European projects dominate the shortlist for the Mipim Awards, with a strong focus on refurbishments and urban regeneration.
The staggering UN statistic that an estimated 66% of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050 underpins not only Mipim’s main theme this year – mapping world urbanity - but also runs as a thread through its annual project awards. ‘Urban’ and ‘mixed use’ are terms characterising many of the projects selected as finalists for this year’s awards, reflecting the strong focus on cities as they grapple with increased pressures on space, resources and vital services.
‘This year we saw a real upscale of the projects in line with the Mipim theme,’ says Méka Brunel, CEO of French investment company Gecina and chair of the 12-member awards jury. Beyond their architectural qualities, the projects entered are ‘making a new step towards connections between people in cities’, she said.
‘This year it was not just about considering the building by itself, but what the purpose of the project is,’ Brunel told PropertyEU. ‘I believe this is the key word this year to understand the awards. Globally speaking, the quality and standards of the projects are outstanding and it was way too complicated to make a decision,’ she added.
Entries for the 2018 awards were up 6% on last year, with 227 projects from a record 55 countries being submitted. Projects spanned the globe from Finland to the Philippines and cut across all asset classes, Mipim said. Like last year, European projects dominated the line-up of finalists, with 27 of the 44 shortlisted schemes coming from this region. Given the focus on urban regeneration in many of Europe’s old cities, developments in historical centres in this part of the world dominated the category for Best Urban Regeneration Project. Porta Nuova in Milan, one of Europe’s biggest mixed-use urban redevelopments, vies for supremacy along with Zaryadye Park in Moscow, which combines an urban park and cultural centre, and Puhlmannhof in Berlin, a five-building complex combining retail and residential space on what was formerly a parking lot.
Refurbished and healthcare categories
European projects take a clean sweep in the Best Refurbished and Healthcare categories where all four finalists hail from cities on the Old Continent. In the Best Refurbished section, they range from the renovation of a derelict fire station into a new headquarters for the port of Antwerp to the refurbished Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow which is the flagship arena for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Also in the running are The Silo in Copenhagen, a former grain container which now accommodates private residential and public functions, and NOI Techpark in the Italian city Bolzano, a technology park designed to house startups, university research hubs and training centres, which serves as an engine for economic development throughout the South Tyrol region.
In the healthcare category, the European finalists are the Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary in Dumfries, Scotland; Hospital AZ Teno in Knokke-Heist, Belgium; the O|2 Laboratory and Research Building in Amsterdam; and The Maersk Tower in Copenhagen, home to a new health research community at the University of Copenhagen.
European projects also score well in the hotels, logistics and residential categories where they dominate with three of the four finalist places. In the logistics category, two European projects show that distribution centres can be built equally well in a spacious industrial hinterland as in a more urban setting. The BTS centre being developed for online retailer Amazon by Panattoni in Szczecin, Poland, is a 160,000 m2 warehouse covering a 29-hectare site, while the multimodal Chapelle International logistics centre being developed by Sogaris in the centre of the Grand Paris area will, at 45,000 m2 of space, be the French capital's biggest urban logistics project.
Surprise contenders
The shortlist also yields a number of surprises: for the best shopping centre category, the jury picked a food & beverage hub in Italy, the Fico Eataly World in Bologna, underscoring the current preoccupation with F&B in malls. And, instead of shopping centres in fashion capitals of the likes of Paris, London or Milan, two of the other finalists were large-scale centres in Tokyo, Japan and Suzhou, China. Also making the cut for this category was Rive Gauche in Charleroi, Belgium, a 40,000 m2 inner-city development that includes a 4-star hotel and 50 residential units.
In the innovative green building segment, two unconventional contenders in Asia stand out: the ONGC Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya Urja Bhawan building in New Dehli, housing India’s largest oil and gas producer. This Platinum LEED-certified building was designed, constructed and operated to minimize the total environmental impact by reducing energy consumption, water conservation and recycling waste.
Another surprise challenger is the Marina One mixed-use complex in Singapore, which groups four high-rise buildings around a three-dimensional green oasis, reflecting the diversity of tropical flora. The other two – European – contenders are the BNP Paribas Banking Centre in Kirchberg, Luxembourg, and the Season office building in Paris which has a ‘bioclimatic and contextual design’. Located in the Clichy Batignolles district, the building is cooled using the thermal mass of the concrete stab floors and therefore does not require an active air cooling system.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, developments from emerging markets in Asia and the Middle East stand out in the two futuristic building categories: Best Futura and Best Futura Mega Project. In the first, the 210-metre high Taichung Bank building in Taichung, Taiwan, which also houses a 5-star hotel and a private VIP club, vies with the monumental National Museum of Qatar in Doha and the National Museum of World Writing in Incheon, South Korea. The only European project in this category is the Skellefteå Cultural Centre in the north of Sweden, a new home for arts, performance and literature in one of the world’s tallest timber buildings to date.
In the mega category, the four finalists – including two from China – all push the boundaries in some way, whether that be in terms of space, technology, sustainability or efficiency.
AWARDS CEREMONY
The winners will be announced at the Mipim Awards ceremony on Thursday, 15 March at 6.30 pm in the Grand Auditorium of the Palais des Festivals in Cannes.
The winners will be selected by both Mipim delegates voting in Cannes for projects of their choice and by the jury. The winners will be selected on a 50:50 basis combining delegates’ votes cast on-site and the jury’s own votes.
