5 finalists works*
*Among the works submitted, the jury has selected 20 projects that will become part of the Archive of the European Prize for Urban Public Space.
Catharijnesingel by OKRA landschapsarchitect. Photograph by OKRA landschapsarchitect.
Catharijnesingel, 2020. Utrecht, Netherlands.
OKRA landschapsarchitect
The restoration of the Catharijnesingel removes vehicular traffic that occupied this street and brings back water to rewild a new public space for the city and make it accessible for cyclists and pedestrians. This project is an excellent example of revitalising the qualities of the city by means of recovering water and its biodiversity. Inspired by the environment, all the elements, including trees, vegetation, paving materials, and street furniture have been meticulously selected and envisaged how nature will evolve in future. It introduces a new, natural, and healthy microclimate that will play an important role in the present situation of the global climate crisis.
FLOW, 2021. POOL IS COOL by Decoratelier Jozef Wouters. Photograph by Paul Steinbrück.
FLOW, 2021. Brussels, Belgium.
POOL IS COOL, Decoratelier Jozef Wouters
Flow, designed and built with the participation of fifty young people, is the first open-air swimming pool to be constructed in Brussels in forty years. This project introduces a temporary structure that establishes a rich meeting place for enjoying fresh air and water. As a simple, economical, modular system that can easily be built by many hands, it presents a good example of how everyone can participate in creating an active, healthy public space.
Hage, 2021 by Brendeland & Kristoffersen architects, Price & Myers. Photograph by Geir Brendeland.
Hage, 2021. Lund, Sweden.
Brendeland & Kristoffersen architects, Price & Myers
Lund Cathedral decided to use its properties to develop a public space that would be an alternative to the logic of rapid urbanisation in its surroundings. A courtyard, closed on three sides by walls made of bricks recovered from a demolished factory building, is set in still-undeveloped land on the outskirts of Lund. The owner of the land has decided not to keep pace with the urbanising development of the area, but to let it follow its own course open to the citizens. The courtyard is a first intervention, an anticipation of a gradual evolution of the place: an hortus inconclusus.
Saint Sernin Square, 2020, by Joan Busquets, Pieter-Jan Versluys, BAU. Photograph by BAU.
Saint Sernin Square, 2020. Toulouse, France.
Joan Busquets, Pieter-Jan Versluys, BAU
The project for Saint Sernin Square in Toulouse restores eminence to the historic urban fabric of the city. The cars that occupied its surface have been removed, and lost trees are reinstated as organisers of the public space. The simplicity of the proposal, its use of materials, and recognition of the heritage of the site have become the project’s mechanisms for reactivating a new, once-jeopardised public space and regaining its vertical dimension and establishing an area that can accommodate a range of public uses.
“Sporta pils dārzi”urban garden in Riga, 2021, by Artilērijas dārzi. Photograph by Kristīne Majare.
“Sporta pils dārzi”urban garden in Riga, 2021. Riga, Latvia.
Artilērijas dārzi
The urban community garden “Sporta pils dārzi” is the result of a popular initiative to recover an abandoned lot and becomes a new typology of public space. The project consists of a system of seedling distributions and interstitial spaces that will be occupied during events and encounters. The resulting project is a new system, a model of urban space that incorporates productive, cultural and social logic and integrates emerging natural elements as part of the community space.
