UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation 2023
Deadline: 30th of June, 2023
The UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation 2023 are now accepting applications. The UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation honor outstanding efforts made by people and organizations to preserve or restore buildings, sites, and other assets with historical importance in the area. It encourages landowners to start conservation initiatives in their neighborhoods, either on their own or through public-private partnerships.
The Awards program has honored 278 projects from 27 Asia-Pacific nations since it was founded in 2000 for their in-depth knowledge of their locations, their excellent technical accomplishments, and their demonstration of social, economic, and environmental consequences at all levels. By highlighting these activities, the Awards program has meaningfully advanced regional discourse on what constitutes cultural heritage, who has a responsibility to preserve it, and how to do so.
Award Categories:
Winners will be announced in November 2023 according to the following levels of achievement: Award of Excellence, Award of Distinction, Award of Merit, Award for New Design in Heritage Contexts; and Special Recognition for Sustainable Development.
- The Award of Excellence represents the highest recognition in the Awards programme, and is presented to projects that display exceptional achievement in all criteria, and that demonstrate a major catalytic impact at the national or regional level.
- The Award of Distinction is given to projects that demonstrate outstanding achievement in all criteria and are making a significant impact at the national or regional level.
- The Award of Merit recognizes projects that demonstrate superior achievement in all criteria.
- The Award for New Design in Heritage Contexts is given to newly-built projects that demonstrate outstanding design and are well integrated with historical contexts. Submissions of completed new architecture and designs that enrich an existing heritage setting are encouraged. Building annexes, new extensions, new buildings, new public spaces, and new structures – such as bridges – are all eligible for consideration.
- The Special Recognition for Sustainable Development was introduced in the 2020 Awards cycle to recognize projects that demonstrate noteworthy achievement in the overall Awards criteria and promise a significant contribution to sustainable development. Projects that are submitted to either the Conservation or the New Design category of the Awards programme are eligible for this recognition.
Eligibility:
- Projects entries must have been completed within the last 10 years (February 2013 – June 2023 if pre-existing use was retained, or June 2022 if a project has a new use).
- Houses, commercial and institutional buildings, historic towns and villages, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes, for example, are all suitable for submission.
Application:
Entries for the 2023 Awards programme must be submitted via the online entry platform before the deadline. In addition, the project dossier with supporting documentation, including a description of the project in the official format, and drawings and photographs in hard and soft copy formats, should be posted to UNESCO Bangkok by mail and be postmarked no later than 30 June 2023.
