The city of Lodz in Poland has won the John Jacob Astor Award with the redeveloped 19th century Ludwik Grohman factory.

The city of Lodz in Poland has won the John Jacob Astor Award with the redeveloped 19th century Ludwik Grohman factory.

The prize, a complimentary 20 m2 exhibition area at Expo Real 2014 worth €10,000, was accepted by the city’s mayoress.

The project was realized between 2011 and summer 2013 and entailed the renovation and extension of the former industrial buildings while preserving their historical character. The resultant modern office building is used as the headquarters of the Lodz Special Economic Zone Joint Stock, the project’s investor, as well as a culture and conference centre for more than 250 people.

Second place went to one of the first Passive House standard laboratory/office buildings: Skylabs in Heidelberg. Third place went to Splash e Spa Tamaro, a domed building, in Rivera-Monteceneri in Ticino, in Italian-speaking Switzerland. Both of them will receive an invitation to the next Oktoberfest for 10 people each and entrance tickets for Expo Real 2014.

In all, 38 projects were submitted for the competition, 14 more than the year before. The variety of the project submissions ranged from shopping centres to office buildings and hotels to rented loft apartments. The submissions also had a more international flavour this year, coming from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the USA.

Particularly sought-after were socio-cultural, economically or environmentally sustainable commercial property projects realized between 2007 and 2013. Everyone was free to take part via the Expo Real Blog, with the social media community casting their votes.

John Jacob Astor, for whom the competition was named, was originally a German by the name of Johann Jakob Astor, who emigrated to America in 1784 where he was the first immigrant citizen to make it as a millionaire. He invested the money in real estate, going on to become the first real estate tycoon in history. He also established a family tradition: a hotel business. One of his hotels, the most refined of its day, 'Astor House', laid the foundation for the later Waldorf Astoria.

Click on the link below for additional information on the winning projects and all the other entrants.