The ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards (BOTY) were decided on 14th of February. The Scientific Information Center and Academic Library was named the Best Building of the Year in the museums and libraries category.
After 70 000 votes from readers, ArchDaily announced the winners in fourteen categories. From close to 3 000 projects, the jury pronounced finalists in each category. In the final round, the Katowice building (designed by HS99) was the only library and was competing against four museums: Michigan State University’s Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum (Zaha Hadid), Perot Museum of Nature and Science (Morphosis), Städel Museum (Schneider + Schumacher) and Ordos Art and City Museum (MAD Architects).
“This group of buildings is unique in several aspects, from their spatial qualities to their structures, but also in terms of what they represent for society and their impact on local communities” – organizers of the contest wrote at their webpage archdaily.com.
ArchDaily has more than 280 000 daily readers and 70 million pageviews per month.
Previously, the Scientific Information Center and Adacemic Library (SICAL) won the Grand Prix for the best building of the Silesian Voivodeship and was named the best building of 2011 by readers of bryla.pl. The library was also awarded the prize of President of Poland for the best building of contemporary Polish architecture completed between the years 2000 and 2012. Moreover, the building got the prize for the best public building of this century in Poland and was nominated this year for the Mies van der Rohe Award.
SICAL (the Polish acronym: CINiBA – “Centrum Informacji Naukowej i Biblioteka Akademicka”) is a joint investment of the University of Silesia and the University of Economics in Katowice and was opened last year.