European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe AwardArchDaily complete coverage

Design concepts & site conditions

“A great empty space, a square + two pavillions”

The new library is located on a large rectangular plot in the center of Girona. Bounded on the north by busy Avenue Emili Grahit, the site is embedded in a dense and compact neighborhood of tall residential blocks. These urban conditions – plus the fact that this is the largest library in the network of public libraries in Catalunya – contributed to the development of a design strategy based on two main considerations.

Creating a new access to one of the most remarkable cultural monuments and landscapes in Europe is a rare challenge for the design of a causeway.

The new Vorarlberg museum completes the row of several culture buildings at the waterside of Lake Constance. The extraordinary concept is based on the principle of architectural continuity and it expands a listed building vertically and horizontally generating a new building form not by contrast but by contact of all parts differentiating them only by their surface structure.

Piri Reis Maritime University provides higher maritime education and applied training in Tuzla district of Istanbul, Turkey. The project consists 60.000 sqm covered area in eight interconnected blocks. The campus is designed with the utmost contemporary sustainability principles that resulted with the BREEAM's "very good" certificate.

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The European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award is one of the most important and prestigious prizes for architecture within Europe. First established in 1987, the prize is awarded every two years, and a look at the projects over the years offers unique insight into the development of architecture across Europe. To better understand the significance and uniqueness of the award we spoke with two previous award winners – Kjetil Trædal Thorsen and Craig Dykers from Snøhetta and Dominique Perrault from Dominique Perrault Architecture – as well as Peter Cachola Schmal, an architect, critic and the director of DAM, the German Architecture Musuem, and Josep Lluís Mateo of Mateo Arquitectura and a professor of Architecture and Projects at ETH-Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule/ Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.

The Kindergarten – of the German School of Athens in this case - is the first public building a young child comes in contact with, and hence, attributes to it a dilated importance.

If you didn't get to see "Made in Europe" -- the incredible exhibition presented by The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe -- during this year's Venice Biennale, you're in luck. Though the show officially closed on August 4th, the projects featured in exhibition can now be viewed online.

Located in the north coast of the Rhuys peninsula, the house takes place at the edge of a lightly residential area and a wood overhanging the sea. The project set up in this wooden hill and offers several living areas connected to the outside in a particular way. The structure of the building and the windows are made out of a wood as well as the facade which is lined with vertical wood slats. The ground floor proposes an entire free space in which two enclosed wheeled beds allows to sleep both inside and outside in the courtyard or on the terrace facing the garden. On the first floor, the main bedroom opens onto the exterior through a large window providing a particular experience with the landscape.

The Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design in partnership with the Fundació Mies van der Rohe have launched an exciting program of discussions and workshops titled: «Rethinking Europe - European experience in the city development»

"European-ness Porosity" is presented as part of “MADE IN EUROPE: 25 years of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award.”

"Is there a distinguishing feature in European architecture beyond the fact that it is 'Made in Europe'?" This question (and others) will be answered in an exhibition which highlights the archives of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. Coinciding with the 2014 Venice Biennale, The European Commission and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe present “Made in Europe.” Showing a unparalleled and unique examination of the development in architecture over the past 25 years, the exhibition will draw on material from Europe's largest collection of documents (more than 2,500 projects and 230 original models) on contemporary architecture.

Houseboat or house? It’s both. PORT X defies all notions of deeply rooted house or houseboat, as we know it. Its elegant curves represent clean, timeless and functional design as well as unique harmony of modern hi-tech and natural materials.

After climbing the hill we thought, ingenuously, that the best way of being established here would be to lie down on a carpet protected from the Sun for a parasol. A carpet that we’d be able to wrinkle to be more comfortable, a parasol that rises and goes down, changing the character of the space that it covers, adaptable to the positions of the body. House and body are recognized in that both are opened systems, in constant exchange with the exterior.