The 10th edition of The Architect’s Newspaper’s Best of Products Awards continues the program’s quest to elevate the well-designed products serving the architecture and design community. The awards bring a well-deserved celebration and recognition of the manufacturers, designers, engineers, and collaborations that are behind the trusted tools and systems that make up our built environment.
This year, the program featured 34 categories and was open to international entries so long as the product is available in North America. Based on submissions and resulting winners, sustainability proved to be a uniting theme. Recycled content and reusable material proved common among many entries, but those who impressed the jury did so by moving the goalpost beyond just greenwashing to create scalable, circular systems or impressive ways to reduce energy and carbon. These products serve as a testament to just how attainable a sustainable future really is.
The following are the 2024 Best of Products Awards winners, honorable mentions, and editors’ picks. May they serve as a commendation for the innovations currently shaping the industry today and a reflection for how the needle will continue to move going forward.
Jury
Acoustics
Søuld Baffle is a sustainable acoustic solution made from eelgrass, sourced from Denmark, that can be used in different suspension and mounting options.
Appliances & Plumbing: Bathroom
Conceived to blend into a space, Design For All Bathroom Accessories includes a wide range of paper towel dispensers, waste units, soap and hand sanitizer dispensers, toilet tissue dispensers, toilet seat cover dispensers, sanitary napkin/tampon dispensers, sharps containers, shelves, and grab bars.
Appliances & Plumbing: Bathroom Accessories
The AirPocket Door is a slide-in shower door with a full shower seal, enabling you to turn your shower into a combination walk-in shower/steam shower.
Appliances & Plumbing: HVAC
The FL-10 LED architectural linear diffuser is a system that fully integrates an architectural linear diffuser with a lighting module.
Appliances & Plumbing: Kitchen Appliances
This induction cooktop offers a sleek, unobtrusive look without the need of a stainless-steel frame for a flush look and new cooktop pan recognition and combination abilities.
Appliances & Plumbing: Kitchen Fixtures
The 2.0 provides filtered, chilled, and medium tap water and sparkling water at the touch of a button to limit plastic bottles and waste.
Building Materials & Facades: Glass
This Vacuum Insulating Glass is manufactured exclusively with Solarban® 70 solar-control, low-e glass, which enables a massive 79 percent improvement in U-values and thermal insulation performance three to five times better than conventional insulating glass units.
Building Materials & Facades: Metals
Aluminum recycled from scrap content and post-consumer scrap from old windows, doors, and facades are re-melted for reuse again in varying building applications.
Building Materials & Facades: Stone and Concrete
Building Materials & Facades: Timber
The VetraFin-W system combines mass timber with structural glass in facade applications, creating a sense of spatial depth to any facade or overhead application.
Building Materials: Weather, Air Barriers, & Insulation
GreenGirt CMH XO™ is a new composite metal hybrid sub-framing system used to provide the necessary structural support and thermal breaks by bringing windows into alignment with the thermal plane of a building’s continuous insulation.
Facades: Structural Systems
This hybrid facade system combines the benefits of timber modules, using carbon-neutral wood, and aluminum to deliver cost-effective and sustainable solutions.
Finishes & Surfaces: Interior Flooring
RIVA MAX is a 100 percent European-engineered, white oak hardwood collection that elevates the ambiance in both commercial and residential spaces.
Finishes & Surfaces: Interior Surfaces
Notoriously rare and difficult to procure in North America, hinoki is a slow-growing, aromatic cypress species native to central and southern Japan and boasting aromatic, anti-bacterial properties.
Finishes & Surfaces: Outdoor
Landscape design and product studio ORCA’s new collection of outdoor pavers are made in California from local clay and recycled concrete with permeability for regenerative water use.
Finishes & Surfaces: Paints & Coatings
A high-performance wood oil, CUTEK offers protection that penetrates into the wood to displace water while enhancing its natural beauty.
Finishes & Surfaces: Walls & Wallcoverings
Made from Japanese cypress, known as “sugi” in Japan, Sugi Unoiled is a versatile, sustainably harvested wood ceiling and cladding product.
Furnishings: Accessories
This modern and electric water vapor fireplace offers the allure of a traditional option with added safety, innovation, and functionality.
Furnishings: Commercial
Float Studio teamed up with Uhuru Design for a collaboration that celebrates a mutual passion for embracing industrial design and preserving architectural beauty with the table series, available for commercial spaces and a variety of materials and finishes.
Furnishings: Outdoor
The Mondrian-inspired Cosmopolitan Kitchen, designed by international architect, designer, and creative director Daniel Germani, offers a fresh take with a modern, minimalist design.
Furnishings: Residential
In an ode to the artist Donald Judd, the studio crafted a floating, minimal Judd bar and record player, both a sculptural and functional nod to living room/home entertainment systems of the 1950s and 1960s.
Hardware: Architectural
With a new redesign to the popular pivot/slide-in and folding/slide-in door hardware, the 3rd generation of this hardware now features a push-to-open option for handle-less cabinet fronts and a pull option for cabinet fronts with a handle.
Hardware: Decorative
Riss means “crack” in German, a concept that has been reinterpreted to create Riss Big and Mini handles, based on linear crevices present in nature
Lighting: Decorative
Crafted by designers like Louis Filosa, BEBOP Studios, and Studio Den Den, this collection features timeless silhouettes, museum-grade, dimmable LEDs, patent-pending mounting mechanism allowing single-person installation in minutes, and sugarcane-derived Gantri Plant Polymers for a biodegradable product.
Lighting: Fixture
This miniature recessed fixture features a minimal aperture of only 0.5 inches, available in round or square, that still delivers powerful output with up to 1041 delivered lumens.
Lighting: Outdoor
Syrios Pro luminaires enable a continuous aesthetic from curb to cube and a multitude of exterior applications, including street and area lighting for public spaces and building facades.
Openings: Doors
NNW Aluminum 643 is a folding glass wall with modern features that matches the classic designs of industrial, art deco, and other midcentury architectural movements.
Openings: Windows
Designed for enhancing entertainment areas, the Performance Series 7665 Pass-Through Awning Window offers a seamless indoor-outdoor experience with a continuous hinge and pressurized gas struts.
Roofing
Combining sleek aesthetics and energy generation, SunStyle offers a comprehensive, protective solar roofing system, installed edge-to-edge in a patented overlapping diamond dragon scale pattern.
Technology: Design & Build Software
The new mixed-reality headset delivers a fully immersive 3D experience so architects and designers can meticulously evaluate design concepts with crisp, true-to-life images.
Technology: Smart Building, Smart Home & Automation Systems
FreePower allows architects, designers, builders, countertop fabricators, and consumers to easily embed wireless charging into residential and commercial surfaces.
Textiles
Ame is the first textile-to-textile project from Kvadrat Innovation Lab, woven with recycled polyester made entirely from textile waste.