Office buildings, administration buildings (e.g. for banks, insurance companies, government departments and local authorities), conference and congress centres; individual or temporary workplaces

Best of Category:

Christian Pottgiesser Architecturespossibles, Paris/France

A 19th century factory hall has found a new lease of life as the Paris headquarters of the companies PONS and HUOT. First of all it was completely restored back to its original state. Most of the space that the architects were asked to create is accommodated within a 1.7 metre high box of solid oak that spans the entire interior. Stamped into its surface are individual workstations, equipped with a Plexiglas telephone hood.

The interior of the new structure houses conference rooms and communal rooms. Growing right through the space are eight Ficus Panda trees, whose lush green foliage improves the quality of the interior climate. Individual offices are housed on the mezzanine gallery of the factory hall.

The jury's verdict: "A playful sense of fun combined with boldness, have resulted in a truly innovative space, with solutions that are far removed from the everyday and ordinary."

Second prize:

Brückner & Brückner Architekten, Tirschenreuth/Germany

The software and consultancy company IGZ, based at Falkenberg in the district of Tirschenreuth, now has a new office building: the IGZ "software warehouse". The design was inspired by the form and materials used in traditional timber barn construction in the northern Oberpfalz region.

The architects have taken the traditional format - a timber frame construction resting on solid masonry walls up to first-floor level - and reinterpreted it for the modern age to create a state-of-the-art office building. The project mirrors frames of reference that come with the locality and building typology and redefines them.

The jury's verdict: "In the best possible sense the project contributes to the development of a corporate identity against the background of a cultural convention (…)."

Francesc Rifé s.l., Barcelona/Spain

With this dental clinic the designer has succeeded in creating a new concept and thus a new image for a medical practice. The rooms not only satisfy all the relevant medical requirements in terms of hygiene, cleanliness and sterility. They also radiate warmth and comfort - qualities that take away the patient's fear of the dentist.

Cold materials, which meet the hygiene and image requirements of a practice, are here brought together in such a way that they bring a sense of calm and relief to the space.

The jury's verdict: "The game played here, which involves an excellent knowledge of materials and fine detailing, makes the project a winner."

"Hotels/Spas/Catering facilities" (75 entries)

RCR ARANDA PIGEM VILALTA ARQUITECTES, Olot, Girona/ Spain

The Les Cols restaurant in Olot now offers its patrons overnight accommodation. Echoing the linear structure of former kitchen gardens, one such area has been divided into lots that are now occupied by five glass cubes. Now overnight guests can experience a night under the stars - literally, because they have a clear view of the night sky and the natural world outside. At the same time the unusual high-tech architectural envelope affords them complete protection against the elements.

The pavilions appear to be furnished with nothing more than a freestanding bed, because the wardrobe space has been cleverly - and almost invisibly - integrated into the outer envelope of the building. The washbasin is constantly replenished with water, like a fountain, and the floor of the shower consists of pebbles. TVs and Internet connections are banished: here the visitor is invited to reflect on the simpler things of life. Privacy is available, however, with the aid of automated fabric roller blinds.

The jury's verdict: "This project (...) is a highly original interpretation of what a hotel should be all about. (...) The jury is awarding a prize for the poetic and innovative quality of the project, and also for the strength of its execution (…), knowing full well that the project itself is very much a one-off."

Andreas Flora (sapinski salon), Innsbruck/Austria + Dr. Christian Kapeller, Schlanders - Silandro/Italy

This listed building from the 17th century was converted into a modern commercial hotel business with great respect for the existing fabric, and at the same time with determined interventions by the architect. The conversion overlays the original fabric of the building and old interior features with new constructional elements. This principle is consistently applied throughout, which gives the building its atmospheric continuity.

Even the problem of incorporating modern sanitary fittings into the rooms has been solved in the same way. As in guest rooms of the past, there is no separate bathroom as such - showers are positioned in the middle of the room, while washbasins are concealed in a bank of wall cupboards.

The jury's verdict: "The hotel project 'Zum grünen Baum' is a fine example of a contemporary approach to the problem of preserving and renovating historic buildings. (…) Given the current dearth of innovative hotel concepts, this project is an important contribution towards developing the typology of the hotel in the modern world."

Studio 63 Architecture + Design, Florence/Italy

This hotel in Riccione on the Adriatic embodies the colourful and fashionable "see and be seen" ethos of this coastal resort, with its young clientele and lively nightlife. Superimposed on the 1950s frontage of the existing hotel is a playful new outer skin perforated by free-form oval openings of varying sizes, which resemble speech bubbles in a comic, as if referencing the street talk outside.

This lively sense of fun is carried through into the hotel interior. All 40 rooms have been individually designed by different artists. Webcams in every room allow guests to communicate with other hotel occupants. Abandoning traditional notions of intimacy and privacy, the architects have sought to overcome the isolation normally experienced by hotel guests during their stay within the four walls of their room.

The jury's verdict: "The transformation of the 50-year-old frontage into a double-skinned façade, whose outer layer draws formal inspiration from comics and creates interesting and surprising lighting effects inside the building, was felt by the jury to be particularly successful."

"Shops/Showrooms/Exhibition stands" (122 entries)"

spillmann echsle architekten eth sia, Zurich/Switzerland

The Freitag flagship store in Zürich is both a model of corporate architecture - and a highly unconventional example of it. The locality - something of an urban wasteland - is given an identity by this local landmark, and a viewing platform provides a welcome public and social amenity. Constructed from used freight containers, the architecture is an indirect allusion to the company's core product line: bags made from used truck tarpaulins.

Utilitarian industrial objects are here made to serve a new purpose, and thereby given a whole new lease of life. This quasi-logical transformation of ready-mades into architecture is carried through into the detailed execution, which relies as far as possible on fasteners that are used as standard in the container industry.

The jury's verdict: "The flagship store is an example of creative collaboration between client and architect that we have not seen in the corporate architecture of recent years. Other strengths of this project noted by the jury are the absence of the architect's personal signature, a bold use of constructional techniques and an honest rawness in the detail."

magma architecture, Berlin/Germany

The head in | im kopf exhibition was conceived by architects as a gallery in which they themselves are the exhibits. The centrepiece is a specially designed textile display sculpture, which is stretched across the entire space, and inside which the actual exhibition is staged. The visitor walks beneath this suspended sculpture and sticks his head through circular openings in the fabric envelope.

Through this unusual and highly focused way of taking in the exhibits, the visitor is made acutely aware of the space. The exhibition features not only projects completed by this office, but also their work-in-progress - or in other words, the process of exploring and refining form. By putting his head through the fabric envelope the visitor enters the head of the architect, as it were, and is able to reconstruct and experience for himself the evolving design of the space.

The jury's verdict: "The project impressed the jury with its remarkable conceptual continuity. Continuity in the sense of the spatial representation of the position from which the designers started. This tautological dimension is experienced by the observer through his physical senses, so that the exhibition leaves an enduring impression."

Estudio Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas, Granada/Spain

The Dal Bat Showroom was created by converting two ground-floor rooms in a 19th century building for new use. The surrounding urban environment, currently a development area, is characterized by solid masonry construction reinforced by timber framing. The use of these buildings has changed repeatedly over the years. So as the architect points out, the present use of this particular building is only a passing episode in its history, which is why the first intervention in 2004 very much emphasized the existing fabric and kept the necessary additions to a bare minimum.

When the premises were extended two years later, a very different approach was adopted. This time the existing fabric has been overlaid with different types of glass, producing a variety of optical and tactile effects. The translucent glass lets light glow through and allows the observer to read the materials behind it, thus giving visual form and presence to the history of the space - dramatizing it, in effect.

The jury's verdict: "Through a process of dialectical juxtaposition the project demonstrates two entirely opposing strategies for dealing with the fabric of historic buildings, both of which transform the space - by subtraction in one case, and by addition in the other. This is an instructive example of how to build within an existing urban fabric that the city is continuing to develop, without either eradicating its past or turning it into a heritage theme park."

Kindergartens and nursery schools, schools, colleges, universities, academies, training centres, libraries

6a Architects, London/UK with Eley Kishimoto

The Hairywood project is a temporary installation in London's Old Street. The brief was to highlight the entrance to a new gallery with an installation on the theme of "Public Space". The architects, for their part, wanted to create a new public space that would make us question our ideas of what constitutes "public space".

The result is an object that combines the intimacy of private space with the public street. Behind the plywood façade, perforated and softened by the architect's laser-cut "Rapunzel's Hair" design, the tower offers a place of retreat from the hardness of Old Street.

The small space at the top of the tower is furnished like a fragment of a domestic living room and opens directly onto the street below, with the traffic moving constantly past. Using simple materials and quirky, playful motifs, the architects have created a warm, soft space that contrasts with the hardness and coldness of the permanent environment outside.

The jury's verdict: "The jury was impressed by the way the project successfully blurs the boundaries between art, poetry and architecture, while at the same time obscuring the distinction between public and private space."

PLOT = BIG + JDS, Copenhagen/Denmark

The Sjakket project involved the conversion of a former factory building into a cultural centre for young people. This is a social project undertaken in the industrial north-west part of Copenhagen, which has a large immigrant population. Instead of offering the local youth a meeting place with a well-meaning, high-minded program of cultural improvement, Sjakket speaks the language of the streets and makes a bold statement.

The architects decided not to remove the graffiti on the outside walls, but to take them seriously and use them as inspiration for the building's colour scheme. The raw industrial architecture has not been prettified: indeed, the same rawness is deliberately echoed in a striking new addition, a long narrow block, clad in corrugated metal and painted red, which sits on the roof of the existing factory building, positioned at an angle across the semi-circular roof vaults.

This structure echoes the containers in the nearby port and makes a bold statement on the Copenhagen skyline. The facilities provided by this new meeting place are attuned to the needs of its young clientele, with a sports hall, recording studio and numerous smaller spaces for more intimate gatherings.

The jury's verdict: "Through its aggressive yet sensitive architectural transformation of the valuable but unused fabric, the building makes a useful contribution to the social revitalization of this struggling quarter and demonstrates the part that architecture can play as an instrument for social change in our cities."

Heinz Tesar ZT-GmbH, Vienna/Austria

Project: Bode-Museum on the Museum Island, Berlin/Germany

The brief was to undertake a general restoration of Berlin's Bode Museum. The task was to bring the museum's technical facilities up to modern standards while respecting the character, dignity and authenticity of this iconic listed building.

This posed a twofold challenge - in design and in conservation. The architectural concept is aimed at creating a new naturalness in the sense of a complementary coexistence of the old and the new. New parts of the building should not contrast with the original fabric, but should be of a piece with it. In this way the museum can be experienced as a whole - as a collection and as the building that houses it.

The jury's verdict: "The design project is seen - refreshingly - not as an exercise in presenting the old and the new as seemingly inevitable contrasting opposites, but as an exercise in combining the new with the old and creating a coherent, complementary coexistence."

Architects and interior designers under the age of 40

Category "Hotels/Spas/Catering facilities"

Hosoya Schaefer Architects, Zurich/Switzerland

The brief was to design a Japanese noodle bar that conveys the atmosphere of present-day Tokyo. The solution chosen by the architects was to impose a geometric order on the existing space. The formal structure developed for the project consists of a series of distorted hexagonal cells organized by a geometric pattern on the floor and ceiling.

The cells are made of 25 mm thick acrylic panels that span the 3.5 m from floor to ceiling and are covered with graphic motifs produced by a group of young Japanese designers. The cells can have many different functions: they may contain a cash desk, a table, vending machines, or plastic trays stacked to form a three-dimensional column.

The use of acrylic for the ceiling-height cell dividers makes the whole space appear transparent, even though it is organized into a series of smaller enclosures. At the same time the different graphics and sensibilities on display (the former extending, like the acrylic dividers, from floor to ceiling) serve to create a heterogeneous, urban whole.

The jury's verdict: "What impressed the jury about this project was the persuasively successful realization of the restaurant concept in the interior design of the space, which was made possible by the sparing use of materials and colours combined with the precise placement of colour and design elements."

no w here architekten amann & volpp gbr, Stuttgart/Germany

with SeiboldBloss Architekten Stadtplaner

The architects have responded to the complex design demands of a choral school with an equally complex and well-considered concept. In terms of how it relates to its urban context, the new building has been successfully integrated into its heterogeneous environment with a sensitive understanding of scale and a use of materials that reflects and reinterprets local building practice.

The folded configuration adopted for the outer skin of the building is consistently mirrored in the treatment of the interior. The brick used for the outer skin is replaced by bamboo on the inside - a timber that responds well to indoor temperature and humidity. In order to reduce sound reverberation times in the practice rooms to the required minimum, a complex system of acoustic panels with varying sound-absorbing and sound-reflecting characteristics was installed.

The lighting design of the building takes both rehearsal needs and concert situations into account. The jury's verdict: "The strength of this project lies not least, perhaps, in its eschewal of the fashionable in favour of the classically modern."

- Prof. Julia B. Bolles-Wilson, BOLLES+WILSON GmbH & Co. KG, Münster/Germany

- Prof. Dietmar Eberle, Baumschlager Eberle, Lochau/Austria

- Prof. Petra Kahlfeldt, Kahlfeldt Architekten, Berlin/Germany

- Prof. Hrvoje Njiric, njiric+ arhitekti, Zagreb/Croatia

- Andreas Ruby, architectural writer and critic, Berlin/Germany

- Rob Wagemans, concrete architectural associates bv, Amsterdam/Netherlands

- Mirko van den Winkel, Moroso spa, Udine/Italy

Association of German Architects (BDA), Berlin

Association of German Interior Designers (BDIA), Bonn

Association of German Master Builders, Architects and Engineers (BDB), Berlin

German Association of Independent Architects (VFA), Berlin

European Council of Interior Architects (ECIA), Amsterdam

Federal Chamber of Architects and Engineering Consultants (ARCH+ING), Vienna

Association of Austrian Interior Designers (BÖIA), Vienna

Association of Swiss Engineers and Architects (sia), Zurich

Association of Swiss Interior Designers (vsi.asai), Bern

Chamber of Architects in the Province of Bozen

Bond van Nederlandse Architecten (BNA), Amsterdam

Beroepsverenigung Nederlandse Interieurarchitecten (bni), Amsterdam

Further information about the entire contractworld program can be found online at www.contractworld.com

- Anja Brockjans -