YTAA Winners Announced

As we pointed out when announcing the 9 finalists and the 30 shortlisted projects, the biennial award aims to "support the talent of recently graduated architects, urban planners and landscape architects who will be responsible for transforming our environment in the future." Submissions came from registered schools that nominated diploma projects earlier this year.

The inaugural award joins the prestigious European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award and the Emerging Architect Award in recognizing architectural talent in Europe, though future editions may open up the award beyond Europe.

The YTAA is organized by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe with the support of the European Union program Creative Europe. World-Architects is founding partner for the award. Sponsors are Jung, USM, and Vectorworks.

Congratulations to the three winners, listed here in alphabetical order. Click the project titles to visit their profiles and learn more about the winners and their projects.

A Symbiotic Relation of Cooperative Social Housing and Dispersed Tourism in Havana Vieja

The project of Iwo Borkowicz, from Catholic University of Leuven (BE), grew out of a scholarship that enabled him to travel to Havana and conduct two months of research in the el Cerro district. Recognizing the struggles of poverty and wealth, housing and tourism, his project proposes a typology that mixes social housing and hotel units toward economic and social sustainability in Havana Vieja. 

S'lowtecture: housing structure

Tomasz Broma, from Wroclaw University of Technology (PL), proposed an experimental housing structure in Wroclaw that would be built by inhabitants according to an algorithm that would ensure privacy between units and a balance of open and closed spaces. The project name, "S'lowtecture," illustrates the emphasis on slow-life principles and low-tech construction.

GeoFront

Policarpo del Canto Baquera, from Madrid School of Architecture (ES), proposes a "bureaucratic fiction": the creation of the Neutral State of the Strait of Gibraltar. Serving as a a prototype for future settlements, the politically charged project – as much nautical as architectural – sees boundaries as thick spaces to occupy rather than as lines of separation between countries and people.