Wison Tungthunya's shot of a hotel in Ayutthaya, Thailand.[Photo provided to China Daily]

"I like to make connections with the audience when I take a photo of a building."

This was the first time Zhang took part in the Architectural Photography Awards.

Among the 12 images he submitted, the shot of the swimming pool is his favorite - "the light is perfect and the building is designed by Chinese".

Wang Zhenfei, an architect and photographer, also made the list of finalists with his photo of Tianrenheyi Museum in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, which he himself helped design.

Another Chinese photographer was among the finalists - Yao Li, with his photo of the Dongzhuang-Building Museum of Western Regions in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Adam Letch's photo of a chapel built on Bosjes farm in Ceres, Cape Town, won the exterior category, and Tom Roe's Messner Mountain Museum Corones, Bolzano, Italy, won "sense of place".

Amy Croft is one of the judges and curator at Sto Werkstatt, the cultural headquarters of the Sto Group in London. She says the 2017 entries were remarkable in their global reach: from the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert to a housing estate in Beijing, from an art museum in Denmark to a chapel in Cape Town.