Emerging Architecture: this year's AR Awards programme yielded its customary crop of invention, sensitivity and optimism

This is the eighth annual cycle of the AR Awards for Emerging Architecture. Since 1999, the programme has celebrated and nurtured the talent of an emerging generation of architects from all over the world, and is now firmly on the radar of those under 45 striving to make their mark in professional practice. A crucial aspect of the Awards' appeal is their extraordinary and unrivalled geographical diversity. This year, 462 submissions were received from 53 countries and new country 'entrants' included Nepal, Kuwait and the Dominican Republic. Winning schemes are spread over a remarkable range of locations, from the remote Great Sandy Desert in Australia to a Copenhagen beach and a Thai forest. Other premiated projects come from Japan, Bangladesh, Brazil and Norway, among others.

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As always, the jury also reflected a lively mixture of nationalities. Chaired by AR editor Paul Finch, it comprised Benedetta Tagliabue of EMBT Architects (an Italian living and working in Spain), Christine Binswanger of Swiss practice Herzog & de Meuron, Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham (an Englishman based in Tokyo), Kim Nielsen, of Danish firm 3XNielsen and former AR editor Peter Davey (an extremely well travelled Yorkshireman). The liveliness of the jury's conversations owed much to different experiences and world views, but all were agreed on the importance of certain unshakeable assessment criteria: environmental and social responsibility, connectedness to place and appropriate use of materials and technology. Projects had to demonstrate a clear commitment to improving human life and should not merely be preoccupied with form and the simplistic notion of architecture as an autonomous art.

Before we consider the winners, a quick word from our sponsors who, like the jury, embody an enlightened international outlook. This year the award has attracted two new supporters in the form of German furniture manufacturer Wilkhahn and American company Interface Flor, both of whom manifest an admirable commitment to developing ways of making products and manufacturing processes more sustainable. In welcoming these new sponsors we are also enduringly grateful to the distinguished engineers Buro Happold, who celebrated their 30th anniversary earlier this year, for their loyalty and generosity which makes possible not only the awards programme, but also an associated exhibition and series of lectures at the RIBA. Such estimable activities help to spread the Emerging Architecture gospel and carry on the debate begun in these pages. The exhibition opens on 1 December and full details of the spring lecture series can be found in the forthcoming-January issue. Following much animated discourse and a convivial lunch, the jury decided on three first prizewinners who share a prize fund newly increased this year to [pounds sterling]15000. They also made seven highly commended awards and selected a further 16 projects for honourable mentions. All are shown in this issue.

Concern for community

Of the three winning schemes, two were broadly concerned with community--a centre for the treatment of disturbed young people in Hokkaido by Sou Fujimoto Architects (p46) and a school in Bangladesh, by Anna Heringer and Eike Roswag (p40)--but the differences in context and the societies they serve, from prosperous, modern Japan to impoverished, underdeveloped Bangladesh, could not be greater. Though the architecture responded accordingly--the Hokkaido project is a sophisticated exercise in geometrical disposition in order to maximise the provision of personal space, the Bangladesh school an admirable and moving example of how to combine robust, simple technology with local traditions of making and building--in some ways they are two sides of the same coin. One is concerned with healing in an internalised environment (Sou Fujimoto was premiated in last year's awards for a residential care unit for mental health patients) and the other with activating and sustaining a celebratory and public approach to learning in a marginalised community. Both are also examples of architecture transcending programme, budget and fashion to connect more deeply with the human condition.

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The third winner, an eye-catching bridge across Lake Austin in Texas by Miro Rivera Architects (p44), has an altogether lighter touch. Modest materials (mainly steel reinforcing bars) are employed to create a highly poetic structure that mimics and merges with nature. This approach--responsive and respectful but with its own distinct architectural integrity--found an echo in other projects, such as a dramatic viewing platform in a Norwegian fjord by Todd Saunders and Tommie Wilhelmsen (p86) and the remarkable Windshape by nArchitects (p70), an elaborate tensile construction that billows lightly above the roofscape of Lacoste.

For obvious reasons, it is usually harder for younger architects to get the chance to tackle projects of substantial scale. So it was particularly pleasing when projects could be seen to have progressed beyond the familiar inventory of follies, houses and noodle bars which, though delightful, tend to dominate submissions. Schemes such as Emre Arolat's new airport terminal for Dalaman (Turkey's third largest airport) (p52) and +Arch's new headquarters and showroom for Dolce & Gabbana in Milan (p90) were appropriately ambitious in scale and confident in execution. Both showed their young designers more than capable of thinking through the requirements for very large, complex projects.