Award-winning plaster facades in Europe

The Jury of ECOLA Award 2019 has awarded four First Prizes under the chairmanship of Manuelle Gautrand (Manuelle Gautrand Architecture, FR-Paris) on 17 May 2019 in Stühlingen. Prizes in the category New Buildings went to Aires Mateus Architects from Lissabon with “Meeting Centre in Grândola” in Portugal and AIM Studio with “Local Community Center Gošići” in Tivat, Montenegro. The Berlin based architecture office Bruno Fioretti Marquez won the category Refurbishment/Renovation/Conversion with the project “Conversion and Extension Schloss Wittenberg” as well as Spanish TEd’A arquitectes that convinced the jury with their project “Can Picafort – 4 tourist apartments”. The ECOLA Award (European Conference of Leading Architects – Award for the Use of Render in Architecture) has been presented for the ninth time.

The ECOLA Award (until 2004 “Bundesdeutscher Architekturpreis Putz”) that is organised by Sto and the Bundesverband Ausbau und Fassade im Zentralverband des Deutschen Baugewerbes is divided in two categories: Refurbishment/Renovation/Conversion and New Buildings. A precondition for the selection procedure was the application of plaster as a building material characterising the architecture. 30 projects were assigned to the Refurbishment/Renovation/Conversion category, while 81 came under the New Buildings category. This year’s location for the jury session on 17 May was Sto SE & Co. KGaA headquarters at Stühlingen in the Black Forest. The international jury comprised the following members: Manuelle Gautrand, Manuelle Gautrand Architecture, FR-Paris (jury chairwoman), Prof. Valentin Bearth, Bearth & Deplazes Architekten, CH-Chur; Andreas Cukrowicz, cukrowicz nachbaur architekten, AT-Bregenz. After the assessment of all 111 projects from 27 European countries, which had been carefully selected by 19 nomination jurors from 18 countries, the jury awarded four First Prizes.

The award ceremony will take place in the context of the ECOLA Conference from 26 to 28 September 2019 in Tallinn, Estonia. Participants of the congress are all award winners as well as the competition and nomination jurors. In lectures and workshops the conference provides the opportunity to intensely analyse plaster as a building material, with regard to its practical application and its technical and creative development.