The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has announced the winners of its 2025 Award of Excellence competition, recognising a diverse slate of built and unbuilt projects that address global challenges and underscore the vital role of tall buildings in shaping 21st-century cities.
Spanning 20 countries and more than 20 categories, this year’s honourees reflect a shift in the industry’s values, emphasising not just growth and height but also stewardship, sustainability, and community impact.
The winning projects, which will be presented at the CTBUH 2025 International Conference in Toronto this October, showcase a wide spectrum of sustainable vertical urbanism.
Innovations range from carbon-negative towers and adaptive reuse strategies that extend building lifespans, to hybrid programmatic models that blur the lines between public and private spaces.
Notably, this year’s awards placed a strong focus on environmental performance, with entrants required to submit detailed data on carbon and material usage as part of the CTBUH 2025 Awards Carbon Pilot Program.
This initiative aims to consolidate global embodied carbon data and set new benchmarks for sustainable development practices.
“This year’s cohort demonstrates not only technical sophistication and design ingenuity but also an ability to respond to the circumstances shaping the world right now — from regional issues and economic challenges to the accelerating climate crisis,” said Javier Quintana de Uña, CEO of CTBUH.
“These projects prove that tall buildings and the vertical urbanism they engender can instigate better quality of life, ecological resilience and urban equity simultaneously.
“That’s the direction our industry must move in.”
The selection process involved multidisciplinary juries of leaders in architecture, engineering, planning, construction, and real estate, with performance — environmental, cultural, and operational — taking precedence over prestige or aesthetics.
The awards program, now in its 22nd year, continues to enhance the reputation and marketability of the companies behind the selected projects.
“Receiving the CTBUH Award of Excellence for One Za’abeel has been a defining moment — both personally and for our entire team,” said Dr. Mohamed Hegazy, Director of Property & Buildings Construction Supervision in the Middle East at WSP, reflecting on the impact of the recognition.
“The award showcased our work on the global stage, inspiring new conversations about what’s possible when visionary thinking, purposeful execution and ambition converge to raise the bar and pave the way for the next generation of transformative structures.”
The 2025 CTBUH Award of Excellence winners will compete for “best in category” honors at the upcoming conference, where the results will be revealed at a prestigious ceremony and dinner.
