Awards

AIA New York | The Center for Architecture has honored BIG with the Firm of the Year award, presented at Common Bond 2026. The event raised $1.19 million to support the Center for Architecture’s exhibitions, programs, and educational initiatives. Fellow honorees include Sciame Construction, Sally Gilland of The Hudson Companies, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, while Christian Aguilar, Michaela Han, and Nora Kelly received scholarships aimed to help offset the growing financial burden placed on graduates.

Since opening the New York studio in 2010, BIG has given form to the future of the city through projects including VIA 57 West, The Spiral, Wildflower Studios, and the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project, expected to be completed next year.

The Dymak HQ in Odense, Denmark, has received the Odense Architecture Prize 2026 in the category New Build. Presented as part of the city’s annual celebration of Architecture Day, the award recognizes projects that contribute architectural quality and lasting value to Odense. The jury highlighted Dymak HQ for demonstrating how architecture can strengthen community, quality of life, and a sense of place through thoughtful design.

Designed for Danish supply chain company Dymak, the 2,800 m² headquarters is organized as a circular building wrapped around a green courtyard that serves as the social heart of the workplace. Located between an industrial area and the landscape surrounding Glisholm Lake, the building combines offices, showrooms, and shared facilities beneath an undulating roofscape designed to maximize daylight, views, and on-site energy production.

The BIG-designed Bloomberg Student Center at Johns Hopkins University and Robert Day Sciences Center at Claremont McKenna College earned places on the World’s Most Beautiful Universities of 2026 list, published by the international architecture and design awards program Prix Versailles. Announced annually, the list recognizes universities whose contemporary buildings combine exceptional aesthetics with intelligent sustainability, cultural heritage, and social value – principles that align closely with the mission of the United Nations.

As Johns Hopkins’ first student center, the 150,000-sq-ft Bloomberg Student Center provides a central gathering space for the university’s Homewood campus, featuring 29 “floating” cantilevered roof planes integrated with nearly 1,000 photovoltaic panels. Across the United States, the Robert Day Sciences Center at Claremont McKenna College is a 135,000-sq-ft multidisciplinary building designed as a stack of two volumes, each rotated 45 degrees from the floor below, creating a central atrium that promotes the flow of people and ideas between the labs, classrooms, and surrounding campus.

For the second year in a row, Partner and Head of BIG Products Jakob Lange joins the jury for the Archiproducts Design Awards. The international awards recognize excellence in contemporary design across product and furniture categories and is celebrating their 10th edition this year. Jakob will join a panel of architects, designers, and industry leaders from around the world in evaluating submissions from both leading global brands and emerging talents.

At this year’s AIA Conference on Architecture & Design, the NYPD 40^th Precinct won the Justice Facility Award, which is given to projects that exemplify quality of form, functionality, and an exceptional architectural response to complex justice design issues. The 45,000-sq-ft 40^th Precinct, designed by BIG, is located in the South Bronx and features the first-ever community meeting room in a New York City police precinct. From the outside, the precinct resembles a stack of boxes, or ‘bricks’ that reference early NYC police stations, unified through a precast concrete façade that alternates between sandblasted and polished finishes.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has awarded The Plus with the prestigious RIBA International Award for Excellence 2026. The recognition places the project among an outstanding group of buildings worldwide celebrated for architectural excellence, with the jury unanimously praising the breadth and quality of this year’s winning entries. Designed for Norwegian furniture manufacturer Vestre, The Plus is dedicated to clean, carbon-neutral fabrication of urban furniture and sets a new benchmark for the manufacturing facilities of the future.

“We are deeply honored that the Royal Institute of British Architects has acknowledged our design for Vestre’s factory The Plus with a RIBA International Awards for Excellence. In all its simplicity, The Plus seeks to explore and showcase how economic growth and ecological sustainability can go hand in hand, by designing and building it as the most environmentally friendly factory in the world. Built from locally sourced timber, powered by local hydroelectricity, geothermal and photovoltaics, covered in locally sourced turf and displacing the bare minimum of forest, the factory has the smallest and gentlest environmental footprint possible. As a positive social side effect, factory workers, leadership, customers, and collaborators alike get to experience the joy of making furniture in the middle of the forest, making it blatantly evident that sustainable manufacturing is not only better for the environment but also more enjoyable for the people who practice it. A literal architectural manifestation of our philosophy of hedonistic sustainability.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG

“We’re absolutely thrilled. We were certainly hoping for this but never taking it for granted. To be recognized by RIBA is a huge honor, and I’m incredibly proud of everyone who has contributed to making The Plus what it is today. This award is a recognition of BIG’s visionary architecture and of the close collaboration between architects, engineers, contractors, and our own team that brought the project to life. With The Plus, we wanted to challenge conventional ideas of what a factory can be. Not just an efficient production facility, but a place where architecture, people, nature, and industry come together. This award demonstrates that sustainability, transparency and high productivity can go hand in hand, and it gives us even more motivation in our ambition to become the world’s most sustainable furniture manufacturer.” – Bjørn Fjellstad, CEO, Vestre

The Hungarian Natural History Museum in Debrecen has been named a double winner at the 14th Annual Architizer A+Awards, receiving both the Jury Winner award in the Unbuilt Landscape category and the Popular Choice Winner award in the Unbuilt Institutional category. The A+Awards recognize architecture and projects that exemplify design excellence, innovation, and impact across the built and unbuilt environment.

AIANY and the New York chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) have awarded the East Side Coastal Resiliency (ESCR) project the Transportation + Infrastructure Design Excellence Award. This awards program recognizes built and unbuilt projects for their design, innovation, and impact – raising awareness about the critical role that well-designed infrastructure plays in our cities, our communities, and our lives.

Designed and developed under the leadership of the New York City Department of Design and Construction in collaboration with MNLA, One Architecture & Urbanism, AKRF, Lower East Side residents, and others, ESCR emerged from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rebuild by Design competition. Designed to protect over 110,000 New Yorkers from future storms while strengthening the neighborhood’s connection to the East River, the ribbon of revitalized parkland along Manhattan’s east side combines flood protection such as barrier walls and sliding gates with amenities such as sports courts, grassy lawns, an open-air amphitheater, and pedestrian bridges.

Large sections, including Stuyvesant Cove Park and the first phase of East River Park, are now open. The next phase of the project is slated to open in 2027.

The Detail Construction Award, an architecture prize launched by DETAIL Magazine in 2025, honors the best building constructions in the fields of facades, roofs, renovation, structural engineering, and interiors. Google Bay View, designed by BIG and Heatherwick Studio, was awarded as the winner in the 2025 “Roof” category by DETAIL readers via online vote.

As Google’s first-ever ground-up campus, Google Bay View brings three new buildings, 20 acres of open space, a 1,000-person event center, and 240 staff apartments to Silicon Valley. The three buildings feature a first-of-its-kind “dragonscale” solar skin roof equipped with 50,000 silver solar panels that generate a total of nearly seven megawatts of energy. The buildings’ long-span canopy rests on cruciform columns, allowing the entire workspace to be open and connected while also relaying services from the solar roof above.

CapitaSpring was named Best Mixed-Use at the inaugural RIBA Asia Pacific Awards, with BIG’s Director and Head of China, Shu Du, attending the ceremony to accept the honor on behalf of the design team. Rising 280 meters in the heart of Singapore’s bustling financial district, CapitaSpring is a vertical oasis, where offices, residences, retail, restaurants, and a revitalized hawker market come together under one roof. Designed jointly by BIG and CRA – Carlo Ratti Associati, the building features a 35-meter-long green oasis open to the public, spanning four stories and home to more than 38,000 plants.

Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art has been awarded Silver in the “Best Cultural, Sports and Education Project” category at the MIPIM Asia Awards 2025, which celebrate sustainable, visionary, and community-focused architecture. The awards recognize projects for their overall sustainability, integration with the environment and community, quality of the user experience, economic contribution, originality of concept, and architectural qualities. Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art, located on Jinji Lake and covering 60,000 m², offers a modern interpretation of the garden elements that have defined Suzhou’s urbanism, architecture, and landscape for centuries. Clad in rippled and curved glass and stainless steel, the façades reflect the surrounding sky, water, and gardens, while 12 interconnected pavilions beneath a continuous, ribbon-like roof guide visitors through a sequence of gardens and courtyards, intertwining art, history, nature, and water.

“The Suzhou Museum of Contemporary Art is a tribute to the rich garden heritage of Suzhou. We envision the ‘廊,’ a traditional element of Suzhou gardens, gracefully winding through the landscapes and transforming into pavilions. In doing so, it frames the contemporary gardens, making them an integral part of the exhibition, as significant as the artwork within.” – Catherine Huang, Partner, BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group

The museum will officially open its doors to the public in 2026.

The Robert Day Sciences Center at Claremont McKenna College has been voted by the public as this year’s top University Building of the Year in the 2025 Archello Awards. The center is BIG’s first built project in the Los Angeles area, designed as a stack of two volumes, each pair rotated 45 degrees from the floor below. Each level of the 135,000-sq-ft building is oriented in a different direction, channeling the flow of people and ideas between the labs, classrooms, and surrounding campus. At the heart of the building is a full-height atrium, providing direct views into classrooms and research spaces from all floors. The Robert Day Sciences Center is the first completed building in the BIG-designed masterplan for CMC’s Roberts Campus, which envisions a more unified campus shaped by a series of buildings that extend the central mall and adjacent sports bowl currently under construction.

BIG HQ has been recognized as Best of Interiors 2025 in the Office category by Elle Décor Italia. Organized around large windows and half floors staggered from one another, the BIG HQ features open plans throughout the building, connected by a black steel staircase moving in an asymmetrical zigzag between levels. At the heart of the building stands a stacked column of granite and marble. Everything from door handles to concrete columns is integrated as part of a continuous spatial system that defines the headquarters’ interior architecture. Agla Egilsdottir, Associate and Director of Interiors, attended the ceremony on behalf of BIG to receive the award.

At the world’s largest event dedicated to architecture and development, World Architecture Festival, the Gelephu International Airport wins Future Project of the Year.

Recognized for its integration of local crafts, the project is part of BIG’s broader masterplan for Gelephu Mindfulness City and will feature a diagrid structure crafted from locally sourced timber adorned with painted wood carvings by local artists. The airport will serve as Bhutan’s first in-land mobility hub, connecting to the broader region via accessible trackless trams and public buses, reinforcing its role in sustainable and inclusive national development.

Palm, the door handle designed by BIG’s Product Design Team in collaboration with DND, has been recognized with two honors at the Archiproducts Design Awards 2025 in Milan: the Archiproducts Design Award and the Sustainability Award. The accolades acknowledge the project’s contribution to design quality and material innovation within architectural hardware. Palm forms part of DND’s ongoing research into tactile architectural components and is produced in natural brass and aluminum, featuring rounded forms that are molded to fit the palm of the hand. The awards ceremony gathered 1500 professionals from the global design community to celebrate creativity, innovation, and sustainable design practice.

Gelephu Mindfulness City has been recognized as one of four Asia Pacific winners at the 2025 Holcim Foundation Awards for Sustainable Construction – one of the most significant honors recognizing innovation and best practice in sustainable architecture and design. Developed by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group with Arup and Cistri, the 1000+ km² masterplan in Bhutan envisions a new economic hub shaped by the country’s culture, landscape, and the principles of Gross National Happiness, setting a global benchmark for mindful urban development.

Wildflower Film Studios has been named Best Industrial & Logistics Project at the 2025 MIPIM Awards in Cannes, France. Created in 1991, the MIPIM Awards celebrate the industry’s most useful, sustainable, and visionary projects.

Wildflower Studios, designed by BIG and developed by Wildflower Ltd. with actor and film producer Robert De Niro, his son Raphael, and film producer Jane Rosenthal, is a commercial film studio situated just two miles from Manhattan in the Ditmars-Steinway neighborhood of Astoria, Queens. As the first vertical media production village in the world, the new studio is home to storytellers working across all mediums – a three-dimensional hub of collaboration, creativity, and innovation.

The Norton Rose Fulbright Tower was named a winner in Urban Land Institute Houston’s 18th annual Development of Distinction Awards in the “Large-Scale For-Profit” category. These awards recognize developments and open spaces in Houston, Texas that exemplify best practices in design, construction, economic viability, healthy places, marketing, and management.

The Norton Rose Fulbright Tower is a 28-story cluster of six connected office towers in downtown Houston that incorporates a unique side core design, expansive floor plate, and LEED Platinum mechanical system. The 676,682-sq-ft structure completes the western edge of Discovery Green – one of Houston’s most beloved parks – incorporating elements of the green space throughout the building.

CapitaSpring has won the 11th edition of the International High-Rise Award – a biennial honor recognizing high-rise buildings that consider future-oriented design, functionality, innovative building technology, integration into urban development schemes, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness. The prize is jointly given by Detsches Architekturmuseum (DAM), Deka Bank, and the City of Frankfurt. The BIG-designed residential tower IQON in Quito has also been recognized as a finalist in the awards program, highlighted for its architectural design and integration of greenery.

The prize was presented at a ceremony in Frankfurt, handed over by Lord Mayor of the City of Frankfurt Mike Josef, Deputy Chair of the Board of DekaBank Dr. Matthias Danne, and Director of Deutsches Architekturmuseum Peter Cachola Schmal. Praised as “the best high-rise building in the world at the moment“, the jury stated, “We are honoring the city for giving the developer the right incentives, and the developer for seizing the initiative, and the architects for finding an innovative solution to it all. All of this is reflected in the quality of the architecture. CapitaSpring could simply not have been built elsewhere at present. Other cities can definitely learn from this.”

Accepting the award on behalf of BIG and co-architects Carlo Ratti Associati was Partner-in-Charge Brian Yang, alongside Project Director Gregory Chua, representing developers CapitaLand.

“In 2016, our first high-rise – the New York courtscraper VIA 57 West won the International High-Rise Award—a great honor. The courtscraper was about providing the American skyscraper with the urban oasis and social space of a European courtyard. Today with CapitaSpring, we have set out to explore the high-rise as a vertical extension of a uniquely Singaporean form of tropical urbanism. By wresting the vertical lines of the façade apart, the tower opens up for access and views between inside and outside, turning the traditional pinstripe of the classic curtainwall into something more engaging, inviting, and accessible. A simple gesture that fundamentally reimagines the social role of a skyscraper. Needless to say, we are deeply grateful that CapitaSpring has moved the jury as much as it has ourselves.” – Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director, BIG

The Nawabari collection, designed by BIG’s Product design team in collaboration with Danish furniture company BoConcept, won the Readers’ Award – a category determined by public voting – at the 11th annual 2024 Design Awards in Copenhagen. Hosted by design magazines Bo Bedre and Boligmagasinet, the Design Awards program is dedicated to celebrating Danish design and designers.

The Nawabari furniture family consists of two sofa sizes, an armchair, two coffee tables, and two pouffe sizes in an array of colors. The collection is inspired by the Japanese art form of binding with ropes to forge close bonds, with ‘nawa’ meaning ‘rope’ in Japanese, and the term ‘nawabari’ traditionally translating to ‘stretching rope’.

This year’s Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) Conference honored the Kaktus Towers in Copenhagen, named “Best High Rise in Europe” by the jury of international architects. Gathering industry leaders in the world of construction, the CTBUH Conference recognizes projects, practices, and individuals that have made extraordinary contributions to the advancement of tall buildings and the urban environment.

The two Kaktus Towers of 21- and 24-stories, developed in collaboration with Catella and Per Høpfner, contain 495 apartments and are designed to accommodate micro living with compact homes and spacious, shared amenities. Situated within a web of movement, the towers feature a green plateau that doubles as a one km-long public park raising eight meters above the bustling Dybbølsbro train station. The park stretches from the Kaktus Towers to the new finance district, Postgrunden, connecting otherwise isolated areas along the post-industrial strip.

Selected by public voting, the Urban Life huts in Aarhus have been named “The City’s Best Architecture” in the annual Byens Bedste (The City’s Best) – an awards program organized by local newspaper Århus Stiftstidende recognizing the best businesses, places, and experiences in the city of Aarhus, Denmark.

As part of the Aarhus Harbor Masterplan designed in collaboration with Gehl Architects, the 13 commercial huts sit at the edge of the waterfront, housing both cafés, bars, and coffee shops. Each hut has its own distinct architectural character, constructed in a variation of materials, ranging from cork and wood to glass and straw.

The BIG-designed NYPD 40th Precinct won the Special Award for Innovation in Civic Design in this year’s SARA NY Design Awards.

Located in the southern Bronx, New York, the new NYPD 40^th Precinct Station replaces a station house on 138^th Street and creates a dedicated space for the community, areas for fitness, and training for officers. The 45,000-sq-ft, three-story building includes the first community event space to be located at an NYPD facility, which aims to promote civic engagement and encourage dialogue with the community. The form of the building is derived from its programmatic requirements, where individual volumes contain specific elements of the program, revolving around a 60-ft light-filled atrium.

The Plus was named Best New Building at the 2024 BREEAM Awards in Oslo, Norway. Organized by the Norwegian Green Building Alliance, the awards program celebrates projects dedicated to sustainability documented through the BREAAM-certification system. The 7000 m2 factory and visitor center, designed for furniture manufacturer Vestre, is dedicated to the cleanest carbon-neutral fabrication of urban furniture, leading the way for manufacturing facilities and high-efficiency production of the future.

“The Plus has set a new standard for industrial buildings and has become an attraction in the industry and the local area. It is a unique building with a good combination of industry, architecture, and sustainability. They have actively spread the message about the sustainability qualities they have achieved both nationally and internationally, and that they have prioritized sustainability in this project despite a higher cost. The project has had a holistic sustainability mindset that also includes the products that are produced in the building. The Plus has achieved the highest available BREEAM-NOR classification; Outstanding.”, says the Jury.

BIG HQ in Copenhagen has received the City’s highest honor for how the building considers the character of its surroundings and contributes to the urban environment of the city. Anchored in the industrial history and maritime infrastructure of Copenhagen’s north harbor, the 4.880 m2 headquarters is the first realized example of a fully integrated LEAP-design – a collaboration between BIG’s Landscape, Engineering, Architecture and Product designers. The building is designed to achieve DGNB Gold through use of FutureCem concrete, which reduces CO2 emission with approx. 25%, integration of solar and geothermal energy systems, and natural ventilation of the office spaces.

The BIG-designed UAE Pavilion at the International Horticultural Expo in Doha has won Gold in the Best Self-Built Pavilion category at the closing event of the 2023 Expo. Selected from the 77 participating countries, the pavilion was honored for its alignment with this year’s theme “Green Desert, Better Environment”, as well as its innovative landscape design, thoughtful plant species selection, use of sustainable materials, guest experience and engaging environmental programming.

The pavilion’s design is inspired by the resilient Ghaf tree and its complex root net, creating a cell structure featuring rammed earth walls, wooden beams, and palm leaf roofs. The structure encompasses 32 gardens of indigenous species, including a total of 6,609 plants with groupings of edible plants, fruit trees, medicinal plants, flowers, spices, shrubs, grasses, industrial plants, and perennials.

The BIG-designed Qianhai Prisma Towers won the Diamond Supplier Award at the Supplier Conference this month, hosted by SZ Metro at the Chunquan Cultural Arts Center in Shenzhen, China. The conference convened over 500 high-quality suppliers spanning the ‘Metro and Real Estate’ industry chain to collectively envision a new era of high-quality development. The conference theme, “Empowering Initiatives, Unlimited Possibilities”, sought out to acknowledge outstanding contributions over the past year. The Qianhai Prisma Towers were recognized as one of four Diamond Suppliers – the top tier – underscoring the project’s exceptional performance and unwavering commitment to excellence in collaboration with Shenzhen Metro.

The two ‘leaning’ towers, featuring a 300m2 tall residential tower and a 250m tall office tower, will complete the new Qianhai Bay development, solidifying Qianhai’s position as the burgeoning financial and cultural center of Shenzhen. Expected to begin construction in 2025, the project will be BIG’s second in Shenzhen following Shenzhen Energy Mansion’s completion in 2017. 

The Gastronomy Open Ecosystem has won the Advanced Architecture Award, presented at the 2024 REBUILD Conference in Madrid, the largest innovation forum driving construction industry transformation through digitalization and decarbonization. The project was recognized for how it envisions a meeting point between culture, gastronomy, and the city.

Conceived as an architectural extension of the dramatic landscape and cityscape of San Sebastian, Basque Culinary Center’s new innovation hub will bring together food start-ups, researchers, and chefs under one roof to advance the art and science of gastronomic innovation while offering new public spaces, plazas, and parks.

Our masterplan for Aarhus Harbor in Denmark has been named Best Urban Regeneration Project at this year’s MIPIM Awards ceremony in Cannes, France. Selected by votes from the jury and MIPIM delegates, the project is honored for its physical and economic revitalization of the area, consideration of heritage preservation, sustainability, access, and integration of the project in its environment and community.

Tasked to transform a formerly industrial harbor into a vibrant neighborhood on the waterfront of Aarhus, we collaborated with Gehl Architects to create the framework for public life first, leaving plots for residential developments to be shaped by the life that preceded them. Today, a public promenade activates the entire waterfront, zig-zagging along the pier and defining a series of new public spaces on land and on water.

The masterplan includes the BIG-designed Aarhus Harbor Bath, Aarhus Theater, Kampanilen, AARhus Residences, the Beach Huts, the Urban Life huts, the Scandic wellness hotel, as well as SLETH’s Karréerne.

Biosphere wins the Best Hospitality Project in Architecture at the 2024 Créateurs Design Awards, a peer-to-peer award program highlighting extraordinary work in architecture, interior- and product design, photography, journalism, and curation.

Located in the Swedish Lapland, Biosphere is the eighth room at the renowned TreeHotel, known for its broad variety of cabins, with each having a distinct identity responding and interacting with the surrounding forest. Enveloped by 350 bird- and bat houses, the Biosphere cabin aims to decrease the downward spiral of the bird population in the region while providing guests the opportunity to experience birdlife in close proximity.

The programming and development of Aarhus Ø’s Bassin 7 pier has been awarded the City’s highest honor for its exceptional attention to scale, architectural quality, and contribution to the built environment.

Asked to masterplan the entire island on the decommissioned pier in 2013, we worked together with Gehl Architects in designing the public spaces first and turning the leftover areas into plots for commercial and residential developments, secondly. Today, a public promenade activates the entire waterfront, zig-zagging along the pier and defining a series of new public spaces on land and on water.

Of the realized projects from the masterplan, SLETH’s residential project Karréerne as well as BIG’s Kampanilen and the Urban Life Huts are emphasized for how they consider the street level and frame a comfortable public space with views of the city, and shelter from the wind.

In its motivation, the Head of the Jury, City Architect Anne Mette Boye, further stated: “The work has been consistently and carefully done to develop the area over time as a welcoming destination for the residents of Aarhus as well as visitors. It is a great example of urban development where architectural approaches to buildings and urban spaces come together harmoniously. Even on a rainy November day, there’s a vibrant urban life.“

Danish construction media Licitationen honors the project development of the Aarhus Harbor Masterplan for its effort in developing the formerly closed, industrial harbor into a new, lively waterfront in Aarhus. The award is given each year to one or more companies, which have succeeded in both planning and realizing a project or neighborhood with a sensitivity to its context. 

Designed in collaboration with Gehl Architects in 2013, the Aarhus Harbor masterplan was realized together with Kilden & Hindby, Bassin 7 Bolig, Bassin 7 Erhverv, Aarhus Municipality and SLETH Architects, and includes the BIG-designed AARhus Residences, Aarhus Theatre, the Beach Huts, the Urban Life huts, Aarhus Harbor Bath, and Kampanilen as well as SLETH’s Karréerne. The final addition to the masterplan will be the 18-storey Wellness Hotel, which broke ground earlier this year. 

In its motivation, the Jury explains: “The project stands out and has, with great luck and creativity, succeeded in transforming a formerly closed and inaccessible container port into a new active district in the heart of Aarhus.”

The BIG-designed Ocean House Palm Jumeirah was named a winner in the International Property Awards 2023 in the category Architecture Multiple Residence Dubai (Africa & Arabia).

The awards celebrate the highest levels of achievement by companies operating in all sectors of the property industry.

Nestled into the Northeast crescent of Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, Ocean House, designed by BIG and developed by Palm Northacre and Ellington Properties, will be a standalone multifamily residential building that will take a pivotal role in reshaping the waterfront of this ever-evolving archipelago. Redefining conventional luxury by merging the vernacular villa with the high-rise urban block, BIG’s vision for Ocean House is to create an iconic urban presence while offering the comfort and experience of a home in nature. The building’s design concept resembles a vertical garden village, where all four facades are wrapped by balconies, offering generous outdoor space and panoramic views over the Dubai skyline.

BIG projects CapitaSpring and The Spiral were both announced as winners of CTBUH Awards of Excellence 2023 at the ceremony held in Singapore on October 18th. CapitaSpring has won the award in two categories – Best Tall Building 200-299 Meters and Best Tall Building Asia – and The Spiral has won the award in the category of Best Tall Building 300-399 Meters.

Designed jointly by BIG and CRA – Carlo Ratti Associati in collaboration with RSP, the 280-meter-tall CapitaSpring reinforces Singapore’s reputation as a garden city. As the second tallest tower in Singapore, the 51-storey mixed-use development continues the city’s pioneering vertical urbanism at the heart of the Central Business District.

Located at the intersection of the elevated High Line Park and the newly developed Hudson Boulevard Park on Manhattan’s west side, The Spiral rises 66 storeys and extends the parks’ green space up and around its exterior in a spiraling motion towards the sky – from the High Line to the skyline.

Silicon Valley Business Journal has awarded BIG and Heatherwick the 2023 STRUCTURES Award for Google Bay View in the category of Best Architecture. The annual Silicon Valley Business Journal STRUCTURES Awards celebrate “outstanding Silicon Valley commercial real estate projects, game-changing deals and high-power developers.”

Anchored in three themes defined by Google’s design brief at the beginning of the project – innovation, nature, and community – Google Bay View’s design is driven by flexibility and extraordinary user experience that inspires collaboration and co-creation. Co-designed by BIG and Heatherwick, team spaces are on the upper level and gathering spaces are below, separating focus and collaborative areas while still providing easy access to both. The second floor design has variation in floorplates to give teams a designated “neighborhood” area that is highly flexible to change with their needs.

Google Bay View has won the Facade Tectonic Institute’s 2023 Vitruvian Award in the category “Outstanding New Facade (Low Rise)”. The award ceremony was held on September 19 at the Center for Architecture in New York.

Hosted annually by the Facade Tectonics Institute (FTI), the Vitruvian Award “seeks to recognize unprecedented innovation and achievements in the field of facade design and delivery,” according to the FTI website. 

Co-designed by BIG and Heatherwick, Google Bay View is composed of a series of large canopy structures that allows the entire workspace to be open and connected under one roof. Access to natural light and views with reduced glare during working hours were priority design elements, achieved through the use of carefully-placed clerestory windows. Its first-of-its-kind “dragonscale” solar skin roof equipped with 50,000 silver solar panels generates a total of nearly seven megawatts of energy.

CapitaSpring has received the President*s Design Award (P*DA), Singapore’s highest honour for designers and designs across all disciplines, in the category of 2023 Design of the Year. Designed jointly by BIG and CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati in collaboration with RSP, the 51-storey mixed-use development is situated in the heart of Singapore’s financial district and reinforces Singapore’s reputation as a garden city with its vertical exploration of tropical urbanism.

“The P*DA remains steadfast in celebrating the impact of design. This year, the P*DA recipients have made a compelling case for how design can improve the lives of people from all walks of life, demonstrating the maturing of Singapore’s design industry as they work across disciplines to build a better world by design,” says Dawn Lim, Executive Director of DesignSingapore Council.

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2023 shortlists the ’50 Queens’ exhibition in the Sustainable Development Goals category. Developed by BIG Landscape Partner, Giulia Frittoli and Partner, David Zahle, in collaboration with Golden Days and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, the exhibition represents SDG 05: Gender Equality.

First exhibited in Copenhagen last year, ’50 Queens’ was a sculptural takeover of Copenhagen’s iconic King’s Square – temporarily renamed to Queen’s Square – featuring notable women in Danish history with the mission to bring more diversity to the city’s many male statues and celebrate Denmark’s fearless women.

“Our exhibition celebrates the untold stories of women who have made significant contributions to Danish history but haven’t yet been properly recognized. As more focus is brought to issues of social justice and equality, we are so proud and honored to contribute to the conversation and give a voice to those who haven’t been heard. With 50 Queens, I hope we can raise awareness about the importance of gender equality and social diversity in our cities and public spaces to inform how we can improve our urban communities of today and plan for more equal cities of tomorrow,” says Giulia Frittoli, Partner, BIG

The ‘50 Queens’ exhibition wins Gold at the Creative Circle Awards in the Spatial Design category. Developed by BIG Landscape Partner, Giulia Frittoli and Partner, David Zahle in collaboration with Golden Days and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, it celebrates the untold stories of 50 significant women with the mission to bring more gender diversity to Copenhagen’s public spaces.

’50 Queens’ was first exhibited at the King’s Square in the heart of Copenhagen in September 2022, and the pedestals have since then travelled to various locations throughout the country, most recently to the Bloom Festival where they were installed in the Søndermarken Park in Frederiksberg, Denmark.

CapitaSpring has been awarded at the 2023 ULI Asia Pacific Awards for Excellence, a programme dedicated to highlighting 10 of the most remarkable development efforts in the Asia Pacific region. Located in the heart of Singapore’s financial district, the 280-meter-tall highrise creates a diverse neighborhood of places to work, live and play in a vertical exploration of tropical urbanism.

“This year’s winners demonstrated exceptional innovation and practice in land use, particularly in terms of establishing a deep connection with the community in which they are located, enriching liveability, and elevating connectivity to surrounding amenities”, said David Faulkner, President, ULI Asia Pacific.

The Sluishuis neighborhood in Amsterdam has been named Best Residential Project at this year’s MIPIM Awards. This year, the MIPIM jury focused on buildings that enrich the lives of their users, the environment and community.

Sluishuis is a reinterpretation of the classic courtyard typology for life on water, bringing 442 zero-energy homes and a comprehensive water-quality program with space for up to 30 houseboats to the banks of the IJ River in Amsterdam. Designed by BIG and Barcode Architects, the building is shaped by its surroundings, at once close to large infrastructure and to small-scale urban communities.

The Plus has received the Norwegian DOGA Award for Design and Architecture. Aiming to connect people, production, nature, technology and architecture, The Plus doubles as a public park and exhibition center inviting visitors to follow the entire production process and sharing knowledge on resource consumption, circular design and sustainable manufacturing.

“This is a factory with a playful and visionary idiom. The open design and visitor center in the heart of the factory has created an attraction and contributed to pride in the local community. With its careful placement and use of wooden materials, colors, light and air, The Plus provides a refreshing contrast to traditional production facilities,” emphasized the DOGA jury.

After a two-stage voting process with more than 150,000 votes cast, ArchDaily’s readers have selected CapitaSpring as the winner of the Building of the Year Award in the Office category. The award is the largest peer-based, crowdsourced architecture award in the world and highlights innovative projects that respond to the increasing complexity of our world and the challenges posed to our built environments.

The Plus has been named Architecture of The Year at the 2023 Scandinavian Design Awards. In its motivation the jury states that: “Vestre’s furniture factory The Plus is a forerunner and an outstanding example of how to take sustainability issues very seriously right down to the tiniest detail.”

Located in the Norwegian woods, the building serves as a factory for furniture manufacturer, Vestre – a company dedicated to encouraging a shift towards transparent, carbon-neutral fabrication in the manufacturing industry.

We’re honored to have two BIG projects shortlisted for the upcoming MIPIM Awards – Sluishuis for Best Residential Project and Fuse Valley for Best New Development. In addition to the usual criteria, this year’s jury focuses on projects with a holistic commitment to sustainability, best serving its users, environment and community.

Denmark’s Refugee Museum wins the Danish Building of the Year award. Located at the site of Denmark’s largest Refugee camp from World War II, the museum gives a voice and a face to refugees worldwide and captures the universal challenges, emotions, spirit and stories shared by displaced humans.

Interior Design Magazine awarded two of BIG’s projects with a Best of Year Award at their annual awards ceremony in New York City! The Plus, Norway won the ‘Greater World Sustainability’ category, while the Biosphere TreeHotel room in Sweden won the ‘Small Resort’ category.

Located at the heart of Singapore’s financial district, the 280-meter tall mixed-use high-rise has received the Silver MIPIM ASIA Award for Best Mixed-Use Development! The high-rise is celebrated as an oasis that continues the city’s pioneering vertical urbanism with a diverse neighborhood of restaurants, office spaces, residences, and sky gardens from the ground all the way up to the 51st floor.

BIG’s CEO and Partner Sheela Søgaard has been honored with the title CEO of the Year 2022 by the Danish Association of Managers and Executives. Former winners of the award include Novo Nordisk’s Lars Fruergaard, Ørsted’s Mads Nipper and the Head Coach for the Danish National Soccer Team, Kasper Hjulmand.

The Plus wins DETAIL’s Reader’s Award, selected by DETAIL’s readers in an online vote from a shortlist chosen by the jury. Located in Norway, The Plus was built in just 18 months and will be the first industrial building to achieve the highest environmental rating, BREEAM Outstanding.  

Google Bay View is officially the world’s largest building to achieve LEED Platinum certification by U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). The LEED v4 BD+C: NC Platinum certification recognizes the HQ’s sustainability-driven design: Google Bay View is a 100% electric building, powered in part by a first-of-its-kind “dragonscale” solar skin, which generates 40% of the annual electricity. The Campus also includes the largest geothermal pile system in North America and has net-positive water use – where all of the site’s non-potable water demands are met using the recycled water generated on-site.

Canninghill Piers, under construction in Singapore’s vibrant Clark Quay enclave, is honored in five different award categories at EdgeProp Excellence Awards 2022, including: People’s Choice Award, a result of public votes, and the Top Development Award appointed by the Jury. Canninghill Piers is developed by Capitaland and City Developments Ltd. and estimated for completion in 2025.

Sluishuis has been awarded twice at the IPAX European Property Awards in Amsterdam – one of the world’s most renowned programs in the property industry. The residential building wins both the award for ‘Best Architecture Multiple Residence’ as well as ‘Best Residential Development 20+ Units’. Shuishuis is the newest addition to the Ijburg Island in Amsterdam and was recently also granted the Architectenweb Award for ‘Residential building of the Year’.

Maison de l’Économie Créative et de la Culture en Aquitaine (MECA) has been awarded a 2022 Urban Land Institute (ULI) Global Award for Excellence! The Awards for Excellence program, launched by ULI in 1979, recognizes outstanding development efforts in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. In 2022, there were a total of six winners.

“This contemporary art center brings together three institutions. The result is remarkable in terms of urban regeneration, and demonstrates perfectly how to encourage exchange, cross-fertilization and the successful collaboration of cultural institutions. Rarely has the leadership and excellent management of a project been observed at such a high level,” emphasized the ULI judges.

The Danish Association of Managers and Executives ‘Lederne’ has nominated BIG CEO and Partner Sheela Søgaard as CEO of the Year 2022. Since 2002, the Association has awarded a CEO the title, who they believe deliver extraordinary results, drive diversity in their organizations, strengthen sustainability efforts and motivate their employees to excel. Sheela has been nominated together with Jeppe Rindom, Co-Founder and CEO at Pleo, Nana Bule, CEO of Microsoft Denmark & Iceland, and Jesper Hjulman, Group CEO of Andel. The winner will be announced on November 24^th 2022.

BIG’s recently completed ‘Sneglehusene’ just outside of Aarhus have received the City’s highest honor for its exceptional architectural quality and contribution to the built environment. The project brings 93 new homes to the neighborhood of Nye, mobilizing modular construction with modest materials and creating generous living spaces in close connection to nature and city life.

“As an architect, one typically only gets to build a house once. With the ‘Sneglehusene’, we were given the opportunity to evolve our housing concept from an earlier project, while also developing the buildings’ own identity. Our modular concept has made it possible for us to maintain simplicity in the execution despite the construction’s complexity, and we have been allowed to improve the concept with all our experiences. It is a joy to see how the buildings have become homes filled with life, and we’re very proud to have contributed to the realization of the vision for the Nye neighborhood”, Partner, BIG, Finn Noerkjaer. 

The Professional Women in Construction, New York have recognized BIG’s CEO and Partner, Sheela Maini Søgaard with an Honoree Award at their September Salute to Women of Achievement event! The Honoree award, which celebrates women’s dedication to their craft and their passion to create a more equitable path forward, was accepted by BIG NYC Project Manager, Flora Bao on behalf of Sheela.

BIG and WXY’s Downtown Brooklyn Public Realm Action Plan has been named on Fast Company’s list of Most Innovative Designs for 2022! Listed in the General Excellence category, the program honors the designers and businesses solving the most crucial problems of today and anticipating the pressing issues of tomorrow.

The BIG-designed mixed-used residential development has received the NYC BIG APPLE BROWNFIELD AWARD, in the category of Community Advocacy and Engagement. While housing a nursing school on the street level, one-third of the residential units above are affordable housing units, strengthening the housing diversity within the neighborhood.

The BIG-designed Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet has been awarded “Best Cultural and Sports Infrastructure” Award at MIPIM’s 31st iteration! This year, in addition to the usual criteria, the jury also looked at how the project adapts to the consequences of the pandemic on the way people live, work, sho, and entertain themselves.