The European Commission, the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, the Architects’ Council of Europe and the European Association for Architectural Education have announced the winners of the Young Talent Architecture Award 2018 (YTAA 2018). The Awards Ceremony will take place on September 20 at Palazzo Mora in Venice with a debate on Free Space, Education and Heritage in which the winners will participate together with emerging and well-known architects.
“It is extraordinary to discover that during the European Year of Cultural Heritage, the 4 YTAA Winners have worked with the theme of heritage. Architectural education that includes heritage is essential for the future of Europe and the once heritage-contemporary dichotomy is becoming a powerful heritage-contemporary alliance.” Themis Christophidou, Director General DG EAC.
Hendrik Brinkmann, College of Architecture, Media and Design Berlin University of the Arts
The project is a contribution to the contemporary debate on the programmatical and architectural future of the Bauakademie in Berlin. Working on reconstruction means posing a set of questions that make the typical design problems more complex: all decisions need to take into account the existing building which might be long gone but very prominent in mind.
The Jury considered that the author sets a rhetorical project with questions to be asked with engagement, implicitly having a social and cultural relevance.
Julio Gotor Valcárcel, Madrid School of Architecture Polytechnic University of Madrid
The P.R.U.S of Madrid is the Plan of Recovery of the existing Underground Spaces of Madrid. The purpose of the project is to recover that forgotten and latent landscape converting it to public space. Starting from research, the Plan is developed by recovering the existing spaces, designing a new network of accesses and connecting the urban scenes.
The Jury highlighted that the project works with different scales at the same time: urban, infrastructure and the tectonics, through experimentation with the architectural system.
Matthew Gregorowski, The Cass Faculty of Art Architecture & Design London Metropolitan University
The project is a proposal for the holistic reinvention of the British countryside. The formation of a vast new forest recomposes the landscape of the Peak District National Park and the structures within it. As human intervention becomes legible, impressions of nature are emancipated from naive conceptions of beauty.
The Jury was attracted by the complexity of the post Brexit situation and how the author deals with a strong concept to reimagine this new situation.
Loed Stolte, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment Delft University of Technology
The Bank of England: a dialectical project”, critically inspired by John Soane’s legendary ‘ruin-esque’ Bank of England, the project explicitly engages the architectural dialectics of ruin and construction, interiority and exteriority with those of genuine publicity and institutional power. The Jury was startled by the originality of this project, an intellectual piece of work which is extremely solid: the ruin, the money, the bank. The drawings are amazing and they are complemented by an incredible piece of writing
The YTAA Winners will be supported in the creation of a network with the architects and critics involved in the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award. The exhibition “Young Talent Architecture Award. YTAA 2018” was inaugurated last May 24th at Palazzo Mora and will remain open to the public until November 25th as a Collateral Event of the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The Awards Ceremony will take place in Venice on September 20th in the framework of the exhibition and the European Year of Cultural Heritage.
On the occasion of the event a debate, on the topics of:
· Reuse and reconstruction of heritage;
· Heritage dimension in architectural education;
will put together YTAA winners, directors of the schools, jury members, EU Mies Award advisory committee members, organisers, sponsors and four participants of the Future Architecture Platform (http://futurearchitectureplatform.org/). Source and images Courtesy of YTAA.