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

Almost a decade ago, I accidentally came across a beautiful industrial waste material – gray sandstone slabs with countless irregular cuts. For many years I was looking for an adequate design opportunity to take advantage of this singular material. Finally, I found the right project in the city of Oświęcim, where it became the leitmotiv of the Memorial Park, symbolizing the ruins of the now defunct Great Synagogue (1863-1939) and the paths of life of the multicultural community that were once criss-crossing in this place. References to the temple demolished 80 years ago take on various forms in the new project. The outline of the former synagogue is marked by a narrow curb, separating the interior of the park from the dense greenery surrounding it.

In the case of the St. Lucas school of arts in Antwerp, Atelier Kempe Thill was confronted with a very low building budget as a starting point.  In addition, the client asked for a complex space program that had to be partly integrated into an existing building.  In order to manage the reduction of the demands, optimisation on various levels and general minimalism have been major design criteria. The new house has been developed in collaboration with the various users of the institute to create contemporary conditions for education in arts. The aim was to use the new building as a means to re-organise the education process as well as the institute itself, to prepare it for the challenges of the 21st century. 

A soft integration in the landscape accompanies the development of the city. Neither in the center of the town nor really on its outskirts, regarding the urban development of the northern part of the street Pierres, blanches, the location of the project offers the opportunity to reinforce the development of the city by asserting the public character of this facilities and equipment.

The project pursues a resilient idea in the compression of a single-family house volume into three apartments with a total of 9 inhabitants, 6 adults, and 3 children, each with the qualities of a single-family house in the design approach. The aim of the project is not linear system optimization and energy efficiency, but a maximum sufficiency approach, creative reduction as a design principle. A new, fundamentally resource-saving and social approach is to be shown to the typology of the single-family house, which questions issues such as land consumption, individuality and flexibility of living, densification, age-appropriate and multi-generational living and would like to show a possible solution, especially in rural areas. In this way, an age-appropriate apartment on the ground floor, a two-story apartment with roof terraces, and an end-row house were created in a single-family house.

Any kind of intervention in this space should not interfere with the existing one. More than proposing it was necessary to omit, more than designing it was necessary to recover and integrate, more than composing it was necessary to be simple and silent with rigour in response to new needs.

The social housing neighbourhood of São João de Deus, was originally adapted to a layout that followed the British design parameters of the ‘Garden City’ movement: small scale buildings, arranged rationally and in a fragmented way over the ground, following the nature of the topography and adapting to sun exposure, configured in a concentric plan. 

The City Cemetery is designed as a forest park – a green oasis in the residential area.  Therefore, it is no longer a strictly monofunctional structure.

On the border of the historical flea market in Saint-Ouen, this small mixed-use building – architecture studio office and collective housing, is set in a typical suburban fabric, defined by heterogeneous and relatively low-rise buildings. The very first difficulty in the project conception was to integrate the building in the small plot of land while respecting as much as possible its residential environment. The graduating height of the five-story volume makes it possible to associate a dwelling to the north and a townhouse to the south. The footprint leaves free space to a 50 m² courtyard which represents a breathing space into the dense fabric and creates a transparency towards the city.

The main idea of the building was to fit into the surrounding environment, also creating a completely new context for the city of Narva. The architectural concept consists of two parts. The first deals with the connection between the typology and the location of the building, and the second with the form in which the strict uniform structure of the building and the contrasting flexible change of the landscape meet.

Warot Building is the latest addition to the public facilities of the village of Winksele. It hosts a wide range of activities in a carefully designed multifunctional hall. The building is situated on an existing sports campus that is surrounded by rural landscape and public facilities. The large bay window and the covered outdoor space activate the adjoining fields for play.

The pavilion for the Revolution of Dignity Museum is a short-span project to galvanize the transformation of the surrounded landscape. Since 2018 when the two best projects for the Museum Building and of Memorial for the Heavenly Hundred Heroes were selected through competitions nothing happened. While collective memory of recent events is still waiting for the comprehensive spaces, people go to the site every day for remembering and gathering. Moreover, the State Intuition, Museum of Dignity, requires the space for events and activities. The best idea is to do the transformation right on the construction site of the future Museum, 150 meters far from Independence square. The triggering moment for the pavilion was the Revolution’s 5th anniversary on November 21, 2019. We’ve been invited to the project one and a half months prior to this date.

Evisa is a secluded mountain village of 200 souls, with limited access to construction materials and strong meteorological constraints. However, there is an abundance of local resources, such as a Laricio pine and chestnut trees forest and the ancestral know-how of local craftsmen, which were of tremendous economic significance and made Evisa the capital of the micro-region. The completion of this project is the result of a consensual relationship with the client.

Inspired by wild nature, placed on the edge of a bog, this building is nothing like your regular hotel room. It is located among birch trees, with bogland flooding knee-deep during high water – making it possible to start a canoe trip straight from the terrace. A boardwalk leads to the terrace in front of the elevated house.

“Stepping through the dark gates, an atmosphere of green calm embraces you, gently disconnecting you from the rush and noise of the city.” The owners' intention of Hotel Graace is thrilling. Staged on an old factory site within an urban perimeter block the twenty-eight modular hotel rooms are linked together by a unique open space.  Set underneath the ancient steel-work construction, the hotel presents itself with lots of green outdoor spaces. In addition to the small courtyard in between the two wings, common areas on the first floor lead up to the fully green roof terraces. 

The residential project Tetris Hall consists of two 25 - storey towers which are connected by a bridge at the roof level. The project has been developed on a dense site in the prestige business district of central Kiev. The site benefits from close proximity to major cultural and entertainment venues and all the amenities which lie within walking distance. The magnificent panoramic views from each apartment and the modern lifestyle offered by the building’s unmatched private amenities, in combination with the easy access to the center of Kiev, make the Tetris Hall a highly desirable destination for residents and visitors.

Towards high-density low-rise. This project is in its core a typological experiment: a maximum of individual homes with private gardens on a relatively small urban plot; a model for the development of more compact settlements with a density of approx. 40 houses per hectare. It aims to offer an alternative to living on the periphery of big cities for people who would like to live in a private house in a more urban context. The project tries to find answers to the typological challenges inherent to high-density low-rise developments:  How much individuality is possible? How much privacy is necessary? How much collective form is required? How much community and social interaction is desirable?

Castle Grad is one of the biggest castles in Slovenia. It lies in the northeastern part of the country and is very well connected with both neighbouring countries Austria and Hungary. It is a huge structure. Legend says it has 365 rooms, equal to 365 days of the year in three storeys developed around a central two-level courtyard.