Schindler Award jury names top ten projects

After a week of intense deliberations, the international jury judging the Schindler Award for Architecture 2007/08 “Access for All” has nominated ten projects. These will be presented at the Award ceremony in Lucerne on November 14, 2008. One winner and four runners-up will be awarded cash prizes at the ceremony and three schools’ prizes will also be announced. The jury also made special mention of four additional projects because of their insights into the issue of accessibility.

The ten top projects were chosen from a total of 125 submitted by student teams from schools of architecture in Europe. That compares with 88 projects submitted for the previous Schindler Award in 2005/06.

Jury president, Françoise-Hélène Jourda, said the high number of entries showed that there was growing interest in questions of Access for All – the central idea behind the Schindler Award – and universal design.

She added that the competition task – to revitalize a derelict area of the Austrian capital, Vienna – had been highly challenging. “It made the students confront some of the traditional problems of a city: lots of traffic, abandoned areas that were not being used for gardens, parks or other social purposes, and how to integrate the public transport network and a section of river into the project area.”

Prizes are also to be awarded to three of the ten schools represented by the nominated project teams. The schools’ prizes recognise architectural institutions that participated in the Award by pre-judging projects from their school and integrating the topic of accessibility into their curricula. The schools in question will be named at the award ceremony in November, and awarded research grants.

The jury also made special mention of four projects. These did not fulfil the requirements to be nominated but came up with new and interesting ideas about how to improve mobility for disabled people in urban spaces.

All the nominated projects teams and their tutors, as well as the teams singled out for special mention, are invited to the Award Ceremony. Invitations will follow in due course.

List of nominated projects (PDF)
List of projects chosen for special mention (PDF)
Interview with the Schindler Award Jury President, Françoise-Hélène Jourda (PDF)