The Sony World Photography Awards 2026 have announced their winners, bringing global attention to photography that captures the built environment as lived experience. With over 430,000 submissions from more than 200 countries, the competition continues to be one of the most significant platforms for contemporary photography.
Within the Architecture & Design category, this year’s winning and shortlisted works reflect a shift away from purely formal aesthetics toward storytelling, focusing on how people inhabit, adapt, and reinterpret architectural spaces.
Winner and Finalists: Capturing Architecture in Context
The first prize in the Architecture & Design category was awarded to Joy Saha (Bangladesh) for the series Homes of Haor. The project documents flood-resilient housing in Bangladesh’s Haor wetlands, offering an aerial perspective on how communities adapt their built environment to extreme seasonal conditions.
André Tezza from Brazil came in second for his book Everyday Structures, which looks at small grocery stores in Curitiba. His work highlights these modest buildings as cultural anchors resisting the uniformity of modern retail landscapes.
Third place was awarded to Chen Liang (China), whose series documents the historic watchtowers of Jiangmen in Guangdong. The work explores a hybrid architectural language shaped by both local and foreign influences.
Together, the top three projects demonstrate how architecture can embody resilience, identity, and historical continuity.
Themes and Direction of the 2026 Selection
The idea that architecture is proof of human experience is a clear theme in all of the winning works. photographers turned their attention to vernacular structures, overlooked urban spaces, and culturally layered sites.
This reflects a broader evolution in architectural photography, moving from documentation of form to interpretation of social, environmental, and political narratives embedded in space.
Shortlisted Projects: Diverse Narratives of the Built Environment
The shortlisted entries further expand this narrative-driven approach, presenting a wide geographic and conceptual range. According to official sources, notable shortlisted projects in the professional architecture & design category include the following:
- Ad Astra by Cristopher Rogel Blanquet Chavez & Daniel Ochoa de Olza (Mexico), examining the US–Mexico border wall as both a physical and symbolic structure.
- Historical Architecture of Iran: Endurance and Persistence Through Time by Farshid Rahimi Kalahroudi (Iran), focusing on architectural continuity and heritage.
- Hotel Florio by Jean-Marc Caimi & Valentina Piccinni (Italy), documenting a historic site tied to political and social memory.
- Night Shift by Mathieu Moindron (France), portraying industrial landscapes operating in the near absence of human presence.
- The Walls of Tohoku by Peter Lipton (Netherlands), reflecting on infrastructural responses to natural disasters.
- Second-Hand Houses by Stephan Zirwes (Germany), exploring repetition and transformation in residential architecture.
- Mausoleum of the Martyrdom of Polish Villages in Michniów by Tomasz Kawecki (Poland), addressing memory through commemorative architecture.
Additional shortlisted works across the awards explored themes such as tsunami barriers, abandoned hotels, and border infrastructures, each highlighting how architecture intersects with history, crisis, and identity
Exhibition and Global Recognition
The winning and shortlisted works are part of a major exhibition held at Somerset House, London, running from April 17 to May 4, 2026. The exhibition features over 300 images and offers a comprehensive look at contemporary photography across categories.
The Architecture & Design category at the Sony World Photography Awards 2026 highlights a decisive shift in how architecture is represented. This year’s winners and shortlisted photographers move beyond visual spectacle, focusing instead on human stories, environmental realities, and cultural memory embedded within built forms.
