Five finalists for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2015 announced

2 March 2015

Five finalists for the Mies van der Rohe Award 2015 announced

Herbert Wright on the five buildings nominated for this year's the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award.

Report by Herbert Wright

The jury of Europe's most important architectural award has whittled its 420 nominations for 2015 to just five, including one in London. These finalists for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award (Mies Arch EU Prize) were announced in London on 25th February.

The award dates back to 1987, a year after Mies' legendary 1929 Brussels Pavilion was rebuilt in Barcelona, the city which is now home of the Fundacíon Mies van der Rohe. Organised by them in conjunction with the European Commission, it is a bi-annual award that considers realised works anywhere in the EU, its candidate countries and another three in the European Economic Area (not Switzerland, though). The award's objectives include to raise awareness of architecture and to 'highlight the European city as a model for the sustainable smart city'. Past winners have included Foster's Stansted terminal (1990), Grimshaw's Waterloo International (1994), Snøhetta's Oslo Opera House (2009) and Chipperfield's Neues Museum Berlin (2011). The last winner was Henning Larsen's Reykjavik venue, Harpa.

At the announcements, the Fundacíon's director Giovanna Carnevali, highlighted that a peculiarity of the prize is that architects cannot nominate their own work. She also declared that 'Europe is made by cities, not architects. Politicians shape the countries, we shape the cities'. (That being said, one of the finalists is an Italian winery). RIBA's head of awards Tony Chapman, who has previously organised the Stirling and Lubetkin Prizes, was a jurist, and noted of the 2015 nominations that 'almost all the schemes came from a time of economic crisis', even musing whether 'architecture may be better off from the crisis'. He noted wryly about jury deliberations that 'consensus is something to fall into when all argument has failed'.

The jury was chaired by Milan architect Cino Zucchi (whose works include the acclaimed Salewa Headquarters, Bolzano (2011)). As well as European architects, it included Shanghai critic and academic Li Xiangning, and progressive architectural patron and head of Austrian supermarket chain Mpreis, Hansjörg Mölk. This year, 27% of the nominations were residential and 24% cultural.

The individual finalists are listed below. They include a German museum built to Passivhaus standards, and a subterranean museum in Denmark. The only finalist architects at the announcement, Sheila O'Donnell & John Tuomey, didn't know that their Saw Swee Hock LSE building had made it through, but they reported that they suspected something was up when they got invited to fly from Ireland to London. They said that it felt like coming home.

On May 7th, the finalists will present their projects to the public at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, where an exhibition will open. The following day, the Mies Arch EU Prize 2015 winner, who will receive €60,000, will be announced.

THE FINALISTS

Ravensburg Art Museum, Ravensburg, Germany by Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei

Ravensburg Art Museum, Ravensburg, Germany by Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei