2019 AZ Awards: Zaha Hadid Architects’ 520 West 28th awarded in the Residential Architecture category

 

2019 AZ Awards: Winning projects

520 West 28th has won the AZ Award 2019 in the Residential Architecture (multi-unit) category. This rare project is art as well as architecture.

Launched in 2011 by AZURE magazine, the AZ Awards recognise excellence and innovation in design, and showcases the world’s best projects, products and ideas.

Azure revealed the 20 winners of the 2019 AZ Awards, which represent exceptional work being created in global architecture and design today. Winning projects include Zaha Hadid Architects’ low-rise residential building on the High Line in New York City, an art museum built into the sand dunes of coastal China and an ingenious folding faucet.

The 68 finalists arrived from as far away as Belgium, Mexico and Peru, and the 20 winners took home an AZ Awards trophy designed by Matt Carr, one of the 2019 jurors and vice president of design at international product design powerhouse Umbra.” The AZ Awards were handed out at an unforgettable gala at the Evergreen Brick Works where the Guest of Honour was the legendary landscape architect Martha Schwartz,” said azuremagazine.

Within an established community of over 350 art galleries that has seen the High Line’s transformation from abandoned freight rail line to public park, 520 West 28th embodies a commitment to uphold the distinctive character of its neighborhood; creating a building with its own architectural presence, yet very much of its surroundings.

There is a powerful urban dynamic between the streets of New York and the High Line, a layered civic realm that has developed over generations and in many iterations. 520 West 28th conveys this contextual relationship, applying new ideas and concepts to create the latest evolution of the site’s rich history.

The split levels of the design define varied living spaces and echo the multiple layers of civic space on 28th Street and the High Line.

These split levels are expressed within the interlocking chevrons of 520 West 28th’s hand-crafted steel façade which carries the spirit of Chelsea’s industrial past; its detailed workmanship continues the venerable tradition within New York’s historic architecture of enhancing the public realm.

Designed and constructed with a practiced understanding of material qualities and manufacturing techniques, the façade conveys the attention to detail evident throughout 520 West 28th—brushed and tinted by hand to resonate with the adjacent structures of the High Line and its neighborhood.

This year, the AZ Awards received 1,175 submissions from 50 countries. To narrow down this unprecedented number of entries to a shortlist of 68 finalists, Azure Magazine gathered together a select jury of international experts in March at Azure’s offices in Toronto.

 

The jury members were:

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, co-founder of both the architectural firm Morphosis and the leading architecture school SCI-Arc;

Pat Hanson, architect and founding partner of Toronto firm gh3*;

Matt Carr, vice president of design at Umbra; renowned interior designer Johnson Chou; and Stefano Pujatti, director of ElasticoSPA, an architecture studio with offices in Italy and Canada.

See all the winners of 2019.