Design Group Five wins again at Asia Pacific Property Awards

Wednesday, 15 June 2011 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Design Group Five International (DG5I), one of Sri Lanka’s leading architectural practices, won a Best Architecture (High Rise) Award for Iceland Residencies at the Asia Pacific Property Awards 2011 in association with Bloomberg Television.

This is the second consecutive year that DG5I was recognised at this annual blue-chip event held at the Longemont Hotel in Shanghai recently.

Established 17 years ago, and in association with Bloomberg Television and Google, these awards are considered the world’s most prestigious property competition and cover residential as well as commercial categories and annually set out to identify the very best real estate professionals across the globe.

This is carried out through a meticulous process involving a judging panel of over 60 experts chaired by Lord Bates of Langbaurgh and covering every aspect of the property business such as development, architecture, interior design and agency.

The judging panel’s collective knowledge of the property industry is unsurpassed by any other property awards. This year’s judges include James Bacon, UK Account Manager of Google; Peter Bolton King, Group Chief Executive of the National Federation of Property professionals; David Dalby of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS); and Mike McNamara of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

President of the International Property Awards Stuart Shield said: “The standards displayed in this part of the world will help make the final one of the most interesting in the awards’ history.”

The event is part of the long established International Property Awards and its award winners’ logo is recognised as a symbol of excellence throughout the global industry.

Attaining one of these coveted awards is indisputable evidence that Sri Lanka’s own DG5I is capable of beating some exceedingly strong contenders within the highly competitive Asia Pacific property arena against multinational firms from Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore among others.

Chairman of DG5I Suranjith de Silva said: “We are proud for our work to be recognised at this international awards forum for the second year running. We hope to be an inspiration for others by this and plan to keep achieving these high standards of architecture in the future.”

He added: “Significant new foreign and local investment in Sri Lanka is resulting in many unique projects which will give us the opportunity to keep producing excellent work and keep Sri Lankan architecture on the international map.”

DG5I is an ISO certified architectural and engineering consultancy practice and was the first in Sri Lanka to receive ISO recognition for quality assurance in 2001. It has also been presented with the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects Special Award in 2008 for its significant contribution to the architectural profession over the last 35 years.

Last year DG5I became the first-ever Sri Lankan architectural practice to win Best Architecture Awards at the Asia Pacific Property Awards for Empire Residencies at Braybrooke Place, Colombo 2 and Lumiére Residencies at Dabare Road, Colombo 5. This year’s winner Iceland Residencies is a 33 Storey Luxury apartment complex developed by ICC Housing (Pvt) Ltd. located at Galle Face Terrace, Colombo 3.