Civic Architects’ LocHal Public Library has won Building of the Year at the World Architecture Festival’s (WAF) World Architecture Awards 2019.
Designed in partnership with Braaksma & Roos Architectenbureau, Inside Outside, Petra Blaise and Mecanoo Architecten, the building is a new urban living room created in a former locomotive shed.
The project is designed to provide a space for people of all ages to read, learn, study, meet and gather.
Historical elements have been retained, including the original train tracks as well as new oak and steel additions.
Judges commended the project for its “fine details and the use of textiles which create the necessary intimacy for the human scale, whilst considering the old steel structure”.
The project triumphed in the ‘Culture – Completed Buildings’ category earlier in the festival and also won ‘Creative Re-Use’ category at the WAF’s sister event, the INSIDE World Festival of Interiors.
The winner of World Interior of the Year at INSIDE, meanwhile, was J.C. Architecture’s JCA Living Lab in Taipei City, Taiwan.
Having initially won INSIDE’s ‘Residential’ category, judges described the project as “A Machine for Green Living: DIY, low-cost and low-tech, yet imaginative in layout, design details and materials as well as being innovative in building and environmental technologies”.