deFlat Kleiburg Residential Complex

The renovation of the deFlat Kleiburg residential complex in Amsterdam, by the Dutch firms NL Architects and XVW architectuur, has won the biennial Mies van der Rohe Award. The other four finalists were: the Ely Court apartments, by Alison Brooks; the Kannikegården building in Ribe, by Lundgaard & Tranberg; the Katyn Museum in Warsaw, by BBGK Architekci; and the Memorial Museum at the Camp de Rivesaltes, by Rudy Ricciotti. Both unexpected and fair, the concession to a work where the original and current authorships are confused, and where the attention to the object is transferred to the processes, was a sort of declaration of intent regarding one of the challenges architects must face: the recovery of peripheries. Described by the jury as ‘heroic and ordinary,’ the project consists in the refurbishment of a rationalist block of 400 meters in length, 500 apartments, and 11 floors built in the 1960s, and which has spared demolishing thanks to an operation based on spatial hygiene and economic profit. The Emerging Architect award went to the Brussels practices MSA and V+ for their Navez social housing in Schaerbeek (Belgium).