The Danish Building & Property Agency and Aarhus School of Architecture announced the three winners of the international open design competition for the NEW AARCH project. The three winners are:
Erik Giudice Architects (Sweden/France)
Brian Vargo, Jonas Nielsen & Mathias Palle (Denmark)
Atelier Lorentzen Langkilde (Denmark)
The winning proposals impressed the jury with their emphasis on dialogue with the site’s surroundings, on access to outdoor areas and on providing space for Aarhus School of Architecture to work with robotic experiments, mock-ups, prototypes, etc., focusing on the school’s workshops facilities – all aspects which have been important to the school from the very beginning.
The three winning entries show great potential for development. Their identity is sufficiently strong for them to be scaled up and down but they are also sufficiently general to provide a basis for the further process. In this further process, The Danish Building & Property Agency together with the management of Aarhus School of Architecture, user groups, and NORD Architects will make the ideas more specific and define the framework of the final project.
None of the three winning proposals from the open design competition will be built in their pure form: they will instead inspire a new brief for the following project competition. The first item on the agenda will be to determine the precise location of the school at Godsbanearealerne based on input from the open design competition. Aarhus Municipality has participated in the evaluation of entries and The Danish Building & Property Agency and Aarhus School of Architecture look forward to continue working together on developing the area.
The three winners of the open design competition will be invited to participate in the project contest on an equal footing with the three pre-qualified teams: BIG, from Denmark, Lacaton & Vassal, from France, and SANAA, from Japan. This means a total of six teams will be competing for the final design of the new school of architecture at Godsbanearealerne in Aarhus. We expect the project competition to be launched in late summer 2016. Source and image by Arkitektskolen Aarhus.