Oliver Wainwright is the architecture and design critic at the Guardian and a 2026 Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Wainwright has also written for the AR on a broad range of subjects, from the courtyards in the sky in Uzbekistan designed by Ofeliia Aidinova in the AR issue on universal housing, to temples to the automobile in Bahrain in the AR Roads issue. In the Korea issue, Wainwright wrote about the touristification of the DMZ between North and South Korea – his first book, Inside North Korea, was published by Taschen in 2018. Inaugurated in 1999, the AR Emerging awards support young architects and designers at a key stage in their career, promoting their best work to a worldwide audience. The awards recognise excellence in an overall body of work, rather than a singular project: entrants are asked to submit a small portfolio rather than an individual completed building.