Scenes from WAF

15. November 2017

All photographs by John Hill/World-Architects

This year's World Architecture Festival – its tenth anniversary – takes place in Arena Berlin, the same venue as last year. Here are some photos from a quick jaunt around the festival this afternoon.

Also like last year's WAF, the fair is laid out as a series of inflatable rooms – the crit rooms – beneath the large trusses and skylights. Arena Berlin was designed by Franz Ahrens and completed in 1927 next to the river Spree.

A solitary figure meandering amongst the inflatables.

WAF entered the 21st century this year with interactive screens replacing the printed boards at the entrance to each crit room (left) and in the gallery of the shortlisted entries (right).

In between the inflatables is the expo floor with stands for WAF's various sponsors, such as "founder sponsor" Grohe.

Koleksiyon's booth features Koray Malhan's felt-walled Oblivion, designed as workplace partitions but here made into a near-monumental statement.

Architectural Review has a presentation of its Emerging Architects awards, its wall following the adjacent inflatable.

Sto and Arcaid Images have a gallery of the finalists for the 2017 Arcaid Awards, for which I served as a judge. Visitors to WAF can stop by the gallery to vote for their favorites, with the overall winner announced on Friday.

Lastly, with people walking from inflatable to inflatable to see their favorite architects, there are plenty of places to take a rest in between such as the Merck booth (left) and WAF's own beanbag seating area (right).