Australia’s National Portrait Gallery, in Canberra, has taken the main honors at this year’s Australian Institute of Architects’ ACT Architecture Awards. Judges praised the design as an “outstanding work of architectural excellence,” reports The Australian.

Jury chairman Bronwen Jones said the gallery, the first new public building in the precinct for twenty years, had a substantial presence that also engaged visitors at a personal level. The gallery was designed by Sydney architects Johnson Pilton Walker and cost about seventy million dollars to build.

In other news, for the second year in a row, a series of photographs has won the United Overseas Bank Painting of the Year competition, according to the Straits Times.

The photographs are part of visual artist Zhao Renhui’s series entitled “Space in Between” and were chosen from 1,047 submissions. The three pictures depict separately the outline of a human figure in a camouflaged cloak, an austere mousetrap, and a lifeless sparrow.

Zhao, twenty-six, said that he posed to himself the question of whether studying animals using science truly brings humans closer to nature. For instance, he was fascinated by mousetraps that are the result of research on animal habits, suggesting to him that science is sometimes not used in beneficial ways.

Other than winning about twenty thousand dollars and a trophy, Zhao will notch a first: He is the first recipient of the prize to attend the one-month residency program at Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan. Part of the prize’s new three-year partnership with the museum, it gives outstanding local artists a regional platform to showcase their works. Koichi Yasunaga, the museum’s adviser, was also one of this year’s five judges.