Now it’s in 9th year, Metal Construction News (MCN) announced their 2021 Readers’ Choice Awards for top products in the metal construction industry. The top product for this year goes to Milwaukee-based Xena Workwear Inc. for their Omerga EH Safety Boot. The other products selected were incredibly varied and showed no clear pattern of preference. Ranging from insulated metal panels and perforated screens to curtainwalls and louvers, the products identified by MCN’s readers touch on every facet of the metal construction industry and show the breadth of the industry’s building product needs.

As announced by Metal Architecture in July, the MA Design Awards are celebrating a decade and have become the defining award program for the metal construction industry, with some of the most exciting projects seen in the architecture landscape. The 2021 Metal Architecture Design Awards represent a variety of great projects in the metal construction industry and showcase exciting uses of metal that take design to the top of the class.

METALCON would like to highlight two projects that were also winning projects in our recent Metal in Architecture Design & Photo Contest: The Bézier Curve House and the David M. Rubenstein Forum; as announced at METALCON 2021 last month in Tampa.

As announced last month in METALCON’s inaugural Metal in Architecture design and construction project photo competition, the Gotca Group received the award in the “interior” category for their work done on the Museum of Tomorrow.

Opened in 2015 as a new icon of the modernization of Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro’s harbor, the Museum of Tomorrow was born in the Praça Mauá as a science museum meant to explore, imagine, and conceive all the possibilities for constructing the future. The Museum of Tomorrow, or Museu do Amanhã to locals, serves as an innovative cultural space addressing the future of the planet was designed by renowned Spanish architect, engineer and artist Santiago Calatrava.

On the heels of METALCON 2021 where architects were in the spotlight with the new Architect’s Experience, the Metal Construction Association has announced the launch of their new Metal Architecture Academy, emphasizing the importance of educating the design community on the uses and benefits of metal. As reported by DesignandBuildwithMetal, “The Academy includes eight courses which provide opportunities to learn about metal walls and roofing as sustainable and flexible solutions for today’s architectural challenges, as well as design options that are unique and inspiring.”

Amidst the buzz and excitement at METALCON this month, show attendees were invited to vote on-site to select the first-ever METALCON People’s Choice Top ThreeProduct winners! Attendees chose from the seven Top Product award winners announced last month (listed below). Of the seven, congratulations to S-5! for their WindClamp2X in the Category of Roofs, RoofersCoffeeShop for their Read, Listen, Watch program in the Category of Technology, and to Bay Insulation Systems for their Bay Runner Insulation System in the Category of Insulation and Weather Barriers. The people have spoken!

Last week at METALCON 2021, the show floor was all “a buzz” when the winners of the inaugural design and construction project photo competition were announced and recognized. The amazing projects featuring metal in design were showcased in the first ever “Metal in Architecture Gallery” prominently displayed on the METALCON show floor (pictured above). We congratulate the following winners:

Grand Prize Winner and for the category Walls: ATAS International, Project 18: David Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago 

Photo Credit: ATAS

Roofs: Rheinzink, Project 24: Bezier Curve House/A-House

Photo credit: Parametric-Architecture

Ornamental/ Architectural Features and Interior: Gotca Group, Project 2: Museum of Tomorrow

Photo Credit: Architect Magazine