Leading architectual firms, Meta-Project and Map13 Barcelona have been declared the winners of the WAN Small Spaces Award 2015.

Meta-Project came first in the permanent sub-category for their striking Water Tower Renovation project at Shen Yang, China, while Map13 Barcelona topped the temporary sub-category list for their impressive Brick-topia scheme, said the organisers of the event.

The winners were selected from 12 shortlisted projects that were chosen by the WAN jury panel comprising James Furzer of Spatial Design Architects, Naomi Milgrom AO, the chair of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation, Doan Thanh Ha, the founder of H&P Architects and Carl Turner, the founding director of Carl Turner Architects.

Attracting wide spread attention from the public and the residences, Meta-Project adaptively renovated the water tower in an attempt to engage community life.

Located in the campus of a rundown military factory, formerly known as the People's Liberation Army No.1102 Factory that was founded in 1959 during the Great Leap Forward. Milgrom felt the scheme was: “Imaginative upscaling and reimagining of a historic structure.”

The water tower is re-interpreted and transformed into a new type of ‘public folly’ - an ambiguous built object that transcends the common usage to which it belongs, and suggests some other public purpose. On the outside it forms an attractive intervention in the urban landscape, and on the inside it offers a space for public activities for the nearby communities.

In his comments, Furzer said: "The juxtaposition between the urban exterior and the colourful internal public space is simply beautiful and engaging. The water tower has had a second breath of life, which has become a heartbeat for the local community progression."

Turner went on to say: “An interesting example of how architecture can adopt memory as a means to deliver community engagement.”

The ‘public folly’ can now house a number of activities, including: casual gathering, movies, performance and a mini-café. It invites people to engage and rethink the co-existence of history and contemporary reality.

Thanh Ha described it as an interesting example of the ability to restore the likely disappeared space and usher in common space for future community from the closed past.

Brick-topia was the winning project of a competition to build a pavilion at the International Festival of Architecture Eme3, in Barcelona.

An unreinforced masonry shell made of brick using a traditional construction technique called tile vault, the scheme was the result of the combination of the latest structural analysis and form-finding computational tools with a traditional, sustainable, cheap and effective construction technique, said the jury.

“An interesting example of how traditional techniques can be deployed to realise challenging geometries” remarked Turner.

The shape of the pavilion is the outcome of a thorough design process optimising the structure through geometry with the software RhinoVault.

Furzer was particularly taken with this scheme, saying: "This project is a fantastic piece of architecture. The form allows the user to experience the shelter in a way that makes them think about the construction prior to their interaction."

A heavy, solid material, that creates a light, soft tensile-like structure. Exploring the boundaries of brick construction superbly! A striking piece of architecture that successfully uses innovation to create something of beauty.”

Milgrom went on to say the project had a: “Highly expressive use of material using traditional vaulting techniques.”

The unreinforced masonry shell showed a complex geometry with a thickness ranging from 65 mm to 118 mm and it was designed to present challenging features in terms of structure and construction, stated the jury.

Impressed with the use of material, Thanh Ha commented that this was a step "that broadens the knowledge of use of bricks in architecture and gives inspiration to the future applications featured with brick material."-TradeArabia News Service