Jury report

Livia Corona Velazquez (Mexican) draws together the Award's defining themes of architecture, nature and development within this one image made of the Eastern suburbs of Mexico City. Our fellow jury member, the architect David Rogers, felt that an entire blog and an urban planning course at Harvard could be constructed from the information effortlessly encoded within the photograph.

Julian Faulhabers (Germany) photograph documents the deliciously brief moment of untouched spaces. In this case an indoor sports hall in pristine, flawless condition just before it is handed over from the architect to the client. It is a hyper realistic clean objective photograph of an unmarked perfect space. We felt this was a gloriously fetish tic photograph. A beautifully rendered print of a fuchsia pink, squeaky rubberised floor inscribed with graphic markings. No shoes have scuffed its surface, no balls have been bounced on its floor.

Abelardo Morell (Cuba) This exquisite, layered picture about the history of Venice is a projection of the outside world onto an interior space. There is a camera in a room recording the room being turned into a camera. It is a technique which Morell has perfected since 1991. In this case the insertion of a prism corrects the inverted projection. Venice, with its history of balancing on the edge of disaster, hangs in the air with a ghostly ethereal presence.

Hans Christian Schink (Germany) As a jury we were all initially drawn to this photograph and intrigued to decode the violet gash that streaks across an otherwise tranquil landscape. This we discovered was the mark of the sun as it arced across the sky in the one hour in took to make the exposure. The photographer Hans Christian Schink has re invigorated black and white photography with a new contemporary verve and created a visual tension that hints of trouble to come in a wilderness paradise. This work truly embraces the award's themes.

Thomas Weinberger (Germany). This gloriously descriptive photograph, History rising transports us to a moment that has already gone and that arguably never existed. In documenting the building of Dubai Weinberger synthesises different exposures made for natural and artificial light into one composite image that fuses day and night. As the round the clock construction continues each phase is a transient moment in the creation of a fixed and monumental landmark.

Danwen Xing (China). Architect's models are often populated by idealised figures who happily conform to the buildings function. Xing became fascinated with the maquettes made to promote real estate developments in China and has developed an approach that playfully inserts her performative self into these Lillipution models. Xing's characters are not the well mannered super citizens proffered by advertising but the more complex and troubled city dwellers often leading more chaotic lives.

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