On March 1st, the meeting of the Advisory Committee of the European Prize for Urban Public Space 2024 was held at the CCCB. This Committee, comprised of ten European institutions specializing in architecture and urban planning, ensures that the most compelling public space interventions gain access to the call.
Present at the meeting were Fabrizio Gallanti, director of Arc en Rêve (Bordeaux), Francis Rambert, director of the Department of Architectural Creation at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (Paris), Ellis Woodman, director of The Architecture Foundation (London), Andrea Jürges, deputy of the Deutsches ArchitektureMuseum (Frankfurt), Katharina Ritter, curator at the Architerkturzentrum (Vienna), Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, chief curator at Arkdes (Stockholm), Nikolaus Hirsch, director of CIVA (Brussels), Grete Tiigiste, head of public programmes of the Estonian Museum of Architecture (Tallin), Samu Szmerey, director of Contents at the KÉK (Budapest), and Maja Vardjan, director of the Museum of Architecture and Design (Ljubljana).
The main role of the Advisory Committee is to ensure that all European public space projects carried out between 2022 and 2023, in case of general category, and between 2019 and 2023, in case of seafront category are known to the Prize organisers and, conversely, that architects and promotors of good public space projects are invited to present their work. The Advisory Committee is, then, a group that directly contributes to the variety and richness of the initiative.
About the meeting
During the meeting, discussions centered on the current edition and the special prize for seafronts which will be awarded this year. A significant part of the session was devoted to reviewing the 250 public space projects nominated by the Prize’s network of experts, ensuring architects and sponsors are invited by the organizers to submit for the Prize. The institutions of the Committee will contribute with their own suggestions of projects that are of interest to the Prize but that had not been nominated.
During the same afternoon, Francesc Muñoz, advisor of the Suburbia exhibition, briefed the Committee members on the content of the upcoming exhibition and engaged in a dialogue with them about different aspects of European suburbs. Following this, Maria Buhigas, chief architect of the Barcelona City Council, outlined the main lines of action that the City Council proposes in the field of architecture and urban planning of Barcelona.
