2018 ARCHMARATHON Awards in Milan

The 55 best international architecture and interior design projects in 2016-2018 have been shortlisted for the fifth ARCHMARATHON Awards. The international architecture award established by Publicomm begins today, October 11, in the splendid setting of Milan’s Palazzo Mezzanotte, starting with a b2b day featuring international architectural studios and event sponsors. On October 12 and 13 the international programme will feature a marathon of discussions of architecture, concluding with the awards ceremony.

As the name ARCHMARATHON suggests, the event will be an unusual architectural marathon: all the architects and studios shortlisted for prizes will present their projects before an international jury of prominent personalities from the world of architecture (Luca Molinari, Gary Chang, Lesley Lokko, Rozana Montiel, Cherubino Gambardella, Evgeniya Murinets, Massimiliano Cecconi and Matteo Spinelli), who are also involved in the cultural programme associated with the event. Lectures by members of the international jury will be included in the two-day programme, alternating with presentation of the shortlisted projects by the architects and studios who created then. This true architecture “marathon” will conclude with a gala dinner on Sunday, when the judges will announce the winners in the award’s 16 categories (10 for architecture and 6 for interior design) and award two OverAll prizes in the two macro-categories of Architecture and Interior Design.

600 projects were submitted in response to an open call for entries announced by the organisers of the ARCHMARATHON Awards in June, and 55 projects from 23 different countries have been selected from among all these candidates. Browsing through the shortlist, we find many international studios and projects that have been presented in the pages of Floornature, including several Italian entries. 18 Italian architectural studios entered the contest in various categories, including studio DC10 with the “Copernico Martesana” project in the “Workspaces Interior” section of the Interior Design macro-category. This modern social hub was created by converting a series of independent buildings into a single modern organism, using Iris Ceramica and FMG Fabbrica Marmi e Graniti floor and wall coverings in the interior design. International entries in the Interior Design macro-category include Zaha Hadid Architects’ Morpheus project, a hotel in Macao built on the foundations of a building that was never constructed. In the “Commercial Retail” section, Francisco Pardo Architects presents the Milan 44 project in Mexico City, in which a former car parts warehouse was converted into a multi-purpose building and an important driver of urban renewal in its neighbourhood.

In the Architecture macro-category, Vector Architects, the Chinese studio that emerged as Overall Winner in the 2016 ARCHMARATHON Awards with the “Seashore Library” project, has entered its Alila Yangshuo project in the Retrofitting category: a former sugar mill converted into a hotel complex in Yangshuo, on the River Li in China. Another Chinese entrant is Open Architecture, which presents its Tsinghua Ocean Center project in Shenzhen, a university campus incorporating a symbolic building and a broken-up asymmetric tower in the colours of the depths, entered in the “Educational Buildings” category. MVRDV compete in the “Landscape & Infrastructure” category with their plan for a new public park in Seoul, Skygarden Seoullo 7017, created by converting a viaduct on an urban freeway. We conclude this brief overview by mentioning Giancarlo Mazzanti’s studio El Equipo Mazzanti, winner of the Next Landmark 2016 contest and featured in the We Play You Play exhibition at SpazioFMGperl'Architettura, who will be competing in the Healthcare & Hospitals category of the ARCHMARATHON Awards with an expansion for Santa Fe de Bogota Foundation Hospital.

(Agnese Bifulco)

Images courtesy of ARCHMARATHON Awards

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