Paul Nicholls’ The Golden Age adds an unexpected dash of diversity to this year’s Architectural 3D Awards.

The shortlist for this year’s Architectural 3D Awards has been announced, and features some very striking work – not all of it obviously architectural.

European studios dominate the Architectural Image and Architectural Film and Animation categories, with young British freelancer Paul Nicholls picking up a (we think) unprecedented three nominations, including one for his short The Golden Age (above).

The three-and-a-half-minute animation, completed as part of Nicholls’ MA work, shows “synthetic programmed spaces” rather than physical architecture.

Another young British artist, Jonathan Gales, gets two nominations for similarly striking, partly abstract works in the still image category.

Elsewhere, former nominees Squint/Opera pick up two nods in the animation category; as does former winner Tianyi Zhu for a typically lush, painterly animation – which, irritatingly, we can’t find in an embeddable form.

The real-time category is equally diverse – geographically, at least -with nominations for artists from Iran, China, Austria and Spain.

The awards themselves take place at the Mundos Digitales festival on 6 July.

See all of the nominees on the awards site