Seven Australian projects have been named winners in the 2025 Architecture Masterprize - an international awards program that honours designs across the disciplines of architecture, interior design and landscape architecture with the aim of advancing the appreciation of architecture worldwide.
The prize, formerly known as the American Architecture Prize, was started in 2015 by publishing and awards company Farmani Group. In 2025, it accepted entries from 72 countries across 44 project categories.
This year's Australian project winners included a project for floating island structures in Hong Kong designed by an Australian practice, a factory-turned-community hub in Sydney, a cultural centre imagined from a historic store in regional NSW and several residences across Victoria and NSW.
Of the public projects to take out a prize, Archer Office's Boot Factory Community and Innovation Hub, which involved the adaptive reuse of a historic factory building in Sydney, was a named a winnner in the Cultural Architecture category, and BAAKA Cultural Centre by Kaunitz Yeung, which was born of a co-design process with community, was named a winner in the Heritage Architecture category.
Island Synchronisation by DOJO Studio and Urbanroom - which proposes an alternative methodology for the formation of floating island structures in Hong Kong, merging undersea habitat with a resting place for divers and fishermen - was also celebrated as a winner in the Installations and Structures category.
The prized Australian residences included F2 Architecture's Rammed Earth House, in the Agricultural Buildings category, located on a hill overlooking Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay, and the Thomas Street House by Embrace Architects, in the Houses Interior category, located in suburban Melbourne. Two houses by Rob Mills Architecture and Interiors were also prize-winners: in Victoria, the Howqua River Lodge in the Residential Interior category; and in Sydney, the Wentworth Residence in the Conceptual Interior category.
In addition, the Firm of the Year Award was bestowed upon Singapore- and Melbourne-based practice Equator Works, founded by Erik L'Heureux. The practice specialises in design for dense equatorial cities, with a focus on adaptive reuse, net-zero energy, super-low embodied carbon, and overall decarbonisation strategies.
A jury of 60 designers, architects, curators and academics from around the world selected the winning projects.
