We were already looking forward to a trip to Lisbon, but World Architecture Festival 2021 and Inside World Festival Interiors 2021 have just announced that also this year the event will take place online.
In response to continuing COVID-19 travel restrictions, organisers had to announce that WAF/INSIDE 2021 will not take place in Lisbon this December but will instead be an entirely online event.
Although the COVID-19 vaccine programme is being rolled out successfully in many countries, there are varying restrictions and quarantine conditions worldwide that would prevent many of WAF finalists attending in person.
One of the key benefits of World Architecture Festival is networking, sharing ideas and making new connections. With a large percentage of our finalists unable to travel, the experience would be greatly reduced.
Following feedback from finalists and partners, organisers have therefore taken the decision to make WAF/INSIDE 21 a live and interactive digital event.
Live judging will continue to form a cornerstone of the 2021 WAF digital edition
The World Architecture Festival 2021 digital event will consist of three days of live conference programmes, awards, and fringe events, with talks by leading global architectural thinkers and industry personalities – live-streamed exclusively to festival delegates.
WAF includes the biggest international architectural awards programme in the world, dedicated to celebrating excellence via live presentations to an audience of high-profile delegates and international juries.
Accolades including ‘World Building of the Year', ‘Future Project of the Year', ‘Interior of the Year' and ‘Landscape of the Year' will be judged live and streamed to festival delegates across the world.
With 18 digital crit rooms and 18 sets of international judges, the WAF 2021 digital event stands to offer the widest access to the largest amount of content in the history of the festival; creating 40 days-worth of exclusive programming which will be available to delegates on demand up to 90 days after the event.
The excitement around bringing World Architecture Festival 2021 to Portugal's capital city remains, and the WAF 2022 edition is confirmed to take place in Lisbon from 30 November to 2 December at the FIL exhibition centre.
Harnessing opportunities opened up by this year's event, the 2022 festival will include integrated digital elements to form a hybrid festival format, fully attuned to digital and in-person delegates.
Photo by Michiel Annaert on Unsplash
