A’ Design Award Call for Entries: What Architects and Interior Designers Should Weigh Before September 30

Most practices already have the project that could win something. What they don’t have is the hour it takes to write up the constraint that shaped it, crop the images properly, and hit submit. The A’ Design Award’s regular submission deadline falls on September 30, which leaves about two weeks to fix that. If your portfolio is ready, nominate your design here.

What the Award Is, and Who Actually Scores Your Entry

Running since 2008, the A’ Design Award is an international, juried, academic prize covering products, projects, services, and buildings. Its stated purpose is philanthropic rather than commercial: promote work that improves how people live, and give the designers behind it a platform. The organizers describe winner publicity as a 188-layer PR ecosystem, with eligible laureates featured across 138+ publications in more than 108 countries and languages. A one-page overview sits at whatisadesignaward.com; the fuller version is on the award page.

Judging is where the credibility either exists or doesn’t. Entries are evaluated by an international jury panel of academics, design professionals, and press members, 312 of them this period, organized into four groups so that scholarship, practice, commercial viability, and public relevance each get a vote on the same entry. Designer names, brands, and countries of origin are concealed during review. Jurors score in isolation without seeing each other’s numbers, and Z-scores calibrate between strict and generous scorers. The full panel is on the jury page, the scoring logic in the published methodology. One thing to know before paying anything: registration, upload, and a preliminary evaluation score are free, so you can see how a submission reads to the system before committing.

Six Categories That Fit a Built-Environment Portfolio

• Architecture, Building and Structure Design — new builds, adaptive reuse, and structures of any scale, clustered under the Good Architecture Design Award
• Interior Space and Exhibition Design — residential, hospitality, retail, and temporary exhibition environments
• Furniture Design — pieces and collections, including custom work made for a specific project (Good Product Design Award)
• Landscape Planning and Garden Design — site strategy, planting, and the ground plane you spent six months negotiating
• Architectural Lighting — fixed lighting schemes as distinct from standalone fixtures
• Sustainable Products, Projects and Green Design — where an envelope or material decision is the actual story

A detail that matters for anyone working across both disciplines: architecture and interiors are separate categories, so a house with an equally strong interior can be nominated in each and judged by the criteria that suit it. Practices with a product arm, a signage program, or a service model should also look at the Good Industrial Design, Good Communication Design, Good Service Design, and Good Fashion Design clusters. Further categories are available at the complete category list.

What the 2025–2026 Winners Actually Look Like

Before you decide whether your work belongs here, look at what cleared the bar last period. These are real laureates from the built-environment categories:

Park1538 Gwangyang Cultural Facility — Unsangdong Architects and Posco A&C — Platinum, Architecture

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Changchun Aerospace Expo Comprehensive Cultural Building — Cheng Sun, Dagang Qu, and Xi Huang, Harbin Institute of Technology — Golden

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King Boat Cultural Museum — C.M. Chao Architect & Planners with Pingtung County Government — Golden

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The Taipei Weather Station Meteorological Instruments Center — IMO Architecture + Design with JC Cheng Associates — Golden

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Higeta Building Headquarters Office — Nobuaki Miyashita — Golden

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PW Senrichuo Senior Residence — UDS Ltd. — Golden

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Villa 49 Residential House — Kris Lin International Design — Golden

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L Company Guest House — Keiji Harada, Harada Keiji Design Office — Golden

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Terminal 2, Guwahati International Airport — Nuru Karim for Adani Airport Holdings — Silver

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Firstbank of Nigeria Headquarters — Marwan Zgheib, MZ Architects — Silver

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Tramdepot Bern Infrastructure — Penzel Valier — Silver

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Learning Landscape Primary School — People’s Architecture Office — Silver

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Ascending Ground Community Library — Hao Zhong — Silver

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UNESCO Ancient Theatre Revitalization — LYT-X Studio — Silver

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Barn Quartet Single Family House — Katarzyna Starzyk — Silver

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Casa Golf Residential House — David Guerra — Silver

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Sumu Yakushima Residence — Tsukasa Ono, tono Inc. — Bronze

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The Cuban Bar Cabinet — Uslu Design Studio — Golden, Furniture

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GGO Biomorphic Lobby Furniture — Yoko Komatsu and Hajime Tokura, Grand Green Osaka JV Group — Golden, Furniture

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Birdcage Chair — Masuo Fujimura, Fujimura Design Studio — Golden, Furniture

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Two things stand out across the full roster. Japanese, Taiwanese, and Chinese practices are heavily represented, so a US entry competes in a genuinely international field rather than a regional one. And a single-family house sits in the same tier as an international airport terminal, which tells you the criteria reward the quality of a design decision over the size of a budget. Browse the rest at awardeddesigns.com or the winners list.

Ten Things a Win Actually Gets You

1. Physical exhibition at MOOD, the Museum of Outstanding Design in Italy
2. Inclusion in the annual yearbook, in print
3. An extensive PR campaign — press release written and distributed, communicated to magazines and blogs
4. Inclusion in the World Design Rankings, plus designer and brand rankings
5. Gala-night invitation to La Notte Premio A’, the black-tie ceremony where the networking actually happens
6. The A’ trophy, produced in 3D-printed metal
7. The winner logo and Prime Design Mark, licensed for use on your products, packaging, and marketing
8. A jury score sheet with feedback notes — useful whether or not the result goes your way
9. Translation into 100+ languages and content syndication through the award’s distribution network
10. A Proof of Creation document, plus a no-further-fees policy for eligible Professional, Digital, and Vision Edition laureates

The full contents are listed in the winners’ pack.

The Part the Press Release Skips

Registration, upload, and the preliminary score cost nothing. Nomination does. The fee is calculated from four variables: account type, preliminary score, entry period, and entry type. The same project costs less the earlier you enter it, which is the real argument for the September 30 date.

Then there’s the time. The competition standardizes image formats and text structure to reduce presentation bias, which is fair, but it also means a rushed submission gets compared against ones where someone spent a full day on the image sequence and the written rationale. Architecture and Furniture also run deep, with dozens of laureates per period spread across Platinum, Golden, Silver, Bronze, and standard A’ levels. “A’ Design Award Winner” covers a wide band, so check which tier a claim refers to, including your own when you write the press release.

And the obvious one: an award is a credibility signal, not a client pipeline. It shortens the conversation with a prospect who has never heard of you. It doesn’t start that conversation.

Enter, or Don’t — But Decide Before the 30th

Regular submissions close September 30. Results go public on May 1, and we’ll be featuring a selection of the winners here at Futurist Architecture the same day, with particular attention to the architecture and interiors categories. If you want your work in that post, the entry point is the registration page.

So: which project in your archive would you actually want 312 strangers to score blind?

FAQs

How much does it cost to enter the A’ Design Award?
Creating an account, uploading your work, and receiving a preliminary evaluation score are free. A nomination processing fee applies if you proceed, calculated from your account type, preliminary score, entry period, and entry type. For eligible Professional, Digital, and Vision Edition laureates there are no further fees afterward, so the winners’ services are covered.

Can I submit an unbuilt or conceptual architecture project?
Yes. Built projects, finished works, and products in production are accepted alongside unbuilt projects, prototypes, and concepts, depending on the category. There are no date restrictions either, and a dedicated category exists for work released more than ten years ago.

When are A’ Design Award results announced?
Results are published to the public on May 1. Designers are notified first, with a four-month window to file for design protection before wider publication.