Star Homes

• Prize
  Silver in Analog/Architecture
• Photographer
  Julien Lanoo, Belgium
• Date of Photograph
  september 2022
• Studio
  Studio Julien Lanoo
• Website
  https://www.julienlanoo.com/
• Instagram
  https://www.instagram.com/julienlanoo/

The Star Homes Project has been developed over a decade to create low-cost, insect-proof housing that improves health in rural sub-Saharan Africa. The project comprises 110 single-family homes across 55 villages in Mtwara, Tanzania, a region with high rates of malaria, respiratory infections, and diarrhoeal disease.A three-year trial found that children living in Star Homes experienced 44% less malaria, 30% less diarrhoea, and 18% fewer respiratory infections than in traditional houses, while also showing improved growth, demonstrating the health andcost-effectiveness of better housing design.

Julien Lanoo is a Belgian photographer.
He looks at the architectural world with a deep understanding of its historical and social layers as well as the visible and intangible connections between nature, light, and materiality.
Lanoo’s photographic career has covered such topics and fields as architecture, design, social integration, urban transformations, and their dwellers.
His work has been exhibited widely, including the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Cité de l’architecture in Paris, MAXXI in Rome, and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, among others.

Awards Julien was a four-time nominee at the WAF Architectural Photography Awards in 2016 and was selected for the European Architectural Photography Prize in 2019. In 2021, his studio was named ‘World’s best architecture photography studio’ at the A+Firm Awards, organized by Architizer.
In 2025, he received the Créateurs Design Awards (CDA) for Best Project Photography, alongside Lord Norman Foster and SANAA (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa), who were awarded the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award and Le Prix Charlotte Perriand, respectively. Most recently, his analog series of 110 Star Homes in Mtwara, Tanzania has been nomiated for Best project Photography at the Architizer Awards, an award celebrating the world’s most inspiring architecture.