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The two overall winners of the inaugural Blueprint iGuzzini Architectural Photography Awards have today been announced.

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In a special event at designjunction, as part of the 2017 London Design Festival, Blueprint editor Johnny Tucker presented the overall professional winner, Simon Kennedy, and the overall amateur winner, Babak Eslahjou, with prizes of £1000 and an £1000 iGuzzini light designed by Ron Arad respectively.

'The global response to these awards — entries from 11 different countries around the world as far apart and Argentina and Germany — has been great and the quality truly excellent,’ says Tucker. 'Professional and amateurs seem to have responded really creatively to the deliberately wide ranging categories and I can't wait for next year.’

Launched in April, the awards, sponsored by lighting company iGuzzini, invited submissions from professionals and amateurs in four separate categories: Architectural narrative, Architecture and Light, Architecture and Time, and Urbanism. A panel of judges, comprising of Ben van Berkel: founder of Dutch architecture practice UN Studio, Mark Davy: founder of Futurecity, Paul Raftery: photographer for 25 years, and a lover of architecture, Elias Redstone: independent curator whose work includes the Barbican’s Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age show, Ian Stanton: Managing director of iGuzzini UK and Johnny Tucker: Editor of Blueprint, journalist and photographer, chose winners for each category. Blueprint then invited readers to vote on overall professional and amateur winners. 

London-based architectural photographer Simon Kennedy won the overall professional award for his Architecture and Time photograph, taken in Berlin.  ‘Berlin is a fascinating city, particularly in the way that it relates to its own history,’ he says. 'Photographed with a large-format camera on sheet film, during many trips to Berlin over several years, these buildings are from a particular period of heroic optimism. Sculptural and idiosyncratic, they resist their rapidly gentrifying urban context.’

Babak Eslahjou, principal at CORE Architects in Toronto, won the overall amateur award for his Urbanism image taken in Panama City. ‘Although I am an architect, my second great passion is photography, and for over 47 years I have been photographing the world around me,’ says Eslahjou. 'While my imagery has an understandably architectural focus, the urban landscape features prominently.’

Professional Winner: Simon Kennedy

 

Amateur winner: Babak Eslahjou

Read on to see the winners in each category.