European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe Award

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PXATHENS, the initiative

Wellness and recreation center is designed in a remarkable place alongside Anyksciai pinewood, famous for its unique beauty of the natural environment, depicted by notable Lithuanian poets. Great respect for the subtle natural surroundings encouraged to look for non-standart architecture design solutions.

The apartment building lies on a sloping site that faces onto three streets and is comprised of 5 stories with apartments, a pilotis and 4 underground levels ― 1900m².

In the heart of Kreuzberg, Berlin’s new, big inner-city park is opening this summer: The “Park am Gleisdreieck”, a former triangular junction. The first half of an altogether 36 hectares area spanning in the Western part of Berlin was already opened in September 2011 („Gleisdreieck - Eastpark“).

Specific features of this location originate from the fact that primordial modernist setting of the New Belgrade, extremely modernized throughout the principles of Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse was interrupted by so called investor’s (speculators) architecture during the past few decades. One of the outcomes of such conflict is the fact that new-formed, fragmentized sites are in huge disproportion compared to existing structures and primarily, sites marked for the complementary functions such as educational facilities are in large scale undersized. So it is the case with this site for the kindergarten. That fact as well as the nearness of heavy traffic corridor were predominant in the process of designing. Circular form was the most appropriate as a response to the built environment as well as to the very intensive traffic which backside of the building faces.

Where in the past a small square marked the medieval gateway to the old town district of Ennsdorf, the garden house stands today. Arisen from an old farmhouse which was entirely ruinous it shapes the counterpart of the historical tollhouse. The traces of the past have slightly vanished, the wayside shrine, that once stood impressive in front of the tollhouse's gable wall, has been moved to the right. The hedges have become too close to the free area.

Goztepe is a southern neighborhood in the Asian side of Istanbul. The area is a densely arranged fabric of isolated towers made in the last 50 years usually in close proximity to each other. As Istanbul grows its footprint outwards the city, urban planners have put forward a strategy to counterbalance this trend by allowing densification of existing neighborhoods.

A ruin was the starting point for the design of a holiday house in the island of Pico. The project came from the will to maintain a ruin and thinking of a house that would value it, a house that could be modelled to it and take advantage at the same time, offering the most diverse and complex possibilities of living than the former typology.

When the ’t Speelhuis theatre in Helmond, designed by Piet Blom, was destroyed by fire in December 2011, the town council opted for a temporary replacement in the Our Lady of the Assumption, a neo-Byzantine domed church near the centre that had become disused. There were important preconditions for the new theatre facility. The church is a monument, it remains the property of the Den Bosch diocese and the facility is temporary, so interventions must damage the building as little as possible and must be reversible. The theatre also had to be operational very quickly.

‘Pulp Press (Kistefos) 2013’ is a permanent site-specific artist-architect commission for Kistefos Museum - one of Scandinavia's largest parks of contemporary sculpture. The museum occupies the grounds of a 19th century paper mill in Jevnaker, an hour north of Oslo, Norway.

The new Moesgaard Museum is uniquely situated in the rolling bucolic landscape of Skåde. With its sloping roofscape of grass, moss and brightly-coloured wild flowers, the building is a powerful visual landmark perceptible even from the sea.

Embedded within the boundaries of the ZAC (coordinated developed zone) Chantereine, the “evolution” grounds of Alfortville represent a qualitative approach to which we lay claim in this district’s public spaces, and more generally in today’s city. Thus, the playground becomes a truly architectural space, integrated in the urban structure and open to the city’s other practices.

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The Kılıç Ali Paşa Hamam was constructed in 1580 by Master Architect Sinan, on behalf of Ottoman Admiral Kılıç Ali Paşa as part of a larger ‘külliye’ complex, in the Tophane district of Istanbul. As the physical manifestation of a unique period in the historical harbor of the Ottoman imperial city, the Kılıç Ali Paşa hamam has become not only part of public space again in the Tophane area, but also part of an overall revitalization of a previously derelict area in the city. 430 years of layered materials and debris, literally ‘embalming’ the surfaces and ‘burying’ the structure, had to be removed in order to identify and restitute the original Sinan building, thus relinking this 1st degree historical monument back to its origins.

Mi’Costa Hotel and Residences Project is one of the nominated projects from Turkey for Mies Van Der Rohe 2015, that is most prestigious European Union Prize.

House C and House D are a part of the “Terra Panonica” estate, located in Mokrin, a settlement in the municipality of Kikinda, in Vojvodina region, in Serbia.

The building is a part of the technological park of the A Coruña University. This technological park is formed by another six buildings interconnected among them. The plan for the Technological Park established that each building must have two volumes; one of them of four floors and the other of two. These two volumes will be divided by a pedestrian public space that will connect transversally all the buildings of the park.

The first phase of FMOS, the new Upper Secondary School in Mosfellsbaer, provides space for up to 500 pupils. The building is intertwined with the landscape on the narrow plot, the diagonal lines of the building refer to the hills in the surroundings and one of the roofs turns into a green ramp to walk about on. Mosfellsbær is a town of approximately 9.000 inhabitants, situated 15 kilometers east of Reykjavik. It is the hometown of Iceland’s noble prize winner, writer Halldór Laxnes, from whom inspiration is sought: ”... and flowers grow on the roof”* – the landscape becomes the building which becomes landscape… The 12.000 sqm plot of the school is situated close to the town center and along Highway nr. 1, which lies through Mosfellsbær. This influences the shape and choice of material of the building, aiming to minimize sound emission.