Blueprint Awards 2015: The winners
Blueprint Award for Architecture 2015
Winner: Rotor
Nominated and voted for by Blueprint readers
Founded in 2005, Rotor is a collective of architects, designers and other professionals interested in material flows in industry and construction, particularly in relation to resources, waste, use and reuse. Currently Rotor includes eight fixed members and a number of collaborators. Rotor disseminates creative strategies for salvage and waste reduction through workshops, publications and exhibitions. Its curation of Behind the Green Door, as directors of the 2013 Oslo Architecture Triennale, brought more people than ever before to that event, investigating the challenges facing 'sustainable' architecture today. Another prominent curation project brought Rotor to London, as the team behind the montage of Progress, the 2011 OMA retrospective held at the Barbican art centre.
The most prominent platform came in 2010, when Rotor represented Belgium at the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice. Rotor's approach emphasises the effects of human planning, oversight and extended use on the built environment. In parallel with these exhibition projects, Rotor continues to realise interventions in existing architecture. A growing series of deconstruction projects by Rotor involves the dismantlement of building components in buildings slated for demolition, for reuse purposes. These dismantling and reselling activities are conducted under the heading of Rotor Deconstruction, a separate, spin-off entity created in 2014.
Nominations
Herzog & de Meuron
Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Rotor
Zaha Hadid Architects
Category sponsored by Turkish Ceramics
Main image: Paul Raftery