The Mies van der Rohe Prize, awarded by the European Commission and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation in Barcelona, is the official EU premier architectural award, which is also eligible for architects and buildings from Creative Europe partner countries such as Norway, Albania or Georgia. The best structures and their authors are awarded every two years. In 2017, the award honored the renovation of the Kleiburg apartment building in Amsterdam, an 11-storey, 500-unit, 400-meter-long building built in the late 1960s and 1970s in the infamous Beilmermeer. Renovated by NL Architects and XVW architectuur, it received the “fashionable” name deFlat Kleiburg, but remained affordable housing.
The same can be said for this year's laureate - the reconstruction of buildings G, H, I of the Cité du Grand Parc complex in Bordeaux, which was carried out by Lacaton & Vassal together with Frédéric Druot Architecture and Christophe Hutin Architecture. These three buildings, with a total of 530 apartments, are part of an array of 4,000 apartments that appeared in the early 1960s. France, where such "large ensembles" are very common, has long been engaged in their renovation, reconstruction and general rehabilitation within the framework of a national program, and its experience deserves close study. But even against the background of a considerable number of interesting projects, the works of Anna Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal stand out, who developed a method of renovating multi-storey buildings, which significantly improves the quality of life of their inhabitants, although they are carried out without their eviction.
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zooming 1/5 Reconstruction of buildings G, H, I of the Cité du Grand Parc © Lacaton & Vassal
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zooming 2/5 Reconstruction of buildings G, H, I of the Cité du Grand Parc © Lacaton & Vassal
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zooming 3/5 Reconstruction of buildings G, H, I of the Cité du Grand Parc © Lacaton & Vassal
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zooming 4/5 Reconstruction of buildings G, H, I of the Cité du Grand Parc © Lacaton & Vassal
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zooming 5/5 Reconstruction of buildings G, H, I of the Cité du Grand Parc © Lacaton & Vassal
Their first experience was the Parisian residential tower Tour Bois Le Pretre, which received a national architectural award in 2011 (we wrote about it here). Archi.ru spoke in detail about the Mies van der Rohe award-winning complex in Bordeaux here and here … The jury noted that in the conditions of the reduction of the area in the new social buildings in Europe, the residential and public space here was, on the contrary, increased, it became more qualitative and even "poetic". In addition, the architects emphasized the threat of demolition (at least not an ecological solution to the problem) and their very close attention to people living in houses, their problems and needs. The customer was Aquitanis, the housing unit of the Bordeaux metropolitan government.
At the same time, among 383 nominated buildings from 38 countries, a jury chaired by Danish architect Dorte Mandrup selected the best budding professionals: the Toulouse bureau BAST, awarded for the building of a school cafeteria in Montbrun-Bocage in the Pyrenees on the border with Spain. The experts liked the extremely clear design and implementation phases on a modest budget, combined with the attention to the context of the village and the natural landscape. The new building complements the 61-student school, physically but not visually constraining the courtyard.
The award jury summed up their work as follows: "We are emerging from a long period of uncertainty, which is now turning into optimism and generosity, and this generates […] a willingness to take risks on both sides, from customers and architects."
The awards ceremony will take place on May 7, 2019 at the Barcelona Pavilion of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
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zooming 1/3 School cafeteria in Montbrun-Bocage. BAST Workshop Courtesy of Fundació Mies van der Rohe
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zooming 2/3 School cafeteria in Montbrun-Bocage. BAST Workshop Courtesy of Fundació Mies van der Rohe
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zooming 3/3 School cafeteria in Montbrun-Bocage. BAST Workshop Courtesy of Fundació Mies van der Rohe
