2022 Sony World Photography Awards: architecture category and more winners

The architecture winner is revealed in the 2022 Sony World Photography Awards announcement, while all winning work goes on show at London’s Somerset House

Historical house 19th century in Croatia
(Image credit: Domagoj Burilović)

This week sees the announcement of the winners of the prestigious 2022 Sony World Photography Awards; and as always, the revelations include an exciting win for architectural photography. Imagery that focuses on buildings and spaces appears in a dedicated award category – the Architecture & Design section of the Professional competition. The award celebrates creativity, artistry and technical excellence in the field of architectural photography, and has garnered submissions from snappers from across the globe. 

2022 Sony World Photography Awards architecture winner

Historical house from 19th century in Croatia

(Image credit: Domagoj Burilović)

In the Professional category, Domagoj Burilović from Croatia was named overall winner for Architecture & Design, with his series Dorf, the German word for ‘village’. The series explores the Croatian region of Slavonia and its historical – and in many cases, neglected – architectural housing stock, built by a German population that moved there in the 19th century. Now, left to ruin and taken over by nature, the structures feature in a beautifully haunting series of images. 

Just behind Burilović, the two finalists were Javier Arcenillas from Spain, taking second place, and Yun Chi Chen from Taiwan, coming third. Their submissions comprise, respectively, a showcase of the architecture of Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan, and a series of images that draws on the aesthetic of a traditional architectural blueprint or cyanotype, using digital post-production techniques.

2022 Sony World Photography Awards exhibition

architecture of Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan

(Image credit: Javier Arcenillas)

Work by all the winners – among them acclaimed photographer Adam Ferguson (Australia), who won the Photographer of the Year title and an accompanying $25,000 (USD) cash prize and a range of Sony digital imaging kit, as well as this year’s Outstanding Contribution to Photography winner, the renowned Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky – will now be exhibited at London's Somerset House. The Sony World Photography Awards 2022 exhibition, which promises to be a visual feast, opens on 13 April 2022 and runs until 2 May.

Architecture of Nur-Sultan, the capital of Kazakhstan

(Image credit: Javier Arcenillas)

traditional architectural blueprint Taiwan

(Image credit: Yun Chi Chen)

Traditional architectural blueprint - Taiwan

(Image credit: Yun Chi Chen)

INFORMATION

worldphoto.org (opens in new tab)

Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture Editor at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018) and Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020).