Dynamic, surprising and visually stunning, the winners of the 2013 World Architecture Festival awards represent the very best in recent architecture across a range of categories, from hotels and transit terminals to mosques and private homes. Here are 12 of those standout buildings, including the winner of the coveted World Building of the Year title.

Shopping: Emporia, Sweden – Wingardh Arkitektkontor

This striking golden glass structure is about as far from a typical suburban mall as a shopping center can ever get. The sprawling Emporia shopping center in Sweden features a cut-out amber glass entrance, color-coded atriums throughout the building that help with navigation, and a rooftop park with outdoor dining and a spa.

House: The Left-Over-Space House, Australia –  Cox Rayner Architects

Proving that virtually no lot is too small for a comfortable, well-designed home, Cox Rayner Architects took a narrow space just 3 meters wide and created a spacious residence. The Left-Over Space House in Brisbane consists of stacked orthogonal forms made mostly of wood. Situated between two public buildings, the house makes use of what seemed like an unusable space. Iron screens offer privacy, and narrow courtyards enable access to nature.

Housing: 28th Street Apartments, USA – Koning Eizenburg Architecture

A historic four-story concrete building in Los Angeles, originally built in 1926, was temporarily abandoned and in a state of disrepair before Koning Eizenburg Architecture gave it a stunning update that restores its beauty while also playing old against new in dynamic and surprising ways. It now contains 24 studio apartments as well as common facilities, and features a modern roof deck with patterns abstracted from the ’20s bas-reliefs found in the main entrance.

Office: Statoil Regional and International Offices, Norway – A-Lab

A-Lab aimed to create a massive commercial building complex for Norwegian energy producer Statoil that would somehow also blend in with the idyllic shoreline on which it’s located. The result is a series of narrow, stacked volumes, each oriented to optimize daylight conditions and views of the fjord landscape. The propeller-shaped glass roofs are filled in with structures inspired by soap bubbles to stand up to loads of heavy snow.

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Started in 1987 and still not complete, North Korea’s Ryugyong Hotel is perhaps its most potent architectural symbol, and an odd legacy for an odd and secretive leader. The 105-floor, pyramid-shaped hotel has towered over the city of Pyongyang in a mostly abandoned state since 1992, when construction was halted due to a period of economic crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The 1,080-foot-tall (330-meter) tower was slated to be completed this year, but it retains its title as the tallest unoccupied building in the world. It was initially intended to be complete by the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students in June 1989, at which point it would have been the world’s tallest hotel; however, it was eclipsed in 2009 by the spire atop the Rose Tower in Dubai.

For the sixteen years in which the tower was abandoned, it was a glaring concrete eyesore. Called “The Worst Building in the History of Mankind” by Esquire Magazine, the 3,000-room hotel has sucked up more than two percent of North Korea’s gross domestic product, while a large number of the nation’s citizens go hungry. Why would Kim Jong Il have believed that this city, which is so poor it can’t afford to light up the streets at night, would need to accommodate so many visitors?

(all images via: Wikimedia Commons)

Construction resumed on the hotel in 2008, and in 2011, the mirrored facade was finally completed thanks to an influx of $180 million from an Egyptian telecommunications company. The group that reportedly manages the hotel has refused to give an expected completion date, saying “Market entry is not currently possible.” The fate of the hotel remains unclear.

An incredible abandoned cement factory, covered with ivy and partially in ruins, has been transformed into a massive office complex that preserves both the original architectural integrity of the structures and honors the factory’s period of disuse. Architect Ricardo Bofill discovered the property in Spain in 1973 and claimed it for the head office of his firm, Taller de Arquitectura.

When the property was discovered, it was full of staircases to nowhere, exposed pipes and half-fallen structures. The industrial complex consisted of over 30 silos, subterranean galleries and machine rooms. The transformation of the space started with knocking down some of the unsalvageable structures, which left behind curious concrete forms that give the impression of a modern abstract sculpture park.

The eight silos that remained became the offices, archives, a library, a projection room, a lab for architectural models and sleeping spaces. A massive space known as ‘The Cathedral’ hosts exhibitions, concerts and other cultural functions.

While the interior spaces have been cleaned up, much of the machinery has been left behind, and the grounds have been restored to a balance between intentional landscape design and the chaos of greenery that proliferates when buildings are not maintained.

What would you think if you walked into an antique store in your town, and found it overflowing with the owners’ laundry? In much of the Western world, we tend to keep our lives rigidly compartmentalized, but in Southeast Asia, the boundaries are blurred – resulting in seemingly chaotic and visually stimulating live/work spaces. German photographer and artist Peter Nitsch documented these small combined homes and businesses for his series ‘SHOPHOUSES – 4 x 8 m Bangkok’.

Mechanic shops are filled to the brim with both the expected stacks of tires, and colorful art. In a hair salon, a woman sits beside a refrigerator, peeling potatoes. A watchmaker’s shop is packed floor-to-ceiling with boxes and trunks. Doors open to private spaces beyond, giving customers a glimpse at the private lives of the owners.

Bangkok is full of these combination home/businesses, which are usually two stories with the lower level open to the street, but the typical tourist will never notice. These shophouses can be founded on the outer edges of the city, away from the snarled traffic and blinking neon lights.

“But if one allows the pictures to make an impression, a fractal pattern with a high degree of similarity is to be gradually recognised in the overfilled rooms, which from the sheer number of objects suddenly makes a structured Mandelbrot set,” says Nitsch. “The chaos becomes a cosmos and thus transforms into its opposite: an orderliness, to which the photographs additionally lend their characteristic power of peace.”

These castle-like structures, skeletal high-rises and rusting remains of the golden age of industry are monuments to themselves, still standing despite decades of neglect. Formerly factories, offices, corporate headquarters and industrial facilities, these 7 commercial and industrial sites contain clues to their former purposes among all the rubble, overgrown greenery, peeling paint and other effects of abandonment.

Abandoned High-Rises and Factories of Detroit, Michigan

(images via: bob jagendorf, meeshypants, nitram242, davescaglione, joguldi 1 + 2)

When it comes to Detroit, how can you choose just one standout abandonment? The city is, in and of itself, a jaw-dropping wonder of architectural decay. Once it lost its identity as a manufacturing mecca, Detroit also lost a large number of its residents, leaving block after block abandoned, with few signs of life in between. Once the fourth-largest city in the United States, Detroit is now filled with towering structures that have been left as they were when last used, often full of the ephemera of life. These include a number of high-rises – the most notable being Michigan Grand Terminal, pictured above with an overgrown lawn – and burned-out factories.

In 1950, Detroit had a population of nearly two million; today, while similar cities have grown exponentially, this one is down to less than 900,000. The fact that the city has become something of an urban Wild West doesn’t exactly encourage new residents to purchase decrepit properties and return them to their former glory. The number of abandoned buildings standing in the city currently numbers around 70,000.

Bethlehem Steel Factory, Pennsylvania

(images via: bob jagendorf, a.strakey, dandeluca, the seafarer, dave scaglione)

Once the second-largest steel producer in the United States, Bethlehem Steel began work on a large facility in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the 1860s that was at the forefront of manufacturing innovation at the time. Its towering facilities made it a symbol of the industrialized future of America. During World Wars I and II, it was a major supplier of armor plate to the U.S. Armed Forces, making components of weapons like large-caliber guns. But by the 1990s, America’s steel industry began to decline, and companies like this could no longer compete with cheap foreign labor.

When Bethlehem Steel closed its local operations, it laid out a plan for its 163-acre site for cultural, recreational, educational, entertainment and retail development, to reduce economic impacts on a city that had long relied on steel manufacturing for prosperity. However, the company went out of business and the land was sold to a developer that has turned it into a casino. Ironically, the casino had difficulty coming up with the 16,000 tons of steel needed to build its new $600 million complex, so it only finished one building. Some of Bethlehem Steel’s old manufacturing structures were demolished, but furnaces and gas blowing engine house still stand.

Hasard Cheratte Abandoned Coal Mine, Belgium

(images via: wikimedia commons, intermayer 1 + 2)

One of the most popular abandoned sites in Europe among urban explorers, the Hasard Cheratte Coal Mine in Belgium looks a bit like a crumbling castle. The facility dates to the 1860s, and was formerly one of many such mines in the coal basin of Liege. Make your way inside and you’ll find the hulking remains of industrial equipment and heavy mining machinery and lots of long, dark brick-lined passageways. Abandoned since 1977 and now a protected heritage site, the complex still contains such small items as books and work gloves. The largest ‘castle tower’ sits over the deepest mine shaft at the facility, which plunges a mind-boggling 1,574 feet into the ground. See photos of the interior at 28 Days Later.

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