With the project for the renovation and expansion of the FRAC Nord-Pas deCalais Art Center, in Dunkirk, the French studio Lacaton & Vassal is the winner of the third edition of the BigMat International Architecture Award ’17, the Biennial Award created and promoted by the Italian and European leading group in materials for buildings and renovations.
During the gala evening held on November 24th in the prestigious Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence, the winners of the International Grand Prize and other Prizes have been awarded with the attendance of 400 international guests in the world of architecture and BigMat members.
The participants in the competition were architects and studios from the seven European countries where BigMat is - Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Spain.
Among nearly 900 candidates, 87 teams of architects had been pre-selected last July, finally reaching a number of fourteen finalists. In addition to the winner of the Grand Prize, the respective national awards and the category prizes have been bestowed.
Maria Alessandra Segantini and Carlo Cappai of the C+S Architects studio in Treviso won for Italy, with the project Law Court Offices, in Venice, whose quality according to the jury, «lies in the way it integrates the external context, resuming the archetype of an industrial buildings and creating a hermetic construction that employs oxidized and rusted materials, in perfect harmony with the context».
The Special Mention Young Architects BigMat '17, worth 1,500 euros, given to a highly deserving project by an architect under 40, went to the Slovenian H3T for the project of the Suspended Black House, in Bohemia.
The Audience Award, which is new of this edition and involves the users of the Network, went to the Portuguese Pedro Mauricio Borges, for its project Tenuta Da Tilia, in Ponta Delgada (Portugal).
The award shows the increasingly growing participation trend. The president of the jury, the Spanish archistar Jesús Aparicio, stresses in fact that: «The success of this third edition of the BigMat International Architecture Award is shown by the growing number of applications (881 projects presented, while in 2015 were 750) and the high quality of the submitted projects; just think that there are 4 Pritzker Prizes among the participants».