A renovated conference middle and a warehouse transformed right into a theater: the Mies van der Rohe awards applaud accountable structure | Culture | EUROtoday

None of the tasks awarded by the Mies van der Rohe European Architecture Prize, introduced this Thursday, is new. However, each renew. This was highlighted by the jury of this version – chaired by the newest Pritzker laureate, the Chilean Smiljan Radic – when evaluating the profitable proposal, the Exhibition Palace in Charleroi, in Wallonia (Belgium), which they applauded for combining intelligence and precision to rework a big infrastructure – a conference middle from the Fifties – as a substitute of demolishing it. Designed by Brussels architects AgwA and the Ghent studio Jan de Vylder and Inge Vinck, the constructing is now open to town. It has grow to be a porous and accessible area invaded, partly, by vegetation. That is, it has been remodeled, but it surely has preserved its character. And its supplies. For the jury, this intervention demonstrates how structure can unleash not solely new areas, but additionally new social relationships by working with what exists.

In this manner, against the clean web page, the determine of the architect who highlights the award turns into a guardian of what shouldn’t be misplaced. Also what it is best to maintain. They do not simply discuss sustaining kinds or historical past. The award defends a accountable observe of the architectural career, an intensive and civic means of being on this planet: recognizing what got here earlier than, repairing, sustaining or updating that legacy and, consequently, making that care a brand new legacy for future generations.

The award, introduced in Oulu, the Finnish metropolis of European Capital of Culture 2026, was introduced, not by likelihood, within the Aaltosiilo, an previous log warehouse that Alvar and Aino Aalto inbuilt 1931 and which right this moment has grow to be a middle for the preservation of business structure. That nearly century-old concrete constructing has, like so many industrial buildings, a cathedral scale. And from that dimension, and with that historical past of assuming and representing change, it has grow to be the icon of this 12 months’s European cultural capital. It is an icon that speaks extra about references than types. Therefore, asserting the Mies van der Rohe Prize on this context sends a transparent message: Europe is a constructed continent, in addition to caring for it, it’s pressing to not mummify it. The authors of the 5 finalist tasks have devoted their audacity and creativeness to this. And the 2 winners.

In the younger class (rising structure) there’s additionally reuse and rescue. The non permanent area for the National Theater of Slovenia, designed by the Vidic Grohar Architekti studio in Ljubljana, has remodeled an industrial warehouse from the sixties into a short lived theater. They have carried out it with low-cost interventions and fast execution. For this mixture of audacity and pragmatism, he has been awarded within the younger class for “transforming an ephemeral condition into a powerful architectural statement: one that leads to activating abandoned industrial sites to reconvert them into cultural infrastructures.” The jury has additionally highlighted on this work one thing that’s hardly ever talked about when describing structure: cash. Low-cost interventions stand out after they obtain flexibility and inclusivity in areas. Thus, the theater-ship shows adaptability as an architectural useful resource. And funds management, as social duty.

That the standard of an award is measured by the audacity of its winners is a truth relevant to any self-discipline. At stake within the architectural awards can be the lighthouse that illuminates the expansion of cities and a compendium of sophisticated relationships: the trail that connects custom and innovation, the freeway that leads from crafts to business, the priorities which can be taught in faculties and the thread that connects the economic system and the welfare state.

Aware of this framework past the buildings, the awards are additionally understood as messages. As conclusions and at the same time as rectifications. When the Mies van der Rohe Prize itself turned that of the European Union, its perspective modified. From valuing unquestionable and radical architectures, they started to hunt the radicality of the proposals past the picture of the constructing, within the reference to its time and its social context.

Thus, restore, restoration and reuse have grow to be synonymous with up to date structure. That is why the opposite 5 finalists of this version comply with the path that takes benefit of limits to suggest modifications. “Architectural intelligence transforms and adapts what exists to facilitate the coexistence of citizens on the planet,” the jury famous. Its president, Smiljan Radic, has declared that to rework what’s inherited and provides it new life, structure should be taught to narrate to uncertainty. “Repairing, replacing, adapting and reconfiguring reveals the potential of architecture to act between permanence and change.”

In the context of uncertainty that the planet is right this moment, the structure awarded by the European Union speaks from humility. But additionally from data and respect for what exists. The award ceremony will probably be held, as is conventional, within the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, ​​which the Aachen architect and Lily Reich designed for the 1929 Exhibition and, subsequently, a constructing that, in itself, shows an ode to recycling, reuse and innovation. It will probably be on May 12, throughout the framework of Barcelona’s actions as World Capital of Architecture.