Dezeen Magazine

Image of swimming pool with vaulted ceiling named best architecture photograph of 2017

This shot of a dramatically lit swimming pool, taken by Terrence Zhang, has been named architectural photograph of the year.

Shanghai-based photographer Zhang was named overall winner in this year's Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards during the World Architecture Festival in Berlin last week.

He was awarded the title for an almost symmetrical image, which shows light flooding through a row of elliptical windows set into the barrel-vaulted ceiling of a swimming pool. The pool is located within a new campus designed for Tianjin University by Chinese studio Atelier Li Xinggang.

The Swimming Pool was one of three images by Zhang shortlisted for this year's awards, including a shot of the gymnasium within the same building. The third shortlisted image captured the view from the Folk Art Museum by Kengo Kuma.

The winning entry was announced during the gala dinner held on the final day of the World Architecture Festival 2017, which took place in Berlin from 15 to 17 November 2017.

The photograph was displayed at the World Architecture Festival along 19 other shortlisted images, including a photo of Zaha Hadid's vertiginous Messner Mountain Museum in Italy and a view of a chapel with an undulating roof near Cape Town.

The prize is supported by acoustics specialists Sto, and all of the shortlisted photographs will be exhibited at the company's exhibition space, Sto Werkstatt, in London.

Last year the award, now in its fifth year, went to British photographer Matt Emmett for his image capturing the brick arches of a reservoir in London's Finsbury Park.