2026 Architecture MasterPrize Winners: Snøhetta Takes Design of the Year

The Architecture MasterPrize (AMP) announced its 2026 winners in Los Angeles on October 19, 2026. Now in its eleventh edition, the program received thousands of projects, firms and products from 92 countries, up from 72 in 2025, across four programs: Architectural Design, Firm of the Year, Architectural Products and Architectural Photography.

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An international jury of practicing architects, designers, critics and academics reviewed work in nearly fifty categories covering architecture, interior design and landscape architecture. Entries are judged on design excellence, originality, function and sustainability. The highest-ranked project in each category receives the Best of Best distinction, and the jury chooses the year’s top titles and the Firm of the Year awards from that group. For last year’s results, see our 2025 Architecture MasterPrize winners.

The 2026 Design of the Year Winners

Architectural Design of the Year: Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library by Snøhetta

The top honor of the year goes to Snøhetta for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota. The building sits on a bluff edge in the Badlands and slopes down to meet the ground, with a planted roof that visitors can walk across and that opens toward Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Architects, landscape architects and ecologists worked on the site and the building as one piece. Our project feature on the library looks at the design in more detail.

Interior Design of the Year: OAKV by Atelier Carle

Montreal practice Atelier Carle (Alain Carle) takes the interior title with OAKV, a medical clinic in Oakville, Canada, that breaks with the usual clinic layout. One skylight, a single tall hall and extensive walnut transform what was a dark office unit. The award announcement calls it the year’s most composed interior.

Landscape Design of the Year: Benjakitti Forest Park

Arsomsilp Community and Environmental Architect and Turenscape receive the landscape title for Benjakitti Forest Park in central Bangkok, Thailand. The park occupies a former tobacco factory site and combines wetlands that hold monsoon rain, a newly planted urban forest and skywalks that make the whole site accessible to the public.

Sustainable Design of the Year: Expansion Headquarter Windkraft Simonsfeld AG

Austrian practice Juri Troy ZT GmbH wins the sustainability title with a timber-framed office extension for Windkraft Simonsfeld, a wind-energy company. The extension is built around a rammed-clay core.

“This year’s top awards went to a presidential library that disappears into its landscape, a timber office for a wind-energy company and a park that cleans Bangkok’s water. They are very different buildings with one thing in common: each gives something back to the place it stands in. That entries now arrive from more than eighty countries tells us the program has become a genuine point of reference for practices of every size.”

David Teravagimov, Managing Director of the Architecture MasterPrize

Firm of the Year Awards

• Architectural Firm of the Year: KPF (Kohn Pedersen Fox), United States
• Interior Design Firm of the Year: PMT Partners, China
• Landscape and Urban Design Firm of the Year: PLACE, United States

Best of Best Highlights

Best of Best goes to the top-ranked project in each category. The projects below are among this year’s recipients named in the announcement.

New Grand Palais, Paris

French practice Chatillon Architectes receives the Best of Best in Heritage Architecture for its work on the New Grand Palais in Paris.

Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation

Designed by modus studio with Grafton Architects for the University of Arkansas, the center wins in Institutional Architecture.

Techo International Airport, Phnom Penh

Foster + Partners and China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute are recognized in Transportation for the airport in Phnom Penh.

Xi’an International Football Centre

Zaha Hadid Architects takes the Best of Best in Recreational Architecture for the football stadium in Xi’an.

Centro Direzionale Metro Station, Naples

Spanish practice Miralles Tagliabue EMBT is recognized in Transportation for the Centro Direzionale Metro Station in Naples; the announcement also lists its Parco del Mare in Rimini among the winners.

Media Library and Music School in Sarlat-la-Canéda

French practice Dominique Coulon & Associés wins in Cultural Architecture with a combined media library and music school.

Nanchang Grand Theatre

Finnish practice PES-Architects also receives a Best of Best in Cultural Architecture, for the Nanchang Grand Theatre.

Robert Mondavi Winery, Napa Valley

Aidlin Darling Design, the design architect, and BAR Architects & Interiors, the architect of record, win in Hospitality Architecture for the winery in Napa Valley.

Cantina Contramar, Las Vegas

Frida Escobedo Studio wins in Hospitality Interior with Cantina Contramar, the first United States location of the Mexico City restaurant.

Watertown Exploratory Labs

US practice Elkus Manfredi Architects is recognized in Interior, Public Spaces for Watertown Exploratory Labs (WELL).

Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport Terminal 3

GDAD with Artelia Airports also wins in Interior, Public Spaces for Terminal 3 at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in China.

TCC DAKA Renewable Resource Recycling Center, Taiwan

KPF, this year’s Architectural Firm of the Year, takes the Best of Best in Mixed Use Architecture for the recycling center in Taiwan.

Data Center ETH Zurich

Swiss practice Penzel Valier wins in Infrastructure with a data center for ETH Zurich.

Other Best of Best winners in the 2026 press kit include OASIS by Atelier Stéphane Fernandez (Residential Architecture, Multi Unit), Torpedo Factory and Wirra Birra Park, Sub Base Platypus by Turf Design Studio (Urban Design), Quinta de Adorigo Winery by Atelier Sérgio Rebelo (Agricultural Buildings), IXCAMPUS for Research and Innovation by Baumschlager Eberle Architekten (Green Architecture) and Heinemann House by FGMF (Houses Interior).

Winners From Leading Practices

The category winners also include work by several of the world’s best-known offices:

• Ateliers Jean Nouvel with Ribas & Ribas Arquitectos and Jordi Sala: La Querola d’Ordino, Andorra
• Aedas: Hong Kong International Airport Terminal 2 and Changsha Jinmao Tower
• Ennead Architects: ByteDance Houhai Center, Shenzhen
• ACPV Architects Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel: No. 8 Castle Road, Hong Kong
• Pickard Chilton with Nihon Sekkei and Takenaka: Tokyo Midtown Yaesu
• KPF: TP-Link LXD and Westlake 66
• HASSELL with iredale pedersen hook: Gibbon Crossing at Perth Zoo

Stantec, Benthem Crouwel and Takenaka Corporation are among the other category winners.

Architectural Photography Awards

Derry Ainsworth is the Exterior Architectural Photographer of the Year for Hong Kong Modern Mosaics, a series of tightly framed façades that turn the city’s towers into patterns. Tzu Chin Yu of TCY Studio, Taiwan, is the Interior Architectural Photographer of the Year for a study of Coelacanth K&H Architects’ Kanazawa Umimirai Library.

Best of Best honors in photography also go to:

• Kelvin Yuen, for a storm-lit image of Hong Kong’s Tsing Ma Bridge
• SARAB, for One Zaabeel in Dubai
• Victor Romero, for The Shape of Modern China
• shum.stills, for I. M. Pei’s Suzhou Museum
• Alex Fradkin, for Fogo Island Inn
• Ingo Rasp, for his documentation of the Stuttgart 21 rail project

2026 Winners Celebration at the Guggenheim Bilbao

The Architecture MasterPrize gala returns to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao on Tuesday, November 24, 2026, in partnership with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The evening on the bank of the Nervión River celebrates the 2025/26 top winners. The full list of 2026 winners and the project galleries are on the Architecture MasterPrize winners page.