Every other year, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) selects projects from around the globe which demonstrate excellence in architecture. For this year's awards, sixteen projects have been announced as the winners of the RIBA International Awards for Excellence. The winning projects, which span everything from hospitals to galleries to memorial sites, illustrate several common trends: buildings with several functions to support the local community, those which find solutions to pre-existing environmental problems and those which are sensitive to the historical context of the structure's surroundings.
The awards celebrate the importance of functional and considered architecture, and the ways in which it can both serve and enrich societies. Amongst the winners are a mixture of larger, more established practices and those small practices just starting out.
Amongst the sixteen winning projects, four of them have been shortlisted for two further awards; the winner of the RIBA International Emerging Architect Prize and the RIBA International Prize 2021 will be selected by a Grand Jury, chaired by French architect Odile Decq and revealed in November 2021.
