The World Architecture Festival has revealed the names of the leading architectural experts who will sit on the super-jury at the inaugural event to be held in Barcelona, Spain, from October 22-24, 2008. Recognizing "the best of the best" in design excellence, the super-jury will decide the world's finest building (whether new, restored, rehabilitated or converted) completed between January 1, 2007 and June 20, 2008. The 17 WAF Awards category winners will be in the running for the World Building of the Year.
The super-jury of international architectural experts will be chaired by Lord Norman Foster, with other members including Cecil Balmond, Deputy Chairman of Ove Arup & Partners; Richard Burdett, Centennial Professor in Architecture and Urbanism at the London School of Economics; Robert Stern, Dean of Yale School of Architecture and Suha Ozkan of the XXI Architecture Centre, Ankara.
In order to ensure absolute impartiality, Lord Foster has confirmed that should a building by Foster + Partners, the practice which he founded in 1967, win in its category and therefore be eligible for the World Building of the Year, he will step down from the super-jury.
A public toilet in Texas, two Christian churches in China and a writer's retreat built of local wood in Costa Rica are among the shortlisted projects competing with cutting edge airports, museums and Olympic stadia.
Buildings by such internationally renowned practices as Zaha Hadid Architects, Skidmore Owings Merrill, Kohn Pederson Fox, Nikken Sekkei, Denton Corker Marshall and Foster + Partners as well as smaller practices are represented among the shortlisted projects submitted in 17 different categories.
All shortlisted architects will present their work live to juries and audiences at the World Architecture Festival, over three days, from October 22-24, 2008 at the Centre Convencions Internacional Barcelona (CCIB). And all entries
