On Friday 20th and Saturday 21st November, the international jury met online to discuss and assess the 33 best graduation projects from the architectural courses in Aachen, Liège, Diepenbeek, Maastricht and Eindhoven.
The jury from this 30th edition consisted of: Johannes Böttger (chairperson), Bart Biermans, Nadia Casabella, Jan Peter Wingender and Julien Déom.
After careful consideration, the international jury decided to award the three prizes as follows.
First prize (€ 2,500):
The first prize goes to Kurvantai Zaitov (UHasselt) with the project "The Ritual Theatre".
‘The first prize goes to a project located in Maastricht (NL). It was in many ways outstanding; being also the best poetic or dream-like and - at the same time - actual project. The project starts from a master plan for an urban development at the site of an old quarry. The master plan uses the level differences left behind by the exploitation and proposes a linear assemblage of high-rise buildings, accommodating diverse functions. The awarded project that could be called a “Theatre for Death”, allocates a new version of a cemetery inside one of the towers. It is composed of rooms each evoking a different way of dealing with death and mourning (the cold chamber, the theatre, etc.). As these rooms pile up vertically and are interconnected by intricate circulation areas, each individual burial ceremony can be scripted differently along specific rooms, according to a chosen sequence. The jury is astounded by the research that stretches from indigenous rituals to more Western, recent versions of death-related ceremonies. The way these rituals are translated into architecture, demonstrates the acute sensibility of the author and his poetic talent to get hold of death. Moreover, by choosing to position this facility, dedicated to the dead, in the midst of the city, next to housing and other ancillary facilities, the project raises the question of how to spatially merge life and death. Or, how to integrate death into our daily lives, a question that the current sanitary crisis has brought violently to the fore’.
Second prize (€ 1,250):
The second prize goes to Elise Mullens (ULg Liège) for her project "Social dwelling in Fléron".
The second prize goes to a project which deals with the question of how to densify the small town of Fléron, south-east of Liège (BE). The jury considers this the best of the "hands-on" projects they have seen. The programme consists of reviving an existing block of social housing by adding a new top floor, a passage and terraces. The author introduces a very interesting mix with different sizes and types of housing and creates collective spaces at all levels of the building. For the jury, this project addresses an urgent theme for the whole of Europe: the re-use and the energy-efficient renovation of social housing in an architecturally valuable way. The project responds to one of the challenges of the master plan and successfully establishes connections with other parts of the city. This work gains a lot with relatively modest means. Due to the author choosing a repetitive and common type of terraced houses for her intervention, the design strategy can be extended to many other locations and projects. This work is proof of a great ability to produce a sophisticated architecture with few means. The quality of the presentation material and the sensitivity that emerges from it, demonstrates mastery and accuracy in the layout and in the construction details’.
Third prize(€ 500):
The third prize goes to Marie Enders (RWTH Aachen) for her project "Third Place Trinkhalle".
‘The third prize goes to a project that is an extensive study on the Trinkhalle, a small corner shop and a common phenomenon in the Ruhr area. The author analyses the Trinkhalle from a historical, socio-cultural, typological and architectural perspective, and documents the various conditions for a Trinkhalle. The jury considers this project to be outstanding in its research-based approach. The crafted drawings, the sophisticated text and the photography support the overwhelming overall graphic quality of the project. Due to the nature of the undertaking, the question remains to what extent the work could be elaborated as an architectural project, exploring the possible futures for the Trinkhalle on the fragile edge between formal and informal in our everyday urban culture. The exhibition of the analysis and additional graphic material within an existing Trinkhalle is highly appreciated by the jury. Also outstanding is the fact that within this graduation project the author formulated the application of this phenomenon to be listed as UNESCO cultural heritage’.
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