A study pavilion designed on the campus of the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona were named by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe and the European Commission as the winning projects in the 2024 iteration of the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture/Mies van der Rohe Awards, or EUmies.
Berlin-based Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke, the designers behind the study pavilion, are the youngest ever winners of the Architecture Prize. In his endorsement of the study pavilion at Technical University of Braunschweig, juror Niklas Maak said the building is a premonition of “the future of German construction.”
SUMA Arquitectura, a Spanish practice cofounded by Elena Orte and Guillermo Sevillano, was given the Emerging Architecture Prize for its work for the Barcelona City Council on the Gabriel García Márquez Library.
The two winning projects were selected from an initial group of 362 nominated works. This year’s winners beat out shortlisted projects including The Hage by Brendeland & Kristoffersen Architects in cooperation with Price & Myers, and the Colegio Reggio school by Andres Jaque/Office for Political Innovation.
“Architecture is a fundamental part not just of our European culture, but also of sustainable development and people’s well-being, said Iliana Ivanova, an EU commissioner. “The winners of the 2024 EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award demonstrate this very clearly. Their works reflect the principles of the New European Bauhaus, bringing the green transition into people’s everyday lives and living spaces. My heartfelt congratulations to the architects and collaborators behind these endeavours!”
The study pavilion was realized as two-story building where students from any discipline could work. The spaces were designed to be flexible, in what the architects describe as a “demountable and highly flexible steel-wood hybridconstruction.”
French architect and juror Frédéric Druot commended SUMA Arquitectura’s Gabriel García Márquez Library, saying that building “acts at the scale of the city, contributing to the transformation of the neighborhood, opening up as a new outdoor and indoor public space. This wooden structure develops as a rich sequence of monumental and domestic spaces that welcome neighbors and citizens, providing them with comfortable environments for learning, teamwork and community engagement. With meticulous attention to detail, the authors have thoroughly examined and pushed the library program to its fullest.”
The library’s exterior presents an amalgamation of materials and textures that the designers described in a project description as evoking “a block of stacked books with folded pages.”
An award ceremony will take place on May 14 at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona during the EUmies Awards Day. The day-long event will feature discussions with architects, clients, policymakers, and jury members, as well as an exhibition of all 362 nominated projects.
