2026 SHORTLIST
SHORTLISTED:
(re)sun(cle)
BY XINYI WANG / XYTOPIA
Set at the dock, (re) sun (cle) becomes a marker for what architecture can still be after excess, after waste, and after the fantasy of effortless production. It does not hide its age or pretend to be pristine. Its meaning comes precisely from reuse: from taking what has already passed through one life and giving it force, presence and public meaning again. In that sense, this is not just a pavilion. It is a small declaration that the future will not be made from clean beginnings, but from intelligence, labour, memory and care.
The installation is conceived as a simple assembly of reclaimed timber and reclaimed steel. Each red louro plank is fixed back to a sweeping metal armature at two points, either at the mid and end positions or at both ends, so the pieces are held securely and read as one continuous radiating form. The metal armature itself can be fabricated from available reclaimed steel sections in the inventory and assembled as a series of straightforward components.
SHORTLISTED:
HOLY SPIRIT
BY KRYZHANOVSKY & POLIAKOV
Holy Spirit is a public sauna and gathering space situated within the industrial fabric of the canal edge. The project is conceived as an art of assembly, bringing together found elements into a new civic structure defined as much by use and atmosphere as form. The pavilion is constructed from standard-sized materials, largely unaltered, a deliberate strategy that both economizes and suggests possibilities for future adaptation and reuse.
At night the building becomes a glowing lantern on the canal. Its patchwork façade filters light outward, revealing silhouettes within while maintaining a sense of intimacy. It stands as a beacon for occupation, an open invitation to gather, participate, and inhabit.
SHORTLISTED:
FEATHERED FOLLY
BY JONNY BUCKLAND OF STUDIO SAAR
The Feathered Folly is a reclaimed habitat structure for the rear of Hackney warehouse overlooking the canal backwater, designed to support the Black Redstart, a bird in decline whose urban breeding habitat has been steadily lost through redevelopment. Rather than creating a pavilion centred for human occupation, the project proposes a vertical guildhall for bird life that taps into the city’s existing ecological infrastructure.
In giving form to the needs of the Black Redstart, The Feathered Folly reframes the canal edge as a place of interdependent occupation, productivity and care.
SHORTLISTED:
HOLY CRAP
BY BOBBY ESPOSITO OF RITES STUDIO
This work is a statement of reclaiming peace and solitude without the subservience to any higher power, whether it be a God or a city council. Instead of a holy torture in the apse, this chapel is oriented toward a crucified martyr of Antepavilion - a shark. Inspired by medieval construction methods, this structure is frozen in its scaffolding stage. The scaffolding itself is the ornamentation. Benches of reclaimed red louro and brick line the edge of the barge’s hull so people can recant their woes in peace. The exterior appears somewhat chaotic due to the crisscrossing structural ties and supports but the interior is more understated. Those arriving with frustration and anger can decompress in the Chapel of Scrap.
SHORTLISTED:
CALIBRATION FIELD
BY GERMAN NIEVA, NIKOLAI DELVENDAHL, TOM FOULSHAM
Calibration Field proposes architecture as an act of tuning rather than designing, framing the installation as a responsive instrument shaped through its encounter with wind and environment. A series of reclaimed cast iron window frames form a structural armature supporting an array of rotating panes that respond to wind through calibrated pivots, weights, and resistances, producing a subtle visual and acoustic register. Each element is adjusted by hand, tested, misaligned, and rebalanced, so that the installation emerges through embodied judgement rather than predetermined form. The work resists resolution; some panes drift while others hesitate or catch, producing a field of persistent inconsistency that never fully aligns. Architecture here is not composed but negotiated, not fixed but contingent, its intelligence located in the calibration of matter rather than in abstract design.
SHORTLISTED:
PILLAR PENTHOUSE
BY BENEDIKT HARTL AND YELYZAVETA LOKTIONOVA OF OPPOSITE OFFICE
In a city where housing is increasingly unattainable, the Pillar Penthouse proposes a radical inversion: the smallest possible dwelling elevated to the status of a monument. A minimal microhome sits atop a single slender column rising from a plinth, a base traditionally reserved for figures of power. Here, it supports only the most basic unit of habitation: a space just large enough for one person to sit, stand, and lie down. The structure is built entirely from reclaimed materials. The plinth and column reuse terrazzo elements from a previous Antepavilion project.
By elevating this minimal home, the project makes visible the shrinking conditions of urban living. The plinth no longer commemorates power, but supports survival. Positioned in a leftover urban void at a road junction, the structure transforms an overlooked site into a moment of attention. The Pillar Penthouse is not a solution to the housing crisis — it is a monument.