NEB Prizes 2021: All Applications

MATto, Politecnico di Torino’s material library, proposed within Terra Madre - Salone del Gusto 2020, a support to companies and designers interested in new material and technological challenges of food packaging: solutions, today, are linked to disciplines from chemistry to technological culture, from semiotics to perception, to design. MATto investigated these issues, with attention to sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusion, developing a new accessible learning model for extended audience.

Cabiner is a network of innovative off-grid mobile cabins blended in nature landscape connected by hiking routes, delivering a positive impact on biodiversity and local economy.

Only accessible by foot, the circular designed cabins are temporarily placed in nature reserves. The hike and remote overnight stay in beautiful cabins offer visitors a unique nature experience. We help to protect local nature environment by investing revenue and show the potential of sustainable tourism close to home.

W-hole is an innovative system designed to support urban waterworks by creating multiple urban basins, widely diffused around the city and helpful in emergency situations. In normal conditions this system harvests, purifies and distributes rainwater, connecting public areas to domestic ones and thus allowing to reduce the clean water consumption as well as changing citizen’s behaviours. The latter objective is also possible thanks to an online platform where different informations are available.

Kaunas University of Technology  implemented the Project “Renovation of a cultural heritage monument and adapting for a public service “ which aimed to renovate interwar modernist architectural building meanwhile to protect and actualize object of cultural heritage of national significance and adjust for the demands of the society.

The curators of Parckdesign 2014: Parckfarm expanded the discipline of architecture from built space to lived space, stimulating social life in the new Thurn & Taxis park in Brussels - Molenbeek.  When developing the new park in such an undervalued neighborhood, the gentrification of the surrounding area is unavoidable, reason why the team stimulated the local economy through the project. Thanks to its success, the project originally foreseen to last was 5 months became in 2018 permanent.

Since its completion, the Standaert site has become the beating heart of a dense, 19th century workingclass neighbourhood in Ghent. Formerly a hardware store, the site was developed into a much needed green city oasis and meeting place for the community. Located at the centre of the green space is a community centre that houses a great number activities and initiatives for the wider neighbourhood.

Metrolab is a Brussels based transdisciplinary laboratory at the interface between urban applied urban research and policy-making. Metrolab gathers researchers in urban planning, sociology, architecture and geography. Through fieldwork, codesign and action research, it addresses inclusion and sustainability in the city. It develops tools for a transversal approach to urban projects in order to foster their anchorage, involving regional administrations, local projects and citizens' association.

In the belief that work represents a formidable tool for social inclusion, the ethical fashion workshop Cartiera trains and hires people in disadvantaged conditions, mainly refugees and asylum seekers, engaging them as artisans in the production of fashion accessories in leather otherwise destined for disposal by large companies of the fashion industry. Inclusion, made in Italy, circular economy are the essence of the ethical fashion workshop Cartiera.

The intent of the retrofitting of the Bavarian farmhouse „H14“ into a residential building with multifunctional event rooms based on the sustainable approach "efficiency (better), consistency (different) and sufficiency (less)" was to support sustainable historic architecture in rural areas. The aim was to create a sustainable monument by means of a renovation concept suitable for historical buildings, renewable energies and the reuse of existing and regional materials.

The Path of the Wises is an educational roleplaying game that pushes the players to empathize with a hero that will settle current issues of our world, in a fantastic kingdom that is inspired by the greek myths.

The game fuels creativity and pushes collaboration because no one knows the ending, that will be built with the players’ choices. The non-judgmental ambience opens the people in a condition of great creativity, fundamental to think innovative solutions to problems dealt with.