From Spain to Denmark: New European Bauhaus 2021 Announces 20 Awarded Projects
The European Commission’s New European Bauhaus has announced the winners of the 2021 edition at the Ateliers des Tanneurs in Brussels, Belgium.
According to the organization, the main objectives have been to recognize current achievements and help the younger generation to continue developing emerging concepts and ideas that illustrate three values: sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion. Accordingly, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has stated that “these projects give a lot of hope for our fight against climate change and the European Green Deal.”
During the application period for the new European Bauhaus Awards 2021, more than 2,000 applications were received. The 60 shortlisted entries were subsequently chosen by a vote cast by subscribers to the New European Bauhaus newsletter. A jury made up of 80 official partners of the initiative, coming from all corners of Europe, had the opportunity to evaluate the shortlisted applications and select the 20 new winners of the European Bauhaus Prize.
Out of 60 shortlisted projects, the ‘New European Bauhaus Awards’ have been awarded in 10 different categories. The winners of each category have received €30,000. For the ‘New European Bauhaus Rising Stars’ 10 prizes of €15,000 each are awarded to support concepts and ideas developed by young talents under 30 years old.
New European Bauhaus Awards
Category ‘Techniques, materials, and processes for construction and design’
Winner: ERDEN PURE Walls
Location: Schlins, Austria
PURE walls are prefabricated building elements that are 100% natural, 100% recyclable, passively control indoor climate, and offer haptic materiality perfectly matched to contemporary architecture.
Category ‘Buildings renovated in a spirit of circularity’
Winner: Gardens in the Air
Location: Sevilla, Spain
A circular initiative of urban renaturalization involving artists, scientists, architects, designers, residents of Tres Barrios-Amate and youngs from the local association A.E.S. Candelaria. An exploration of the resources and species of the neighborhood, to imagine new relationships of sustainable prosperity through an integral process that takes the form of a vertical garden, a perfume that distills plants from the neighborhood, and a sound composition that celebrates new alliances.
Category ‘Solutions for the co-evolution of built environment and nature’
Winner: RoSana
Location: Rosenheim, Germany
This guesthouse has been made for people who seek mental and physical stress relief, who want to become focused on their inner strength, recharge their energy, get grounded. The common goal of the architects was to build the RoSana guesthouse as healthy as possible for the people and the planet.
Category ‘Regenerated urban and rural spaces’
Winner: La Fábrika de toda la vida
Location: Los Santos de Maimona, Spain
After being abandoned for years, an old cement factory is now a collaborative space for free culture. Located in a rural municipality of Spain, La Fábrika has become a landmark for an open network of creators, thinkers, and social agents throughout the territory. Over the course of our ten years of activity, more than 3.000 people have contributed to regenerating the space.
Category ‘Products and life style’
Winner: AYR sustainability platform
Location: Matosinhos, Portugal
AYR, developed by CEiiA, is a sustainability platform designed to achieve a zero-carbon society, incentivizing the adoption of sustainable lifestyles by citizens and companies. It connects communities, people and things in a network, where sustainable actions create tokens that can be exchanged for green goods and services, or used to locally offset carbon emissions.
Category ‘Preserved and transformed cultural heritage’
Winner: Xifré’s Rooftop: “Floating” Wild Garden
Location: Barcelona, Spain
The Xifré Rooftop is a dual purpose renovation project, in terms of both architecture and ecology. Covering an early 19th-century block of ten buildings, this contemporary roof garden creates a “floating” wild space that enhances urban biodiversity and opportunities for social interaction between neighbors.
Category ‘Reinvented places to meet and share’
Winner: Ulia Garden
Location: San Sebastian, Spain
Ulia Garden is driven by urban regeneration and agroecological community action. It is nurtured by the voluntary work of many people who, by getting their hands in the soil, seek to weave new relationships between committed citizens, integrate the care of nature as a central concept, and share the beautiful essence of life and a common project.
Category ‘Mobilization of culture, arts and communities’
Winner: ESSERI Urbani
Location: Locorotondo, Italy
ESSERI URBANI elects art as a means of reading the contemporary world, but also as a tool to take action on reality. It opens the curatorial practice and the artistic exercise to new possibilities: it’s an opportunity for research and experimentation, to bring together communities, landscapes, and local architectures with contemporary artistic languages. The Festival takes place in the streets in a sort of widespread museum, with free admission and multimedia content accessible through QR code.
Category ‘Modular, adaptable and mobile living solutions’
Winner: APROP Ciutat Vella
Location: Barcelona, Spain
APROP is an affordable, sustainable, fast, and high-quality housing program providing evicted households with emergency accommodation in their own neighborhood. A lightweight, dry, modular and reversible construction system using reused shipping containers has been specially conceived to achieve high rates of energy efficiency and excellent architectural standards. The first APROP is already in operation in Ciutat Vella, Barcelona while two other buildings are currently under construction.
Category ‘Interdisciplinary education models’
Winner: Degree in Design. Universidad de Navarra
Location: Pamplona, Spain
The new “Degree in Design. Universidad de Navarra” is an experience that fits perfectly within the framework pursued by the “New European Bauhaus wave”, it is a teaching methodology that integrates the theoretical, practical, technical, and creative contents, which acquire their whole meaning applied to a project.
New European Bauhaus Rising Stars
Category ‘Techniques, materials and processes for construction and design’
Winner: Inhabiting an enclosed landscape
Location: Santa Margalida, Spain
The material isolation of the Balearic Islands made its inhabitants develop their own material culture out of the island’s limited resources. This enclosed landscape gave shape to sustainable techniques that deeply align with our current search for circularity and can thus be brought into the future.
Category ‘Buildings renovated in a spirit of circularity’
Winner: Zero waste house
Location: Žalec, Slovenia
The Zero Waste House project is rooted in the circular economy, community and ecology. These concepts inform the architecture of the buildings and the use of urban spaces. The ZW House is a project of renovation and adaptation to climate change. It explores the notion of commons by including the community. Form follows function, is a common thread weaving through the design principles of the ZW House. It merges the heritage of the space with innovative, modern and accessible building practices.
Category ‘Solutions for the co-evolution of built environment and nature’
Winner: Nest
Location: Barcelona, Spain
NEST is an ecological façade system that would be made through sustainable ceramic/clay 3d printing techniques. Façade panels are tailored to create a specific environment that will allow the passive or low maintenance growth of the plants or places to nest for desirable species of insects, birds, and bats while maintaining the high performance of the building and healthier micro-climate.
Category ‘Regenerated urban and rural spaces’
Winner: Porto di Mare Eco-District
Location: Milan, Italy
Porto di Mare Eco-District project combines a multi-scale design, focused on a bottom-up holistic approach, acting on people and transforming users into more sensible agents. The outcome is a replicable approach for similar urban-rural contexts, to be used at 360-degrees.
Category ‘Products and life style’
Winner: Materieunite
Location: Terni, Italy
Recycled materials, digital production, parametric project design, and made-in Italy are at the core of materieunite. They design and create permanent and temporary spaces by using recycled cardboard and other materials which are either recyclable or recovered from supply chain waste.
Category ‘Preserved and transformed cultural heritage’
Winner: Retrofitting the UNESCO site of Ivrea
Location: Ivrea, Italy
Latest EU programs related to energy efficiency underline the need for retrofitting existing buildings, responsible for 40% of EU final energy consumption. This proposition deals with the issue of rethinking the common practices in the retrofitting of modern heritage, integrating the thermal improvement with architectural preservation and inclusiveness.
Category ‘Reinvented places to meet and share’
Winner: Social reconstruction in post-emergency
Location: Florence, Italy
Natural disasters cause traumas, thus social breakdown. Living in post-emergency settlements is an opportunity for community recovery. This potential is identified in open space, a constant element regardless of the adopted housing systems and catastrophe. Open space guidelines for temporary settlements are proposed as resilient tools for sociality. The further development foresees to translate the guidelines in spatial parameters to be used in widespread BIM planning software.
Category ‘Mobilization of culture, arts and communities’
Winner: Spaces to reconnect citizens with cities
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Barcelona hosts numerous events that often have an impact on the environment, in terms of resource and energy use. “Spaces to reconnect citizens with cities” is a project to create a set of zero impact tools and advance the ecological transition in the events sector.
Category ‘Modular, adaptable and mobile living solutions’
Winner: Homeless Housing
Location: Holbæk, Denmark
Homelessness is an increasing problem in Denmark. Reports show that the problem can be eliminated by 2030 with the right strategies. Building on the Housing First strategy and with an eye for a minimal budget, Astrid Lykke has designed these high-quality modular houses ready to be implemented anywhere needed.
Category ‘Interdisciplinary education models’
Winner: Klasse Klima
Location: Berlin, Germany
All art and design universities must address the climate crisis. This is Klasse Klima’s mission, a student-led seminar series and education collective based at the University of the Arts Berlin. They are building a transnational network with groups from other art schools, connecting them through innovative digital infrastructure and a fluid joint corpus of transformative knowledge and practices.
Get to know the winners at the New European Bauhaus 2021 virtual exhibition.