The laureates were the German architects Brenne Gesellschaft von Architekten, who carried out a comprehensive restoration of the ADGB School of Trade Unions Brenau near Berlin in 2001-2007. This ensemble was built in 1928-1930 by Hannes Meyer and Hans Wittwer; it is one of the largest orders received by the Bauhaus school during its existence (during the construction period Mayer was its director).
The fate of the monument turned out to be difficult, which led to the fact that it was not included in the first row of buildings associated with the architectural activity of the Bauhaus: already in 1933 it was occupied by the Nazi-oriented German Workers Front, and in 1936 an SS training center was organized there. In the early days after the war, a Soviet military hospital was located there; in 1947, a school of the Federation of Trade Unions of the GDR was opened there. The last institution was located there until 1991, and during this period the complex was significantly rebuilt.
In 2001, the ensemble was transferred into the possession of the Berlin Chamber of Crafts, which commissioned its reconstruction in the workshop of Winfried Brenne. In October 2007, the work was successfully completed, and a boarding center for vocational education was opened in Mayer's building.
Winfried Brenne re-erected the glass bypass gallery of the complex, restored the original structural divisions, removed the extensions of the GDR era. Jean-Louis Coen, who was a member of the jury of the WMF Prize, praised the “archaeological” accuracy of the approach of the restorers, who recreated all the details of the original project, as well as kept all the parts that have survived to this day intact.
For Brenne's workshop, this is not far from the first such task: the architects have already restored the buildings of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Erich Mendelssohn, Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius.
Winfred Brenne and his colleagues have already received two Brandenburg awards for the Mayer and Wittwer School of Trade Unions: the Brandenburg Architecture Prize from the Minister of Infrastructure and the local branch of the Union of German Architects.
They are now the first recipients of the World Monuments Fund / Knoll Modernism Prize, awarded by WMF in conjunction with office design firm Knoll as part of the Modernism at Risk program aimed at restoring and conserving endangered modernist monuments around the world.
