The votes for the 2025 Imaginative and prescient Awards have been counted! Uncover this yr’s cohort of high architectural representations and join this system e-newsletter for future updates.
For a few years now, it appeared like architects had forgotten the drawing. It’s true, we live in an image-first tradition, the place artistic professionals are relying on a single picture to achieve recognition, credit score, and in the end promote their work. The attention-catching render, the well-lit {photograph}, and the AI-generated perspective have all been taking heart stage, with drawing turning into the silent workhorse of architectural communication.
And but, on this yr’s Imaginative and prescient Awards, the successful practices quietly subvert that pattern, bringing the drawing again to the forefront. Throughout all classes, architects are selecting to pair their spectacular imagery with equally placing drawing units to speak intent, narrative or hypothesis. And their weapon of alternative? Annotation. This text showcases seven initiatives that use annotation in a number of the most imaginative methods doable, reminding us that explaining a undertaking is a lot greater than a constructed undertaking; architectural innovation is embedded within the design itself.
Group 2.0
By UArchitects / Misak Terzibasiyan
Editor’s Alternative Winner, Imaginative and prescient For Group, 2025 Imaginative and prescient Awards
The undertaking’s intention was to create a self-sustaining, floating and adaptable group to handle rising water ranges in Bangladesh, particularly within the delta area of Khulna. The drawing is a website plan/map that breaks down the completely different components of the design. It pairs scale-specific roof plans with small axonometrics that additional clarify the sustainability methods current within the proposal. In parallel, discrete annotations akin to a dotted line mark the realm that may survive the flooding, whereas a collection of texts clarify the completely different makes use of of this new colony.
Slovenian Pavilion for EXPO Osaka 2025
By Dekleva Gregoric Architects
Jury Winner, Imaginative and prescient For Supplies, 2025 Imaginative and prescient Awards
The undertaking posed a single query: How can we create a common and uniquely memorable expertise for each EXPO customer whereas considerably lowering our carbon footprint? In response, the architects rented native supplies akin to scaffolding to make use of them as the first construction for the pavilion. With the intention to talk their intent and carbon discount practices, they produced an in depth part displaying the meeting of the completely different supplies they used. Moreover, the drawing is marked with clear annotations, the place completely different fonts and textual content colours clarify the a number of makes use of of the pavilion, the strategic “strikes” for making a sustainable construction, in addition to the completely different design parts.
Baghere Dietary Middle
By Kyle MertensMeyer
Editor’s Alternative Winner, Imaginative and prescient For Localism, , 2025 Imaginative and prescient Awards
Analyzing a second pavilion with environmental sustainability as its main purpose, the Baghere Dietary Middle is designed to handle malnutrition and meals insecurity, appearing as a middle for healthcare, play, and schooling. The architects selected to speak the pavilion’s perform in addition to its passive design methods via a sectional perspective. The drawing exhibits in nice element the assorted supplies used to assemble the construction by way of hatches and tags – all akin to particular parts.
Moreover, fastidiously positioned, coloured arrows clarify how the roof is designed to generate airflow whereas yearly capturing 274,323 gallons of rainwater funneled into deep cisterns holding as much as 76,000 gallons for dry season use. Lastly, extra arrows showcase how woven bamboo mats act as mild cabinets, shading interiors whereas bouncing daylight and permitting airflow.
Metropolis Of 1000 Gardens
By Nidum
Finalist, Imaginative and prescient For Cities, , 2025 Imaginative and prescient Awards
The intention of the proposal is the regeneration of Marsaskala, a quickly rising, former fishing village on a bay alongside the north-eastern coast. This redevelopment technique focuses on reconnecting with the city’s ecological capital, rebuilding group by reinforcing the id of historic quarters and inspiring public participation.
As a result of proposal’s complexity, the architects created a diagram that mixed a topographic drawing with a really distinct annotation type. Three concentric circles encompass the map, every one drawn in a special line kind. In parallel, two ellipses cross the middle of the circle, dividing it into 4 equal components. Textual content follows the annotation strains with a purpose to kind the completely different proposal scopes and provides route to the assorted methods at play.
Autonomous Urbanism: In the direction of a New Transitopia
By Evan Shieh,
Editor’s Alternative Winner, Imaginative and prescient For Transport, 2025 Imaginative and prescient Awards
This idea (and speculative critique) makes use of annotation in probably the most playful approach doable. The proposal is communicated solely via a broadcast ebook monograph and architectural graphic novel that envisions a future metropolis integrating autonomous automobiles into its mobility methods and constructed environments. The ebook makes use of textual content as a tool for narration in addition to dialogue between the characters within the story, whereas within the nook of every web page, a discrete, minimal map marked with navigation symbols and circulation routes is guiding the readers via the speculative metropolis.
Polybotes’ Atlantis
By Nam-Y Nguyen
Finalist, Pc Aided Drawing, 2025 Imaginative and prescient Awards
Polybotes’ Atlantis is a speculative floating analysis and vitality extraction heart anchored south of Nisyros, above an energetic hydrogeothermal vent. Its wider connotation is to suggest a radical view of vitality world-building: decentralized, submerged, and scalable, merging mythology and machine. The drawing will not be notably architectural within the conventional sense, slightly extra paying homage to a maritime part chart. Annotation is used primarily as a navigation gadget, situating the construction within the Aegean sea, whereas a depth scale positions it vertically in relation to the seabed. Lastly, vast brackets clarify the vitality switch all through the construction.
Flatiron & NoMad Streetscape Plan
By OSD (Workplace of Technique + Design)
Jury Winner, Imaginative and prescient For Cities, 2025 Imaginative and prescient Awards
Lastly, the Flatiron & NoMad Streetscape Plan is a holistic plan that promoted pedestrian exercise and provided a lifeline for companies and residents for 110 acres of business, public, and residential house in New York put up the Covid-19 pandemic. The undertaking is efficiently communicated with diagrammatic isometrics that convey the general circulation and purposeful positioning methods of the proposal, utilizing textual content to mark the assorted packages, furnishings and infrastructure interventions.
The votes for the 2025 Imaginative and prescient Awards have been counted! Uncover this yr’s cohort of high architectural representations and join this system e-newsletter for future updates.
Featured Picture: Group 2.0 by UArchitects / Misak Terzibasiyan, Imaginative and prescient Awards, 2025, Editor’s Alternative Winner, Architectural Idea – Imaginative and prescient For Group
