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Fundació Mies van der Rohe and the European Commission have selected the winners for its 2024 edition of the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe Awards, from a pool of 362 nominated works. The 2024 Winner of the Architecture Prize is the Study Pavilion on the campus of the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, by architects Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke, both with studios in Berlin. The 2024 Winner of the Emerging Architecture Prize is the Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona by SUMA Arquitectura founded by Elena Orte and Guillermo Sevillano in Madrid.

“The 2024 Prize jury emphasizes the significance of architecture that explores the potential to shift mindsets and policies, as well as the importance of fostering inclusivity”, explains the official announcement. The Awards Ceremony will take place at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, in the context of the EUmies Awards Day, on the 14th of May 2024, launching the Barcelona Architecture Weeks.

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In 2020, in the midst of the first wave of lockdowns due to the pandemic, the municipality of Amsterdam announced its strategy for recovering from this crisis by embracing the concept of the “Doughnut Economy.” The model is developed by British economist Kate Raworth and popularized through her book, “Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist”, released in 2017. Here, she argues that the true purpose of economics does not have to equal growth. Instead, the aim is to find a sweet spot, a way to balance the need to provide everyone with what they need to live a good life, a “social foundation” while limiting our impact on the environment, “the environmental ceiling.” With the help of Raworth, Amsterdam has downscaled this approach to the size of a city. The model is now used to inform city-wide strategies and developments in support of this overarching idea: providing a good quality of life for all without putting additional pressure on the planet. Other cities are following this example.

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The 3^rd edition of Shaping the City, a forum on sustainable urban development, took place in Venice between November 24-25, following successful events in Chicago and New Orleans. Organized by the European Cultural Centre, this forum was running in parallel to the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennial exhibition, Time Space Existence. The event, hosted at Palazzo Michiel del Brusà in Cannaregio, brings together global urban planners, architects, academics, and politicians. Notably, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma was among the experts invited to explore the intersection of nature and the built environment in Japanese architecture.

Over two days, the conference set out to explore crucial themes such as education, urban commons, displacement, nature integration, and the future of architecture media, a subject discussed during a panel talk attended by ArchDaily’s managing editor, Christele Harrouk. While on-site in Venice, the ArchDaily team sat down with Kengo Kuma to discuss his unique approach to nature-inspired and site-specific designs.

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