For the 4th consecutive year, we are proud to announce the Building of the Year Awards. During the past year we continued to grow, reaching over 280,000 daily visitors and close to 70 million page views per month. We also expanded our ever-growing network of architects on social media: 640,000 fans on Facebook, 105,000 followers on Twitter, 40,000 followers on Instagram and more than 100,000 photos contributed to our Flickr group.
But ArchDaily is more than numbers. The world faces fundamental problems, related to health, energy, climate, and more. And almost all these problems are related to the built environment.
We launched ArchDaily Mexico this year, which joins ArchDaily, ArchDaily Brasil and Plataforma Arquitectura in our mission to improve the quality of life for the 3 billion people who will live in cities in the next 40 years. How can we do this? By providing the inspiration, tools and knowledge to the architects who will face this challenge. By connecting the traditional hot-spots of architectural production with emerging economies (where a lot of innovation is happening). We believe that, in this way, the constant iteration of architecture will accelerate and result in better and faster solutions to the world’s issues.
That’s why the Building of the Year Awards are so important for us. It is a peer-based award process that identifies and recognizes projects with impact. It will be up to you, the architect, to nominate and choose the winners for each category. It will be up to you to be a part of a collective intelligence that will judge more than 2,700 projects – a scope we think is unprecedented in the world of architecture.
For the next 4 weeks, you’ll be in charge of nominating buildings for the shortlist, and then voting for the winners. We will give away iPad Minis and 4th Generation iPads for voters, and will include amazing plotters (courtesy of our friends from HP) for the firms behind the two projects with the most votes.
Rules at a glance: During the nominating stage, each registered user of the My ArchDaily platform will be able to nominate once per day for their favorite projects (published between Jan 1st 2012 and Dec 31st 2012), the counter resets at midnight EST. This stage starts on Jan 15th and ends on Jan 29th at 11:59PM. After this, five projects per category will move into the voting stage, starting January 30th and ending on February 13th. The winner will be announced on February 14th. Start voting here.
You can review last year’s awarded projects in our free iPad App.
Detailed rules after the break:
Official rules
Selected Projects
- All buildings published between Jan 1st 2012 and Dec 31st 2012 under the following categories are eligible for this award.
- Available voting categories are: Houses, Housing, Institutional, Sports, Religious, Interiors, Office Buildings, Healthcare, Museums & Libraries, Hotels & Restaurants, Educational, Refurbishment, Cultural and Public Facilities.
- By submitting their works to ArchDaily, offices agree to enter this competition and to be present on the promotional material.
- Authorship and copyright of each project belong to the offices and architects mentioned on each project’s page.
Timeline
- The nomination process starts on January 15th and ends January 29th, 2013 at 11:59PM EST. - The voting round starts on January 30th and ends February 13th at 11:59PM EST. - The winners will be announced on February 14th, 2013.
Eligibility to vote
- Everyone can register to vote. To do so, you must follow the registration link and complete the required steps to become a registered user (or use your existing My ArchDaily account). - You can only vote for one building per day (the system will count only one vote per user per day). After the system resets at midnight EST, you can vote for a different building. - To register you must use a valid e-mail address. Votes coming from users without a valid e-mail address will be discounted. - Offices and architects are encouraged to promote their works for voting, but no monetary or virtual gift compensation should be offered. You can use the following link: http://www.archdaily.com/building-of-the-year/2012/
Nomination Process
- Starting January 15th, 2013, every registered user will be able to nominate their favorite project of the 14 categories included in the Awards. You can nominate the same or a different project each day throughout the nomination period. - Nomination ends on January 29th at 11:59PM EST, after which the top five projects on each category will go on to the voting round.
Voting Round
- On January 30th, 2013, registered users will be able to vote once per day for their favorite project among the finalists. - After the system resets at midnight EST every day, each registered user can vote again, either for the same project, or a different one of their choice. - The voting round will end February 13th at 11:59PM EST.
Winners Announcement
- Winners of each category will be announced at ArchDaily’s Home Page on February 14th, 2013. - The 5 finalists and the final winners of each category will be announced to the press and will be featured extensively on ArchDaily.com, giving each office worldwide exposure (example of previous press coverage). - Winners of each category will receive a physical award from ArchDaily. - Of all the 14 winners (one per category), the project with the most votes will receive an HP Designjet T520 ePrinter and the project with the 2nd most votes will receive an HP Designjet T120 ePrinter from our sponsor HP. HP will be responsible for shipping the printer to the winning office. - The 5 finalists and the winners of each category can use the respective title for their own purposes.
You could win an iPad or iPad Mini
- We will give away two iPad Minis and twos 4th generation iPads during the awards process. - Every registered user who votes in the First Stage of Voting will automatically enter for a chance to win an iPad Mini; every registered user who votes in the Second Stage of voting will automatically enter for a chance to win an iPad (4th generation). - If you participated in the First Stage of voting, and were the winner of an iPad Mini, you are still eligible to participate in the Second Stage of voting with the possibility of winning an iPad. - The winners of each iPad/iPad Mini will be announced after each round. - ArchDaily will be responsible for shipping the prize to the winners, but won’t cover any additional costs related to local taxes, customs, etc.
Important notes
- All data harvested in the user registration will be kept private and won’t be shared with 3rd parties.
- After each stage, all votes will be checked. Every vote submitted by an invalid registered user will be removed from the final vote counting. Also, all attempts to abuse the system, such as creating dummy accounts, suspicious behavior from individual IPs addresses or any other techniques to generate votes will be logged and reviewed for removal.
- ArchDaily reserves the right to analyze the data during every stage of the Awards in order to ensure a fair process.
- All questions should be sent to David Basulto, director of the awards, through our contact form.
