Architecture News

A German University Study Hall and Barcelona Library Win 2024 EUmies Awards

DE03-7_Photo by Lemmart_Study Pavilion TU Braunschweig4 copy.jpg — Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke's Study Pavilion at TU Braunschweig in Brunswick, Germany, is the winner of the EUmies Awards' Architecture Prize. *Photo © Lemmart*

Young Berlin architects Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke have won the European Union’s top architecture prize for their collaborative design of a study hall on the campus of Technical University Braunschweig in Germany. The project—first commissioned in 2015, the same year Düsing and Hacke established their respective studios—won over four other finalists in the running for the main prize in the 2024 edition of the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture/Mies van der Rohe Awards—or, as they are better known, the EUmies Awards.

Gustav Düsing and Max Hacke Photo © Leonhard Clemens

In total, there were 362 nominees for this cycle of the prestigious biennial awards program, narrowed down to a shortlist of 40 built projects—all completed between April 2021 and May 2023—representing 38 European cities and 20 countries, with Spain leading the pack with six shortlisted projects. Belgium and Germany each had four. Notably, Düsing and Hacke are the youngest recipients of the EUmiesAwards Architecture Prize, valued at €60,000, in its 18-cycle history. Other finalists included Madrid’s Colegio Reggio by Andres Jaque/Office for Political Innovation; The Hage by Norwegian studio Brendeland & Kristoffersen with Price & Myers in Lund, Sweden; the Plato Contemporary Art Gallery in Ostrava, Czech Republic, by Polish firm KWK Promes; and French architect Amelia Tavella’s Convent of Saint-François in Santa Lucia di Tallano, Corsica.

Technical University Braunschweig study hall

Study Pavilion at TU Braunschweig. Photos © Iwan Baan (1), Leonhard Clemens (2)

“It is rewarded for its ability to challenge the constraints and imagery of sustainability, creating a welcoming and playful environment for study, collaboration, and community gathering through an uncompromising and carefully detailed structure,” stated the award organizers of Düsing and Hacke’s winning academic building in an announcement. “It has taken a clear architectural idea, scrutinized it and pushed it to the limit; more than being a building, it could be understood as a versatile system, merging technological inventions with a flexible and reusable principle.”

Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona by SUMA Arquitectura. Photo © © Jesús Granada

In addition to Düsing and Hacke’s Architecture Prize–winning work at TU Braunschweig, SUMA Arquitectura, a Madrid-based studio led by Elena Orte and Guillermo Sevillano, was recognized with the €30,000 Emerging Architecture Prize for its Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona. “This wooden structure unfolds as a rich sequence of monumental and domestic spaces that welcomes neighbors and citizens, providing them with a comfortable atmosphere and community engagement,” detailed the announcement.

Although designed by a Madrid firm, the recognition of Barcelona’s Gabriel García Márquez Library marks a hometown victory for the EUmies, which calls the Catalan capital its spiritual—and administrative—home. The awards are jointly organized by the European Commission and Barcelona-based Fundació Mies van der Rohe, while the awards program itself, which includes a day of festivities, public lectures, and a formal ceremony, is held at the city’s reconstructed Mies van der Rohe Pavilion and at Palau Victòria Eugènia.

This year’s EUmies Awards Day will be held on May 14 while a concurrent “Out & About” program invites the 40 shortlisted architects/teams to hold tours and events on the same day at their nominated buildings. An exhibition summarizing all 362 nominated projects—and showcasing in-depth the 40 shortlisted ones—will also launch at Palau Victòria Eugènia before traveling to Madrid and Vienna later in the year.

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KEYWORDS: awards European Union

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Matt Hickman is senior news/digital editor at Architectural Record. Previously, he served as Senior Editor at The Architect’s Newspaper and has over a decade of experience as a freelance writer and editor specializing in historic preservation, public space, and the intersection of the natural world and built environment. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Matt holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from The New School.