United Bank, Ethiopia selected Eskender Woubetu & Partners Consulting Architects, as the winner of the competition to 
design a headquarter building.It is estimated that the future headquarter building will cost 800 million birr to complete.
The design competition launched five months ago was closed at an event held at the Hilton hotel. The two other finalists were Gereta Consult and K2N architects.
The bank invited architectural firms to present a design for a 30 storey building with additional four leveled basement for parking on a 3338 meter square plot of land it acquired in the Senga Tera area of Addis Ababa.
The competition was conducted through the Association of Ethiopian Architects which took on the task of evaluating the designs with jury members receiving 20 thousand birr in recompense for the bank for evaluating the completion according to a source.Seventy one interested parties bought the Term of Reference for the project and 41 schematic designs were received in the first round registering the highest number of entrances in such a competition to date said the source.
The jury selected seven entries for the second round to present a detailed design and three dimensional model in a month and a half. The submission were evaluated on the basis of the a range of factors including, space organization, sustainability, plot usage and techniques; form including style, scale, composition, urban character, and symbolic attributes; and compliance which includes planning requirements, code and security requirements and accommodation requirements.
Source: Fortune
