Judges have selected the winners of the Blue Clay Country Spa architecture competition.
Students and professionals were invited to contemplate the economic, cultural and architectural implications of inhabiting non-urban territory, through an ecotourist facility in Latvia.
The winning submissions were chosen as they established social collectivity through circulation and parti.
The first prize winners were Joao Varela, Ana Isabel Santos, Joao Tavares, Paulo Dias from Portugal, who successfully reprogrammed a spatial archetype, the hortus conclusus, or walled garden.
The project’s circular promenade unites each functional space of the spa, enclosed within a colonnade that functions both as wall and social space.
With an ethos of minimal interference and simplicity, this hortus conclusus pursues a new type of ecotourism, one in which the spatial diagram of the spa enables a new environmental, cultural, and social agency.
Winners of the second prize were Graham Burn, Alex Turner, and Will Fisher from a UK company called Pug, and the third place winning entry came from Miroslava Brooks and Amy DeDonato from the US.
Pug were chosen for their strong response to the site, with a playful reinterpretation of vernacular form.
The strength of Miroslava’s and Amy’s project lies in its combination of three architecture typologies, the courtyard, pavilion, and promenade, to generate a spa experience that is simultaneously containing and exposing.
Federico Rodriguez and Alejandro Lobo from the University – Facultad de Arquitectura Diseno y Urbanismo – UdelaR in Uruguay received the BB Student Award.
While Ashley Clayton and Mangyuan Wang from the UK won the BB Green Award for their sustainable design entry. Source and images, Courtesy of BEE BREEDERS.
