Faye Chalmers and Michael Hammond of World Architecture News explain the benefits of entering projects for their international architecture awards.

Most would admit to enjoying the kudos of working for successful practices and winning, or being shortlisted, for an internationally acclaimed award.

The submission process itself may require time, resource and energy, however this can reap tremendous benefits and the investment is swiftly returned.

The highly acclaimed World Architecture News (WAN) Awards have been running for over six years. They have evolved into the world’s largest architectural award programme - entry alone is sufficient to raise the stature of the profile of practices taking part.

Faye Chalmers, WAN Awards Manager says about the whole concept of architectural awards, “Winning an award has multiple benefits for entrants - it gives an incentive to prospective clients, reassures existing ones and sets winners apart from their competitors.” She continues, “The projects selected for WAN Award shortlists promote individual style, innovative environmental credentials, as well as pushing the boundaries of design.” WAN Awards vary from other programmes in that their rolling schedule means that categories are open at different stages throughout the year. “Our awards run in two month cycles,” continues Chalmers, “By running the programme over the year we ensure something is always happening.”

WAN Award categories include specific sectors such as the ‘Excellence in Design’ awards for Healthcare, Education, Civic Buildings, Urban Design, Residential and Commercial projects and the specialist areas which include House of the Year, Performing Spaces, Wood in architecture, Facades and Products to name a few.

“By spreading these categories out,” says Michael Hammond, Editor in Chief at WAN and Chairman of the Judging Panel, “We are able to group highly specialised judging panels representing all of the stakeholders in a project. This gives us a rounded opinion on each submission. That way, each project gets the attention it deserves.”

The WAN Awards programme is powered by the World Architecture News service, the largest supplier of news and information to the global architecture community. The global reach is extensive, with an exclusive database of over 160,000 architects, developers and consultants, over one million unique visitors per year to the website, 551,000 Facebook followers and a further 38,000 on Twitter.

Tom Kundig of Seattle based Olsen Kundig, whose dramatic design Pierre won the highly contested 2010 House of the Year Award confirms: “Being featured on WAN was probably the tipping point, the immediate reaction was an incredible upswing in blog activity: it just went global, you could see it happening virtually overnight. It certainly got our work out there and we already have two new clients who specifically referenced the Pierre.”

“Then there's the judging process itself,” says Hammond, who believes that one of the key reasons for their success is the quality of and commitment made by the WAN judges. “Over the past two and a half years,” he continues, “our extensive panel of top international experts have committed not only their valuable time but their wealth of experience, objectivity and above all, their passion for good design”.

Such is the reach of WAN’s influence, that they are now in the privileged position of being able to see projects that were tendered on their business information site, being realised and then subsequently shortlisted in a WAN Award category. One such example was Bridgepoint Active Healthcare in Toronto (Stantec Architecture / KPMB Architects, HDR Architecture / Diamond Schmitt Architects).

“Seeing a project complete the cycle was an endorsement of the internationally integrated service that WAN provides,” explained Faye Chalmers. “And the connection was totally unrealised until the finer details were scrutinised. So the project was selected purely on the quality of the submission.”

If practices are still in any doubt about the benefit of entering architectural awards, then adopt a strategic approach. Entering provides an opportunity to step back from the project, assess achievements, and consolidate the process for the submission. Then consider the benefit of presenting work into the global arena. All entrants for WAN Awards are uploaded onto the WAN website and are promoted through social media. If a project wins or is short-listed then entrants receive dedicated press kits and their projects are featured in a special edition of WAN’s long established News Review, the weekly digital news digest (this week’s will be issue #510) So if a project is good, then surely it is worth putting together a submission, and launching it onto the global stage.