The Royal Institute of British Architects International Prize is awarded every two years; now we are talking about its second edition, and you can find out about the first laureate here. The construction of any author anywhere in the world can apply for the award, the selection criteria are both simple and difficult to achieve: high architectural quality and significant social impact of the project. RIBA is running this award in cooperation with the International Council of Architects, the Architectural Council of Europe and national associations of architects from different countries. From a long list (20 structures), four have now been selected: we present them to our readers.
Built into the dense urban fabric, incorporating new and old buildings, the O'Donnell + Tuomey Dublin Bureau campus in Budapest has already been the hero of our publication. The architects had to dive deeply into the "morphology" of the Hungarian capital, interact a lot with the city authorities - as a result, a work that fits into the surroundings, but at the same time is clearly visible, appeared.
The "Children's Village" in the Brazilian Amazon, designed by Aleph Zero and Rosenbaum workshops, is a dormitory for 540 high school students, children of farmers who study at the Canouan School. Constructed from local wood, it combines bedrooms and reading spaces with hammocks and balconies to enhance the quality of life for children.
The famous Toho-Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo has received a new building designed by Nikken Sekkei, which does not have the usual gloomy corridor connecting rehearsal classes. Instead, a "village" filled with natural light was created from educational and common spaces. Each of the classes is acoustically ideal for its instrument, and next to it there is necessarily a transit space that isolates it from neighboring ones. As a result, music from all classes can be heard outside, but silence reigns inside. The architects describe their project as a new natural landscape created from many parameters - "a very Japanese approach to the use of computer-aided design."
"Vertical Forest" in Milan designed by Boeri Studio - the second tower of the already famous residential complex (
see the publication Archi.ru). In total, 17,000 trees and bushes have been planted on the floors of the two buildings: this amount usually grows on two hectares of forest. According to the authors of the project, it improves biodiversity and air quality in the city.
