimal intervention, using a slender structural system and a sinuous form that echoes the contours of the land. By merging landscape, architecture, and program, the project redefines the vineyard as a destination where movement, production, and leisure coexist within a unified, sensory journey.
Large Scale Category Winner + Student Winner
Project title: Theseus: A New Housing Typology
Authors: Emma Agnes Sheffer and Joe Robert Russell, Harvard Graduate School of Design, United States
Theseus proposes a modular housing system that repurposes decommissioned Handymax cargo ship holds into elevated, multi-story residential structures along the Port of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Designed as a 150-bed housing solution, the project leverages the structural capacity of existing steel shells, inserting laminated timber floor plates within a tensile framework to create adaptable living environments. By lifting the units above the ground, the design maintains an open and flexible ground plane, allowing for future programmatic evolution. The project addresses housing shortages, material reuse, and climate resilience, offering a scalable model for coastal cities through the transformation of industrial infrastructure into dense, cost-effective urban housing.
Buildner's Student Award 2025 - Medium Scale Category Winner
Project title: Forestack
Authors: Yoon Daeun, Heecheol Kang, Hyeongwon Ryu, Kangwon National University, South Korea
Forestack transforms an abandoned public bath in Busan into a vertical ecological landscape that merges architecture, nature, and public space. The project reinterprets the existing structure through a strategy of minimal intervention, introducing layered programs that include therapeutic gardens, social areas, and integrated vertical planting systems. Organized as a gradual vertical sequence, the design moves from ground-level bath gardens to elevated rooftop greenery, framing architecture as a process of ecological and social healing. By prioritizing adaptive reuse and natural growth over time, the proposal creates a calm, restorative environment that reconnects users with nature while demonstrating a thoughtful and technically grounded approach to regeneration.
Best Presentation Award 2025
Project title: Tranquillizing the Void
Authors: Xavier Arés, Koh Noguchi, Juan Pablo Lopez Isabella, Spain
Tranquillizing the Void proposes a small-scale architectural intervention within the residual spaces of Kyoto's dense urban fabric, transforming overlooked gaps into places of retreat and reflection. Inspired by the Japanese concept of oku, the project creates a layered spatial experience through a lightweight timber pavilion that emphasizes depth, intimacy, and quiet. The design combines translucent polycarbonate panels, tatami interiors, and carefully framed roof openings that draw natural light into the space. Minimal yet precise, the structure strikes a refined balance between simplicity and craftsmanship, presenting a replicable strategy for activating underused urban voids while fostering moments of calm within the city.
Highlighted Projects
Project title: GEM – Geological Museum and Scientific Research Center
Author: Vagia Dimara, Greece
The GEM project explores the relationship between geology and architecture through a museum and research center embedded within the geomorphological landscape of Grevena, Greece. Inspired by natural processes such as erosion and landform formation, the design integrates the building into its terrain using a fragmented, layered composition that reflects the surrounding geological conditions. The program combines public exhibition spaces with private research facilities, organized to support both education and scientific study. Exterior courtyards and geological gardens extend the experience into the landscape, reinforcing a sensory connection to the site. Constructed with concrete, glass, and stone, the project creates a spatial narrative that guides visitors through a contemporary interpretation of the region's geological history.
Project title: Batumi 08.10.2021
Author: Shalva Makharadze, BRUT Architecture, Georgia
Batumi 08.10.2021 is conceived as both a residential structure and a memorial, responding to the tragic collapse of a Soviet-era building caused by unauthorized structural alterations. Designed in a raw Brutalist language, the project uses exposed concrete to convey permanence, gravity, and accountability, transforming architecture into a vehicle for collective memory and social awareness. The façade is carved with voids that symbolize the lives lost, while integrated greenery introduces a narrative of renewal and resilience. A prominent red stair core marks the exact point of collapse, making circulation visible and emphasizing safety, transparency, and escape. More than a replacement building, the project serves as a civic statement, addressing structural negligence and advocating for responsibility in the built environment.
Project title: Unseen Museum
Authors: Kelvin Goh Cher Kiang, Lim Zi Hong, DESIGN DRIVE, Singapore
The Unseen Museum is a conceptual proposal set within the Uyuni Salt Flats, exploring how reflection and visual disappearance can transform architecture into an extension of its environment. Conceived as a reflective cube, the building uses one-way mirrored cladding to blend seamlessly with the sky and surrounding terrain, appearing nearly invisible from a distance while gradually revealing itself upon approach. Inside, a luminous, glass-lined interior guides visitors through exhibits on Uyuni's geological and cultural history, using reflection to create a sense of depth and immersion. Designed with a minimal footprint and heat-reducing materials, the project prioritizes environmental sensitivity while orchestrating light, movement, and illusion to redefine the relationship between architecture and landscape.
Project title: Data Center in the Age of 'Datafication'
Author: Yicheng Ren, United States
This project reimagines a former industrial factory in Providence, Rhode Island, as a contemporary data center that challenges conventional closed typologies by transforming it into a public, critical space. Rather than concealing digital infrastructure, the design introduces a linear promenade that deconstructs the existing industrial order and reassembles it into a narrative sequence of spaces that combine data functions with exhibition environments. Transparent server rooms, surveillance installations, and layered circulation systems reveal the mechanisms of data collection while raising questions about privacy and control. Through material reuse and spatial openness, the project reframes the data center as an accessible institution that exposes, humanizes, and critiques the invisible systems shaping contemporary society.
Project title: Huailai Wine Culture Center
Author: Xinyi Wang, Australia
The Huailai Wine Culture Center reimagines a cultural complex as a landscape-driven composition, where architecture emerges from the terrain rather than dominating it. Organized around a central water basin, the project brings together four programs—museum, cultural and retail spaces, expo hall, and hotel—into a cohesive ensemble connected by continuous circulation and undulating green roofs. These accessible "mini-mountains" shape microclimates, frame views of vineyards and distant mountains, and create a sequence of public terraces and gathering spaces. Water functions as both a climatic moderator and a civic stage, supporting year-round activities while reflecting the surrounding landscape. Through its integration of program, ecology, and public life, the project establishes a new identity for Huailai, blending terroir, culture, and everyday experience into a unified spatial narrative.
Project title: Al-Ula Villa
Authors: Essamalden Mohamed Mohamed Abdo Alemam, Aishidha Rajeev, Nada Gamal Eissa Bakhit, Hind Altawi, Saudi Arabia
Al-Ula Villa draws inspiration from the sculpted sandstone formations of AlUla, translating geological processes into a contemporary residential design defined by carved volumes and layered massing. The project is composed of clustered cylindrical forms shaped through subtraction, creating courtyards, terraces, and openings that echo natural erosion patterns while allowing light and air to penetrate deep into the interior. A palette of earthy materials, including textured plaster and stone tones, reinforces the connection to the surrounding desert landscape. Inside, fluid spatial sequences unfold around central volumes and vertical connections, balancing openness and enclosure while framing views of the environment. The project reinterprets traditional desert architecture through a contemporary lens, creating a dwelling that feels both rooted in its context and shaped by time.
Project title: Edible Infrastructure: Re-stitching Urban Fabrics
Author: Xinwei Guo, United States
Edible Infrastructure transforms freeway-divided neighborhoods in West Oakland into a regenerative urban network that integrates mobility, agriculture, and community space. Built from recycled shipping containers and a laminated timber framework, the project creates a modular system of vertical farms, public programs, and elevated pedestrian and cycling paths that reconnect the fragmented urban fabric. A layered "living canopy" provides shade, supports food production, and creates spaces for social gathering, while the continuous circulation network promotes low-carbon mobility. By combining ecological systems with adaptive reuse, the design reframes infrastructure as a tool for social equity and environmental resilience, offering a scalable model for repairing urban divisions and activating underutilized spaces.
Project title: Endless Library
Author: Jianing Yang, United States
Endless Library reinterprets Frederick Kiesler's Endless House as a contemporary public building, translating primitive, non-rectilinear geometries into a fluid and continuous architectural language. The project organizes its program—exhibition spaces, reading rooms, and public amenities—within three sculptural volumes elevated above a porous ground plane, creating an open civic platform below. Circulation is structured around a central vertical spine, while interior spaces are shaped by curvature to promote openness, natural light, and visual continuity. Constructed with fiber-reinforced plastic and glass, the façade emphasizes smooth, continuous forms and diffused daylight. By merging geometric experimentation with functional clarity, the project proposes a new library typology defined by spatial fluidity, public accessibility, and sculptural expression.
Project title: Shelters of Tomorrow
Author: Rabee S. R. Alashi, Saudi Arabia
Shelters of Tomorrow proposes a modular housing system for displaced communities in Bosaso, Somalia, designed to move beyond emergency relief toward long-term resilience and dignity. Rooted in Somali vernacular architecture, the project uses a flexible 4 × 4 m unit that can expand incrementally and aggregate into diverse, village-like clusters, supporting both individual households and communal life. Each dwelling combines enclosed rooms with semi-open spaces and private gardens, while shared areas emerge organically to support farming, markets, and social interaction. Built from locally sourced materials such as acacia wood, mud brick, and palm leaves, the system emphasizes low-tech construction and adaptability, offering a scalable and culturally grounded model for sustainable community development.
Architects and designers are encouraged to visit Buildner's Unbuilt Award 2026 site for the third edition of this competition, which is currently accepting registrations. The advance registration deadline is July 9, 2026.
