What Defines Good Design Today? Michele Rhoda Reflects on the WAN Awards

In an era where architecture is increasingly photographed before it is inhabited, the question of what constitutes “good” design has become more urgent — and more complex — than ever. For Michele Rhoda, principal at ARRCC, serving on the jury of the prestigious WAN Awards offered a revealing recalibration of architectural value systems.

Across categories as varied as Adaptive Reuse and Future Leisure, the deliberations repeatedly moved beyond surface polish and seductive visual language. What emerged instead was a collective insistence on architecture that performs with integrity over time — projects capable not only of impressing at first glance, but of meaningfully improving the lives of those who inhabit them long after opening day.

The strongest entries, Rhoda observed, were rarely the loudest. Their success lay in clarity of thought, restraint of execution, and a sophisticated understanding that sustainability is not an aesthetic trend but an enduring framework for relevance, adaptability, and human experience.

From these conversations emerged three defining principles shaping contemporary architectural excellence.

Design for Use, Not the Image

If sustainability once operated as a checklist of credentials and materials, it is now being judged as something far more rigorous: a test of purpose under pressure.

Within both Adaptive Reuse and Future Leisure, the projects that resonated most deeply approached their briefs as inherently fluid. Their strength lay not in fixed perfection, but in anticipating change — cultural shifts, operational demands, evolving user patterns, and the unpredictable realities of contemporary life.

This reframes the metrics of success entirely. A building that photographs beautifully yet cannot adapt is already edging toward obsolescence, regardless of how refined its detailing or persuasive its renderings may be. Increasingly, sustainability is measured through continued usefulness: operational intelligence, spatial generosity, and the flexibility required to remain socially, environmentally, and financially viable over decades.

In Adaptive Reuse particularly, this intelligence manifested as restraint and precision. The most compelling projects resisted nostalgia-driven preservation. Instead, they demonstrated a disciplined clarity about what should remain, what should be transformed, and how existing structures could become more legible and liveable through carefully calibrated intervention.

This distinction between preservation as image-making and reuse as a living system is central to Rhoda’s thinking. In Wave Villa, for example, the restoration of the roof and key architectural elements was never approached as a purely aesthetic exercise. The design strategy focused instead on lived performance: how the home would breathe, function, and support everyday rituals over time.

The lesson is increasingly clear. Architecture succeeds not when it freezes history into a pristine visual artifact, but when it enables buildings to continue evolving meaningfully into the future.

Future Leisure projects sharpened this argument from another perspective. The strongest proposals demonstrated public value beyond spectacle, resisting the temptation to pursue “icon” status in favour of civic belonging. Their sustainability narratives were embedded not in rhetoric, but in programme: spaces capable of evolving beyond novelty while sustaining delight, responsibility, and long-term relevance simultaneously.

Minimalism Is Not an Excuse for Less

Minimalism continues to dominate contemporary architectural language, yet the jury repeatedly distinguished between reduction as refinement and reduction as compromise.

Stripped-back architecture can achieve extraordinary spatial clarity — but only when supported by generosity, comfort, and material intelligence. When minimalism merely disguises budgetary restraint, its deficiencies quickly surface through diminished comfort, poor environmental performance, and an absence of emotional warmth.

Throughout the judging process, human experience remained a non-negotiable benchmark. Daylight needed to function beyond the promise of a rendered image. Ventilation, thermal regulation, and acoustic performance were evaluated as fundamental design drivers rather than secondary technical considerations.

Whether within affordable housing or high-end hospitality, the contemporary interior must ultimately feel inhabitable in the deepest sense of the word. What endures is not visual austerity, but disciplined calm: environments shaped through thoughtful proportion, tactile richness, and atmospheric warmth rather than reduction for its own sake.

The projects that succeeded understood that restraint demands precision. Minimalism, at its highest level, is not about absence — it is about careful editing in service of human comfort.

Make Community the Brief, Not the By-Product

If future-oriented architecture is to remain relevant, Rhoda argues, it must answer a single question with conviction: who benefits?

Buildings driven purely by spectacle or short-term visibility inevitably struggle when they fail to support authentic patterns of public use. Increasingly, architectural value is being measured through contribution rather than image — through a project’s capacity to strengthen civic life and cultivate meaningful belonging within its context.

The most effective work treated shared space not as leftover circulation, but as deliberate social infrastructure. Thresholds softened exclusion. Circulation encouraged encounter. Flexibility enabled spaces to evolve organically over time. Even modularity, often associated with efficiency alone, proved successful only when it supported dignity, identity, and human connection rather than repetition for repetition’s sake.

An adaptive reuse project by Neri&Hu captured this ethos with particular clarity. Through restraint and conceptual precision, the project demonstrated how generosity can emerge not from excess, but from purpose — proving that enduring public value is ultimately achieved through thoughtful, context-sensitive design.

A New Definition of Excellence

What the WAN Awards jury room ultimately revealed was not the emergence of a dominant aesthetic language, but something far more significant: a recalibration of architectural priorities.

Today, excellence is increasingly defined not by visual impact alone, but by adaptability, usefulness, emotional intelligence, and long-term social relevance. The projects that endure are those that remain capable of supporting life as it changes — quietly, intelligently, and generously over time.

By Michele Rhoda, Principal, ARRCC