Inside Architecture Today’s Test of Time Awards: An Overview
On 9 September, the teams behind 36 shortlisted projects will present evidence of how their buildings have performed in use at Architecture Today’s live finals. Beedier examines what this public judging format asks of architects and what five award cycles reveal about the practices and projects the awards recognise.
Architecture is often judged when it knows least about itself: at completion.
The intentions are clear and the photographs controlled, but the building has barely begun the process that will determine its success: being used. Architecture Today’s Test of Time Awards delay judgement until clients, occupants, maintenance, weather and changing patterns of use have tested the original design.
On 9 September, the teams behind 36 shortlisted projects across 11 categories will present at a one-day live final at Society Building in London. The jury will question teams about environmental and functional performance, adaptability, resilience and what they have learned in use. Winners will be announced on 12 November.
A live crit rather than a ceremony
Shortlisted teams present evidence of building performance during the Test of Time Awards’ live final.
The format matters. Most awards reach the public as a finished list. Here, shortlisted teams must explain their claims to jurors and an industry audience, then answer questions about what happened after the opening photographs were taken. Reflection becomes public, exposing the distance between design intention and lived performance.
A formal post-occupancy evaluation is not required, which keeps older projects in contention. Teams may instead bring measured or comparative data, independent validation and testimony from clients and users, alongside a candid account of changes and failures. Because the jury will not visit the buildings, the quality and honesty of this evidence—and the public questioning around it—will carry particular weight.
The value extends beyond the day itself. The organisers intend the recorded presentations to become a publicly accessible learning resource, while winning projects will receive building-in-use studies with commissioned photography. Together, these materials archive not only the buildings but the arguments and evidence used to assess them, supporting teaching, comparison and future research.
Blue House Yard, Wood Green, by Jan Kattein Architects. Photograph: Doctor Nicholas | Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
An award judged after occupation
Launched in 2022 in response to an awards culture preoccupied with newness, the programme actively welcomes older work. The 2026 shortlist stretches from Peter Aldington’s Turn End, completed in 1967, to Carpe Diem Dementia Village, completed in 2020. It includes landmarks such as Lloyd’s, the Eden Project and Gardens by the Bay, alongside homes, schools, healthcare settings and a temporary workspace in Wood Green. Age permits scrutiny; it does not prove success.
Blue House Yard shows why endurance needs a flexible definition. Jan Kattein Architects designed the meanwhile project for five years on a disused council site. Nine years after opening, it remains in use. Its achievement is not monumentality but the continued value of a deliberately provisional framework: a building can last through the activity and relationships it enables as well as through its materials.
Lloyd’s presents the inverse challenge. Familiarity can make cultural endurance seem self-evident while obscuring performance. The live jury will be able to ask how the building has adapted to four decades of workplace and technological change. Similar questions apply to the maintenance of the Eden Project and the ecological, visitor and servicing demands of Gardens by the Bay. Visibility is not proof of success.
What five award cycles reveal
Shortlists and winners. Beedier’s review covers 160 project records across five award cycles. The completed 2022–25 programmes comprise 124 shortlisted entries, including 43 winners. A further 36 projects form the 2026 shortlist and will face the live jury. Winners are included within the shortlist totals, not counted separately.
Marking its 40th anniversary, the Lloyd’s building has been named to the 2026 Test of Time Award shortlist
Recurring practices. Allford Hall Monaghan Morris appears most frequently, with ten records and three winners: University of Amsterdam, Burntwood School y Kentish Town Health Centre. Its other shortlisted projects are The Barbican, North London Hospice, Weston Street, Westminster Academy, Hawley Wharf y White Collar Factory, which appears in both the 2024 and 2026 shortlists.
Four other practices appear four times each. Foster + Partners’ projects are Maggie’s Manchester, Sulis Hospital Bath—a 2024 winner—Bloomberg y SEC Armadillo. Grimshaw is represented by Bath Schools of Art and Design in two cycles, Via Verde – The Green Way y Eden Project. WilkinsonEyre’s four records include 2024 Editor’s Award winner Bridge of Aspiration, alongside Gateshead Millennium Bridge, Weston Library y Gardens by the Bay. Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands appears with 2024 winner Oxo Tower Wharf, together with Bonhams, Island Studios y JW3.
Building type. The results challenge the idea that an award for longevity is primarily about retrofit. New-build projects form the largest group, although adaptive reuse, refurbishment, restoration and retrofit together represent a substantial part of the archive. Education and workplace are the most frequently represented sectors.
Geography. The archive is strongly UK-focused: 140 of the 160 records are British, with half of those in London. International projects extend its reach, but the findings should be understood principally as a picture of architectural recognition in the UK.
From intention to consequence
The Test of Time Awards leave time between promise and judgement. Buildings are changed by those who operate, maintain, adapt and occupy them. At the live jury tomorrow (9th September 2026), the strongest case will make evidence legible, identify what changed and treat shortcomings as knowledge rather than reputational risk.
Five cycles in, the resulting archive shows what the profession currently recognises as evidence of lasting value. Beedier’s data adds scale to that picture: which practices recur, what kinds of work are represented and where the projects are concentrated.
A completed project cannot rely on its original brief or opening photographs. It must return with evidence of what has happened in use: what worked, what changed and where performance fell short. That move from stated ambition to demonstrated consequence is the award’s most useful demand.
Architecture is not only what a project says it will do. The Test of Time Awards ask what it can show it has done.
Explore the data: View the complete record of shortlisted and winning projects from 2022–26.
Research note
Beedier analysed 160 project records in the 2022–26 Architecture Today Awards results workbook. For 2022–25, shortlist totals combine records labelled WINNER and FINALIST; all 36 records for 2026 are FINALIST. Studio credits and classifications are used as recorded; where Architecture Today’s project pages use a fuller or historic credit, that wording is retained above. Sources. Architecture Today: 2022 finalists y winners; 2023 finalists y winners; 2024 finalists y winners; 2025 finalists y winners; and the 2026 finalists. Beedier workbook analysed 5 September 2026.
image credit: Fred Romero / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
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