Readers of ArchDaily have voted Ilot Queyries as the winner of a 2022 ArchDaily Building of the Year Award, clinching the top spot in the housing category. Given every year by the world's most visited architecture website, the award narrowed down over 4,000 projects published in 2021 to the best project in each of 15 categories.

Located to the east of the River Garonne in Bordeaux, across from the city’s UNESCO World Heritage historic centre, Ilot Queyries, a courtyard apartment building providing 308 homes – including 163 for social housing – parking, commercial space, and a rooftop restaurant in an intimate urban setting with plenty of light, air, and a large collective green space.

Designed in partnership with local architects Flint, the Ilot Queyries is a large, irregularly shaped courtyard building almost 200 metres long. At 5,200m2, the large courtyard provides a park-like space for the residents; located one storey above ground level, it also hides the residents’ parking below. The building responds to its surroundings on all sides: on the south-eastern end of the building, sections as low as one storey relate to the low-rise neighbours, while on the north-east, facing the river, it rises as high as nine storeys. At this high point, a glass crown houses a restaurant with views of the river and the historic centre of Bordeaux beyond.

Ilot Queyries is the largest building in a development of four buildings masterplanned by MVRDV and Joubert Architecture. Ilot Queyries itself was designed by MVRDV with co-architects Flint, with landscape architecture designed by MVRDV in collaboration with Sabine Haristoy and Flint.

Ilot Queyries joins three previous MVRDV designs to win ArchDaily Building of the Year trophies. Crystal Houses won the award in the commercial architecture category in 2017, Future Towers won the award in the housing category in 2019, and Concordia Design Wrocław won the award in the offices category in 2021.

Read more about Ilot Queyries here. You can see all the winners of the 2022 Building of the Year Awards here.