Six impressive developments from around the world have been selected as winners of the 2023 ULI Global Awards for Excellence. This year’s winners include two from North America, two from Europe, and two from Asia Pacific.
ULI began the Awards for Excellence program in 1979 to recognize truly superior development efforts in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Winning projects represent the highest standards of achievement in the land use profession.
In 2023, 128 projects and programs were submitted across the three ULI regions – the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Of those submissions, 23 were named as winners across the regions and were then considered as global finalists. From this impressive field, the jury ultimately selected the six winners. More information on each of the finalists can be found here: Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Additionally, more information about the global competition is available at: uli.org/gae.
The 2023 ULI Global Awards for Excellence winners are:
• Aurora Bridge Bioswales, Seattle, Washington, United States. Developers: Phase 1: CoU, LLC /HessCallahanGrey Group; HAL Real Estate; Clean Lake Union LLC, Phase 2: CoU, LLC / HessCallahanGrey Group; Spear Street Capital; Clean Lake Union LLC, Phase 3: Clean Lake Union LLC; The Boeing Group; The State of Washington. Designers: Weber Thompson; kpff.
• Ironworks, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Developer: Conwest Developments. Designer: Taylor Kurtz Architecture + Design.
• National University of Singapore (NUS) Buildings, Developer: National University of Singapore. Designers: SDE4: Serie + Multiply Consultants Pte Ltd with Surbana Jurong Consultants Pte Ltd, SDE1 & 3: NUS College of Design and Engineering with CPG Consultants Pte Ltd.
• Nightingale Village, Melbourne, Australia. Developer: Duckett Acquisition Collective Pty Ltd. Designers: Architecture architecture; Austin Maynard Architects; Breathe; Clare Cousins Architects; Hayball; Kennedy Nolan.
• Restoration and Modernization of Mercado do Bolhão, Porto, Portugal. Developer: GO Porto – Gestão e Obras do Porto, EM. Designer: Nuno Valentim, Arquitectura, Lda.
• Scholen van Morgen “Schools of Tomorrow”, Flanders, Belgium. Developer: AG Real Estate. Designers:72 Architectural teams, both national and international (UK, Ireland, Germany, The Netherlands).
The Global Awards for Excellence are open to projects and programs in the three ULI regions that are substantially complete, financially viable, and in stabilized operation. The program evaluates submissions on overall excellence, including achievements in marketplace acceptance, design, planning, technology, amenities, economic impact, management, community engagement, innovation, and sustainability, among others.
The winners were selected by a multidisciplinary jury of nine ULI members who had served on their respective regional juries. The jurors represent a range of real estate and land use expertise, including development, finance, planning, urban design, architecture, and landscape architecture.
“This year’s finalists across the three regions included a wide breadth of diversity of building types and sizes, as well as for profit and non-profit, but what ties them all together, beyond design excellence, is their contribution to their community vibrancy and spirit,” said Albert Chan, jury chair and Director of Development Planning and Design, and Chief Sustainability Officer, Shui On Land (SOL) Shanghai, China. “Each finalist demonstrated pioneering efforts in land use that are worthy of emulation by other developers, and the global winners exhibited the highest degree of alignment with the award criteria, each in their own creative ways. Moreover, the winners often pushed the envelope of sustainable development and carbon net-zero technologies—I’m happy the ULI Global Award for Excellence is playing a part in finding innovative ways to solve this global environmental issue.”
In addition to Chan, the 2023 ULI Global Awards for Excellence jury members are Clarissa Alfrink, managing director, UNStudio Germany, Frankfurt, Germany; Sigrid Duhamel, chairwoman of the board, Deepki, Paris, France; Andrew Garrett, senior principal, real estate, IMCO (Ontario Pensions), Toronto, ON, Canada; Lucia Garsys, senior advisor for community partnerships, Hillsborough County, Florida, Tampa, Florida; Gordon Hatton, vice president, head of development and delivery, Colt Data Centre Service, Tokyo, Japan; Sophie Henley-Price, principal & managing director, STUDIOS Architecture, London, UK, and Paris, France; Ko Iwahori, managing partner, Acadia Capital, Tokyo, Japan; Benedict Tranel, principal, Gensler, San Francisco, California.
