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MIPIM AWARDS
(Liebigstraße 1 in Berlin-Friedrichshain)
in the category of Residential Buildings.
Six freestanding point block buildings
were built on a former brownfield within
an existing perimeter block development
on the side of Frankfurter Allee. Thanks
to the skillful arrangement of the floor
plans based on a design by zanderroth-
architekten in Berlin, this nevertheless
allows for sufficient light and air. It is also
worth mentioning here that the variety
of flexibly divisible apartment types and
the building owners’ association as the
owner were organized by the Berlin plat-
form smarthoming. With only six to seven
floors, the houses fit in with the level of
surrounding buildings. The same applies
to the projects competing in the same
category. As opposed to nominations in
previous years with skyscrapers towering
over everything around them, even the
“Vertical ItaimBuilding” in Sao Paulowith
only twelve floors is practically a dwarf.
The residential complex of “The Sky above
Asnière-sur-Seine” with its reflective ce-
ramic façade is an invigorating contribu-
tion to the renewal of a district between
the Seine and a regional train station and
was carried out by Eiffage Immobilier and
CoffimSA.The fourth project, “Residence
Sacre Coeur 2” in the Old Town of Prague
was even built over the Strahov Road tun-
nel, in other words on a surface that was
never intended for building development.
All four are successful examples of an in-
novative improved use of space to create
more living space and enhance the loca-
tion at the same time.
URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND ARCHITECTURE
Urban development criteria that go be-
yond individual buildings and an inter-
linking of indoors and outdoors for more
quality of life are a common thread among
the nominations for 2017. Even the double
nomination of the biomass plant “Värtan
Bioenergy CHP-plant” in Stockholm in
the categories of Best Green Buildings
and Best Industrial and Logistics Facilities
stands for aspects of city life. Not only has
Stockholmmoved a step closer to becom-
ing independent of fossil fuels by 2040, a
new residential district on an old indus-
trial site was also given an architectural
focal point.
Tinka Kleine, member of the jury and
Director of Private Real Estate Europe at
the Dutch PGGM Investments, welcomes
the increased emphasis on qualities in
projects that are effective in the long term.
“As a long-term real estate investor, we pay
more andmore attention to location qual-
ity and what we call ‘good urban density’
as a response to trends such as urbaniza-
tion, technology, demographics and social
change. The way in which cities are organ-
ized and developing will highly determine
the future value of specific projects and
Photos: UDAS Skolkovo; Simon Menges; Hufton + Crow
«
Dr. Gudrun Escher, Xanten
their net contribution to the carbon foot-
print. There is much to gain or lose; hence
the importance of not only evaluating pro-
jects on a stand-alone basis but also on a
more comprehensive level.” She adds that
the eleven categories represent traditional
asset classes, but that mixed-use buildings
deserve special attention.
Prizes will be awarded in nine cate-
gories for projects that have been already
implemented, in addition to two for “Best
Futura Projects”. In addition, the British
magazine “Architectural Review” awards
eleven “Future Projects Awards” at MIP-
IM. The “Civic and Community” catego-
ry for public buildings has been added in
2017. One of the prize winners last year
was the Düsseldorf office of Eller + Eller
for the new BASF headquarters in Lud-
wigshafen. The award made the project
understandable and was proof that they
were on the right path, says Erasmus Eller.
“The competition entry is a statement
which transfers the architect’s vision to
a language which can be received by a
broader audience. The jury therefore has
to pick up this vision to verify its potential
to be transferred into today’s questions re-
garding innovation and the needs of soci-
ety’s next generation. The Future Projects
Award takes on this responsibility in con-
firming the designs relevance for clients,
architects and society.”
Although there are no classic architec-
tural awards, architecture is also gaining
importance at the MIPIM Awards because
architectural design is becoming all the
more important for increasingly sophis-
ticated projects. The list of participating
architects for the Skolkovo Innovation
Center in Moscow, nominated among the
best Urban Renewal Projects reads like a
Who’sWho of the scene, fromStefano Boeri
fromItaly, toKazuyo Sejima fromJapan and
on to Zaha Hadid, who died in 2016.
The list of participating archi-
tects for the Skolkovo Innovation
Center in Moscow, nominated
among the best Urban Renewal
Projects reads like a Who’s Who
of the scene.
