Australian Architects Win Back to Back World Architecture Festival Award

World Architecture Festival (WAF) is the world’s largest festival and live awards competition dedicated to celebrating, and sharing architectural excellence from across the globe.

Held in Singapore this year, WAF is the world's largest, live, inclusive and interactive global architecture event. Now in it's seventh year, WAF returns to Moshe Safdie's award-winning Marina Bay Sands, from 1st-3rd October 2014.

Australian landscape architecture firm,

Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL) has once again scooped the prestigious ‘Landscape of the Year Award’ at the World Architecture Festival Awards (WAF) for its design of the National Arboretum in Canberra with

Tonkin Zulaikha Greer (TZG).
The award follows on from the firm's success at last year’s WAF Awards, where it received top honours for the Australian Garden, and caps off a momentous week for TCL who also won the Rosa Barba Landscape Prize in Barcelona with Wraight + Associates for the Auckland Waterfront. 
The ‘Landscape of the Year’ award was awarded to TCL and TZG on 3 October at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. The ceremony marked the culmination of WAF 2014 – the largest festival and live awards programme for the global architecture community, which ran over three days from 1-3 October.

The National Arboretum was selected by a jury of some of the world's most highly regarded architectural and urban designers. It overcame competition from a shortlist of ten entries from Australia, Thailand, China, Vietnam, Switzerland and Turkey.

TCL Director Perry Lethlean said It was a great honour to once again win the major Landscape of the Year Award at WAF.

“The award recognises the collaborative efforts of our key design partner, Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, the client, artists and other consultants in creating an arboretum of the future.

“Rather than a collection of individual trees as specimens, we wanted to create grand forests that offer unique and contrasting visitor experiences and hold a viable population to preserve vulnerable and endangered species.

“It is a strategy, a program and an ongoing event, not a design based chiefly on aesthetics,” he said.

The National Arboretum comprises 100 forests of the world’s most endangered tree species on a 250 hectare former fire ravaged site in the centre of Canberra.

It is supported by a host of visitor, educational and research facilities including a 900-person visitor centre by TZG; a demonstration native garden, conservation and educational resource; tree and sculptural installations by renowned Australian artists, and a state-of-the-art children’s playground, which has set a new international benchmark for themed playground design.