The inaugural 2026 PERSPA Awards have officially concluded, revealing a striking collection of imagery that explores the complex relationship between the built environment and the human experience. By celebrating the intersection of design and artistic vision, the competition highlights how architectural photography can shift our perspective, transforming vast, immovable structures into intimate studies of form, light, and geometry.
The top honor, Photographer of the Year, was awarded to Alessia Santambrogio for her exquisite series capturing an 18th-century Italian theatre. With a background rooted in opera photography, Santambrogio approaches her subjects with a unique sensitivity to both grandeur and atmosphere. Her prize-winning composition offers a singular, unobstructed view from the stage, drawing the eye toward the ornate, illuminated boxes, the intricate painted ceiling, and the modeled flourishes of the historic auditorium. By choosing to frame the theater entirely void of patrons, she allows the architecture itself to take center stage, emphasizing the timeless harmony between functional space and aesthetic beauty.
Beyond the top prize, the PERSPA Awards featured a diverse array of categories—including Stairs, Modern Architecture, Geometry, and Human and Architecture—that challenged participants to interpret the built world through varied lenses.
In the Geometry category, Petr Vapenik’s first-place image, The Arcade Sun, captures a moment of domestic serenity in Prague. By photographing a yellow lamp in an arcade ceiling immediately after a storm, Vapenik highlights a bright, circular contrast against the grid of the architecture. Similarly, the Stairs category was dominated by Massimo Borchi’s monochromatic exploration of Ólafur Elíasson’s “Endless Staircase,” a photograph that turns a structural climb into a visual puzzle, inviting the viewer’s eye to cycle through the image indefinitely.
Modern and contemporary developments also featured heavily in the winners’ circle. Florian Kriechbaumer received top honors in both the Symmetry and Aerial categories for his stark, precise documentation of planned communities in Dubai. His work serves as a powerful commentary on the scale of urban repetition and the orderly nature of contemporary suburban expansion. Meanwhile, Eric Chatelain’s second-place entry in Modern Architecture highlights the vibrant, multifaceted façade of the Kuggen building in Sweden, demonstrating how a tight, rhythmic crop can abstract a structure into a collection of vivid colors and curves.
The competition also shed light on the often-overlooked nuances of industrial and historic sites. DI CHANG’s Brilliant Star City received accolades for its low-light photography, transforming a complex network of industrial pipes and platforms into a glowing, miniature cityscape. Conversely, Carlos Archer’s honorable mention entry, Aonde já foi casa, captures the poignant reclamation of nature within a disused greenhouse in Porto, where flora has begun to overtake the iron framework of a former residence.
By platforming these diverse visual narratives, the 2026 PERSPA Awards demonstrate that the built environment is far more than mere utility. Through the work of these photographers, structures—ranging from ancient, ornate theaters to modern, minimalist housing—are elevated into art, challenging viewers to reconsider the spaces they occupy and the stories those spaces tell. The complete gallery of winning entries serves as a testament to the power of the camera to reveal the hidden geometry, history, and life embedded within our global infrastructure.
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