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Congratulations to the winners of The Architectural Photography Awards 2021. For the first time we have two winners per category. The winners selected by our jury and the winners selected by the delegates of the World Architecture Festival (WAF).
Liu Xinghao
in Sense of Place
Holidaying during the Covid-19 pandemic (look for longer to see the people in masks) in the shadow of Raffles City Chongqing China by Safdie Architects.
The overall winner of The Architectural Photography Awards 2021 is chosen from the four main categories. There is a separate portfolio prize, and a mobile photography category prize.
Images in ‘Exterior’ should show the outside of a building. Consider the form of that building, and consider the materials and the quality of light. What is special about it?
Images in ‘Interior’ should show the inside of a building, effectively communicating the space. Interiors are made up of a series of spaces, punctuated by light and utilised for a purpose.
The ‘Sense of Place’ category should show buildings or spaces in their wider context and environment. Illustrate if the building blends or jars with its surroundings. Is the building typical of its location? Is the building in an atmosphere, a mist or rain?
‘Buildings in Use’ images should show occupied buildings and populated exteriors. Each building has a specific purpose and creates areas of activity. These images should combine the activity with the architecture and not distract from it.
This year's portfolio and mobile photography categories have a total of $1250 USD in cash prizes to win, however they do not count towards the overall award.
Photo: Richard Bryant, Smithsonian Kogod Courtyard, Washington USA / Architect: Foster + Partners
The Architectural Photography Awards 2021 portfolio category celebrates the architecture of buildings with history, by showing how an old building has been integrated with a new build. The judges will be assessing the most powerful collectives – enter a minimum of four and maximum of six images for your portfolio.
Photo: Ryan NgMichael Lassman, Oasis House Australia; 2019 WAF Commended project by CplusC Architectural Workshop
Images must be taken on a mobile device – phone or tablet.
This offers a huge range and scale of subject matter: from architect-designed solutions to contributions by individuals, business or local authorities, such as hanging baskets, balconies, front gardens, green roofs and walls, pocket parks, roundabouts and more.
There are three awards in the competition – the Overall award, the Portfolio category award, and the Mobile category award – with two winners in each.
In the overall award, the jury's chosen winner will take home $2,000, and the WAF delegates' winner will receive $1,000.
The jury's portfolio winner will receive $750, and the WAF delegates' portfolio winner will win $250.
In the mobile category, the jury's favourite will win $150, with $100 going to the delegates' choice.
The awards will have exposure via the World Architecture Festival. The format is yet to be established owing to uncertainty of international COVID-19 regulations.
The winners will be announced during The World Architecture Festival, Lisbon, the evening of Friday 3rd December 2021.
Entries in The Architectural Photography Awards 2021 will be reviewed by a panel of architectural photography experts. More judges will be added to the panel soon, including the winner of the 2019 Architectural Photography Awards, Laurian Ghinitoiu.
Katy leads Foster + Partners’ Communications team, overseeing all aspects of the practice’s communications activity including PR and exhibitions, marketing, graphics, image archive, book and journal libraries and research. After gaining a degree in Communication Design in 1981 she joined the practice in the same year heading the communications team from 1983 when it started to enjoy global recognition. She was made partner in 2004, and senior partner in 2017.
The 1980s marked a key change in the visibility of the architect to the general public. Richard Bryant was the one photographer present to interpret the work of rising stars of architecture and to disseminate his pictures globally. Working around the world with architects such as Tadao Ando, Foster + Partners, Frank Gehry, von Gerkan Marg, Zaha Hadid, Richard Meier, Stirling & Wilford and Richard Rogers. Richard was the first photographer of architecture to be awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In recent years Richard's clients have included Pentagram and extended to international brands including Armani, Bulgari and Gucci.
Marco is an architect specialised in history and theory of architecture. His main interests are architectural research, education for public good and relationships between architects and photographers. He was awarded an international fellowship by the European Commission for The Interactive Vision between Architecture and Photography held at the University of Cambridge. In 2018 Marco led a research project and an exhibition at the Vittoriano (Rome) Eternal City: Rome in the Photographs Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, which attracted more than 200,000 visitors. Recently he conceived and let the competition to design the new Liverpool School of Architecture (LSA) awarded to O'Donnell + Tuomey. He is a faculty member of the British School at Rome (Humanities), visiting lecturer at the University of Cambridge and series editor for Architectural Photography for the publisher Lund Humphries (London).
Photo: Laurian Ghinitoiu / Architect: Bjarke Ingels Group
View the resultsPhoto: Pawel Paniczko / Architect: Atelier Deshaus
View the resultsPhoto: Terrence Zhang / Architect: Atelier Li Xinggang
View contestThere are 6 categories to enter:
Exterior
Interior
Sense of Place
Buildings in Use
Portfolio – Building with History
Mobile – Greening the City
The Architectural Photography Awards 2021 is an international award, and welcomes photographers of all nationalities.
Any entrant under 18 on the date when they enter must gain the permission of a parent or guardian to enter the competition. People under the age of 13 are not permitted to register on the Photocrowd platform and therefore unfortunately are not able to enter the Architectural Photography Awards 2021.
Awards open - w/c 12th July 2021. The portfolio category, 'Building with History' will open in late July.
Submissions close - 5th September 2021
Shortlists announced - w/c 11th October 2021. Please note that the portfolio category shortlist will not be visible on Photocrowd until after the final results are announced.
Winner announced - 3rd December 2021
Note: in these uncertain times many aspects of the APA and WAF may be subject to change.
All photographers can enter up to 6 images in each of the 6 categories.
In the ‘Portfolio – Building With History’ category, there is a minimum requirement of 4 (four) images, maximum 6 (six) images.
The cost is based on the number of images you want to enter. Entries are bought in advance and can then be used at any time before midnight (UTC+1) on 5th September 2021. The following entry bundles are available, and entries can be used across any of the 6 categories:
1 image - £8 (£8 per image)
6 images - £30 (£5 per image)
36 images - £72 (£2 per image)
A discount on the price of entry bundles of 10%, 20% or 30% is available for Photocrowd Challenger, Pro or Master subscribers, respectively. Find out more about Photocrowd subscriptions here.
Multiple bundles can be purchased (eg. 3 x 1 image bundles = 3 total entries) but the maximum number of entries that can be made across all 6 categories is 36 (6 images per category).
There are three awards in the competition – the Overall award, the Portfolio category award, and the Mobile category award – with two winners in each.
One of the winners in each award will be selected by the Architectural Photography Awards jury.
The second winner in each award will be voted for by delegates of the World Architecture Festival (WAF), who will vote on images in a shortlist decided by the judging panel.
WAF will potentially be taking place in Lisbon on 1-3 December 2021. The Awards will have exposure via the World Architecture Festival. The format is yet to be established owing to uncertainty over international Covid regulations.
Images should be saved as jpegs at the highest quality available, with a colour profile attached. Either the RGB or sRGB colour profiles are recommended. Digital scans from film are also eligible providing they meet these technical guidelines.
It is strongly advised that you upload the largest file size that you have available. Images will be viewed at 100% by the judges, and larger file sizes will therefore be at an advantage. Whilst no image sizes will be rejected at upload, winning images may be required to be printed, and so must be of sufficient quality to allow this. As a minimum it is advised that images measure at least 2,500 pixels on the shortest side after any cropping. Where images submitted are smaller than this, it will be assumed that this is the largest image size available to the photographer, and will affect that image’s chances of winning.
There are Photoshop and other image software tutorials online that show you how to best resize an image.
We advise photographers to include as detailed a description as possible of their work during the upload process, including (when known) the name of the architect of the building(s) in the shot. This is a great way to tell a story or other interesting facts about your image, and the judges will be able to read this while rating to give them insight into the image.
It is also advised to include a title for all submitted images, and these titles will be presented alongside winning images on the Awards website and in press releases and elsewhere.
We would advise all entrants to add copyright information in the metadata of all submissions.
Images exhibiting watermarks, copyright or authorship information or other information overlaid over the image will not be considered by the judging panel.
Yes, images can certainly be retouched, but it is critical to the integrity of the awards that entries must not deceive the viewer or attempt to disguise or misrepresent the reality of a scene. Therefore some restrictions on the use of digital manipulation of images apply.
Images submitted to the Architectural Photography Awards 2021 must essentially show the scene and subjects as they were shot and must not combine multiple different elements into one frame. Entries that use fundamentally different subjects or backgrounds brought together into one image are not allowed, even if you have shot all the components yourself.
Examples of what is not allowed:
- the use of sky replacement packs and software
- incorporating other elements into a scene that were not in the original shot, including (but not limited to) people, animals and other objects.
Photographers may make reasonable use of digital darkroom techniques which enhance quality but do not distort the photograph. Major alterations should be avoided, although the cloning out/removal of elements in an image is allowed, so long as this does not fundamentally change the likely interpretation of the scene.
Adjustment to levels, curves, colour balance, colour saturation, dodging and burning, selective adjustments using layers and blemish and dust spot removal are all examples of acceptable manipulation.
You may crop your image in the interests of composition, correcting horizons, etc. but your cropped image must be at least 2,500 pixels on the shortest side as we will ask for files at least this size should your image win and be selected for any printed material or exhibition coming out of the awards.
Excessive sharpening, noise reduction and color saturation techniques should be avoided. We appreciate that entrants will attempt to prepare their entries to optimise appearance and appeal on screen, and this may include these techniques.
Excessive use of any or all of them can result in an entry that will be unsuitable for printed media and therefore become invalid as a result.
A copy of the original camera file and a screengrab of your indexing software showing other images from the same shoot may be requested for all images that are included in the shortlist for each category. We reserve the right to eliminate entries where such a request is ignored or where it is suspected that the rules have been infringed.
Yes, the same image can be entered into multiple categories, if you consider that it fits the brief for each category you enter it into.
Each entry to a category counts as one entry, for the purposes of payment.
To enter the ‘Portfolio - Building with History’ category you must submit between 4 and 6 images, which will then be judged as a series, rather than as single images. It is up to each entrant whether they enter 4, 5 or 6 images to this category. Entering more images will not necessarily increase your chances of winning.
Each photographer can enter the awards once, using one Photocrowd account. More than one image bundle can be purchased, but there is a maximum of 36 images that can be entered by each photographer – 6 into each of the 6 categories.
All entries must have been taken in the last 5 years. Any images shot before 5th July 2016 are not eligible.
No images that were shortlisted or won a prize in a previous Architectural Photography Awards can be entered into the Architectural Photography Awards 2021. Images that were not shortlisted in previous years can be re-entered in 2021 if the photographer wishes to do so.
No, if your photo has previously won or been commended in a photo award, it is not eligible in The Architectural Photography Awards. This does not include standard Photocrowd contests.
If the awards are still open for entries then at any time you can remove an entered image and enter a different one in its place. Once the deadline for entries has passed, and judging is underway, images cannot be removed or swapped out for other images.
Yes, there’s a simple signup process to register on Photocrowd, which will then give you full access to The Architectural Photography Awards.
Yes, images can be taken on any device capable of producing a digital image of sufficient size for entry. For full guidelines on minimum image requirements see above - ‘How should I prepare my images for submission?’
Only images taken on a mobile phone or tablet can be entered into the ‘Mobile - Greening the City’ category.
No, The Architectural Photography Awards is an international competition and you may enter photographs taken anywhere in the world.
The Architectural Photography Awards 2021 competition is hosted on Photocrowd.com, and Photocrowd’s Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy apply.
In addition please note the following in relation to the Architectural Photography Awards 2021:
The competition promoter is The Architectural Photography Awards.
The competition is global and open to people of all ages and nationalities.
Any entrant under 18 when they enter the competition must gain the permission of a parent or guardian to do so. People under the age of 13 are not permitted to register on the Photocrowd platform.
It is the responsibility of each entrant (or the entrant's parent or guardian) to ensure that they have read and will abide by these rules and Photocrowd’s terms and conditions. By submitting an entry, each entrant (or the entrant's parent or guardian) agrees to these rules, that their entry complies with these rules, and that they will be liable to the Promoter and their licensees in respect of any damages or losses incurred as a breach of the rules.
Employees or agents of Photocrowd, their families or other persons connected with this promotion (excluding the sponsors) are not eligible to enter.
Proof of eligibility must be provided upon request. Use of a false name or other false details will result in disqualification.
All entries must be submitted via the Photocrowd online platform. No entries will be accepted by email or post.
Images (including similar images taken from the same series of photographs) that have previously won a national or international photography award (including winner, runner-up or highly commended) or are entered into a competition where the results are pending, are not eligible for entry. This excludes standard Photocrowd contests.
All images should be the result of a single image. Photographers may make reasonable use of digital darkroom techniques which enhance quality but do not distort the photograph. Any major alterations should be avoided.
Full guidelines on permissible image sizes and types, and what image manipulation and retouching is allowed are provided in the FAQs.
The Promoter reserves the right to request from the entrant a copy of the original camera file and a screengrab of their editing software showing other images from the same shoot, and to eliminate entries where such a request is ignored or where it is suspected that the rules have been infringed.
The Promoter and Photocrowd reserve the right, in their sole discretion, to disqualify or remove any entry that does not comply with the rules or the spirit of the awards, at any stage of the awards.
Please refer to the prizing page for details of prizes.
Once the entry period has closed, the panel of judges will convene to determine their shortlist.
The expert-judged shortlists will be announced in the week of 11th October 2021.
The overall Award, runners up, and the winners of the portfolio category and mobile category, will be judged from the shortlist by a) the panel Judges and b) delegates of the WAF. The Award winners will be announced at The World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Lisbon on Friday 3rd December 2021. Please note that in these uncertain times, details of WAF may be subject to change.
All imagery MUST be the exclusive work of the submitting photographer and may not include any element that is the copyright of another. The Copyright for each image entered will remain with the submitting photographer. By entering the Competition and submitting your photograph(s), you hereby grant the Promoter, its sponsors and their hosting partner Photocrowd a non-exclusive, irrevocable license to use your photograph(s) for any purpose connected with the Competition, including (but not limited to), promoting the Competition within printed and online media, the inclusion within printed and digital versions of any Competition book, the inclusion within printed and digital versions of any Competition calendar or other merchandise, display at exhibitions, use in press, promotional and marketing materials, social media networks and for the promotion of any future photographic competition in both print and online media.
You agree to participate in related publicity and to the use of Your name and likeness for the purposes of advertising, promotion and publicity without additional compensation.
The promoter and Photocrowd are excluded from liability for any loss, damage or injury which might occur to any of the winners arising from their acceptance of the prizes. Entrants indemnify the Promoter for all liabilities, including legal costs, in relation to any action or complaint taken by any third party against the Promoter in relation to the entrant’s photograph(s).
The promoter and Photocrowd reserve the right to cancel this Competition, in which case any entry fees paid will be refunded.
The promoter and Photocrowd reserve the right to amend these Terms and Conditions. These Terms and Conditions shall be governed by English law. When a photograph is submitted and the entry date has passed, the entry cannot be changed or withdrawn. No refunds will be given. Entry to the Awards shall be deemed full and unconditional acceptance of the terms & conditions.
