Scan Magazine | Architecture Feature | World Architecture Festival
Södra Skanstull by White Arkitekter, which is up for a WAF award.
The world’s biggest architecture festival – on performance and Scandinavian know-how Ten years have passed since the first ever World Architecture Festival (WAF) took place in Barcelona. Now the biggest international annual festival of its kind, WAF celebrates its anniversary in Berlin by delving into the theme of ‘Performance’ – and firms, speakers and jurors from all over the world will be there to contribute. By Linnea Dunne | Photos: World Architecture Festival
As the world’s architect lovers gather in Berlin for a second year, celebrating the tenth annual World Architecture Festival (WAF), world-class speakers and award-winning firms join them to discuss issues around the theme of ‘Performance’. Like every year, the programme will include speeches, discussions, debates, exhibitions and social events, alongside the prestigious competition and awards ceremony, where some of the world’s best architecture from the year that passed will be celebrated. The 20 | Issue 105 | October 2017
festival, which this year takes place at Arena Berlin, a converted 1920s bus station in Treptow, former East Berlin, is the largest international annual architecture festival in the world. Kicking off the conference on 16 November is a keynote talk about Hamburg’s new, anticipated concert hall, The Elbphilharmonie, with speakers Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron and Charles Jencks, co-founder of Maggie’s Care Centres. The following day, Burning
Man Festival’s art and civic engagement director, Kim Cook, will ponder how tens of thousands of people create their own city with temporary structures for the spectacular event in Nevada’s Black Rock desert. Other renowned speakers include Alison Books, creative director at Alison Brooks Architects; Jacob Kurek, partner at Henning Larsen Architects; and Rafael Viñoly, principal of Rafael Viñoly Architects.
Scandinavian know-how Among this year’s shortlisted creations are 37 Scandinavian projects, including Utopia, Tengbom, Wingårdhs and Marge Arkitekter from Sweden; Rørbæk og Møller Arkitekter, C.F. Møller Architects and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) from Denmark; A-lab and DARK Arkitekter from