Photo of a former gas station voted best architectural shot of the year

The Architecture Photography Awards 2025 is an international competition that celebrates visual interpretations of architecture around the world. The award for photo of the year was won by Michael Luetge, who captured in chiaroscuro a former gas station in the Grindelviertel district of Harvestehude, Hamburg. The district, which came into being in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is known for its Art Nouveau villas and vast English-style parks, also holds this architectural gem from the 1950s, which has been recognized as a historic monument since 1999 and is now converted into a small flower store that lights up at night like a somewhat retro pit stop.

The idea behind the Architecture Photography Awards is to give visibility not only to professional photographers but also to emerging artists, covering a broad spectrum of photographic genres, which make up the 20 categories of the awards:  Light&Shadow, Interior Architecture, Modern Architecture, Historic Architecture, Urban Landscapes and Cityscapes, Minimalist, Vertical Perspectives, Human&Architecture Interaction, Fine Art, Reflection, Symmetry, Abstract&Geometric Forms, Drone&Aerial, Black and White, Night&Low-Light, Long Exposure, Open Theme, Bridges, Stairs, and finally Windows. 

The result is that the architectures immortalized by the participants are anything but obvious and recognized masterpieces.   Winning it all in the urban category was a Hong Kong photographer, Chi Ho Gary Ng, with two shots: the first looks like something out of a science fiction comic book and depicts the brutalist Uji station on the outskirts of Kyoto; the second is a view of the Hong Kong skyline suspended on clouds. This photo encapsulates all the imagery the world has built around China. 

Another photo that makes you, when the vacations are over, want to get on a plane is a shot of the Ice Cave Presale Office in Tehran, a showroom that now serves as a sales office for the Tehran Eye shopping complex, but was designed to become an event hall. Mundane in destination, but curious in design: it is in fact 329 curved panels of milled polystyrene. In Parham Taghioff's photo, it looks like a large marble quarry...carved out of the forest. There is also no shortage of curious entries such as those with staircases, windows and ancient architecture as their theme, photographed mostly by Italians. In the Fine Art section, Javier Perez's black-and-white shot of Valencia's Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, signed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela, stands out: a weave of rarefied geometries, suspended in a De Chirico-esque, almost metaphysical atmosphere. Next to it, in the Drone&Aerial category, the futuristic bivouac on Monte Rosa photographed by Paulo Sousa looks like an outpost from another planet. 

It is, however, perhaps the winning photograph of the open theme that gives us one of the strangest architectures of this competition: a remote Lutheran church in the west of Iceland, designed in 1990 by Jón Haraldsson. The idea behind the design? Replicating the shape of whale bones.

Opening image:  "Architectural Minimalism" by Michael Luetge. All images: Courtesy the artist and Architecture Photography Awards 2025