NEB Prizes 2021: All Applications

Werkspoorkwartier, a former industrial site, is transformed into a vibrant working area for creative industries, manufacturing and circular business. A joint effort from entrepeneurs in the area, Utrecht universities and circularity specialists. Monumental halls are converted into event and working spaces. Over 300 entrepreneurs in creative / circular manufacturing have found a working place here, transforming the site into one of the leading sustainable business area in the country.

“Terrestrial Fields in Urban Conditions” propose a reorientation and broadening the objectives of the goals and approaches for the ecological transformation of urban development. This new approach to space production is called “Terrestrial Fields”. They represent urban experimental fields, implemented through the urban planning instrument of zoning. A habitat for all species; places of co-evolution, between humans, animals and plants, where the landscape extends into the city and not vice versa.

The Shed was formed in Malmö, Sweden, in the summer of 2020. When the Covid Crisis hit, we were curious about the positive side-effects of the turmoil. We turned the tables around and built an all-inclusive space that could be an outlet for anyone to create something both meaningful and also meaningless. A place where the imagination runs wild and new realities are shaped. Today, The Shed hosts creative explorations, both in the virtual and physical world.

HeritageBox is a modular and mobile wooden unit being inserted within the endangered heritage buildings. Units offer simplified architectural and sustainable answers and possible solutions for housing issues and the lack of vibrant and creative industries in peripheral areas. HeritageBoxes can serve as flats, residences for artists or tourists, co-working places, workshops ...  United with its digital platform, the solution offers an uncomplicated response to a complex problem.

Think Education Forward is a long-term strategic plan for a public primary school renovation in Saint Vlas, Bulgaria, that addresses important educational issues such as children hyperactivity growing into violence, the unchanging school environment that tolerates industrial age education, the limited children's freedom of choice. The project is funded solely by the limited school budget, which allows one project to be implemented each year. 

Science, engineering, design and culture. The Lab aims to teach students, the future leaders of our world, the importance of incorporating sustainability to all aspects of innovation. It also provides a real platform to do so, in the form of organizing truly impactful projects with European companies. The first pilot includes participants from 14 different nationalities investigating the food industry by 2030. 

The basis of the design is the reactivation of a small town. This is to be achieved by redesigning the riverbank and the existing boatyard at the entrance to the city. With the help of pavilions, the riverbank will be divided into different outdoor spaces. The integrated market hall thus stands as a prelude to the city entrance situation and flows into the riverbank. The reactivation of the riverbank will create various meeting places for all generations.

Pavilion built by volunteers without the use of public money as a dissemination and teaching tool on the issues of environmental, social and economic sustainability. It is a space for the neighborhood and citizenship where citizens, associations and informal groups can meet and network for free. It is a place to carry out social and cultural initiatives, essential for socialization and for a process of reappropriation of the city by those who live there.

'What Do Landscapes Say?' explores how artistic narratives can provide a starting point to engage multiple voices in archiving and narrating the human-landscape relationship and inform more inclusive urban development. The research is a cross-disciplinary collaboration of nine architects, artists, illustrators, designers, urbanists, and writers based in the Netherlands, Russia and the UK. Their works are shared in the Netherlands and Russia via two exhibitions and a seminar with guest speakers.

A traditional civic forum reinterpreted into an urban democratic civic typology using the casual, diverse, and stimulating environment of a public market and the instant knowledge and opinion sharing abilities of the online civic space. A new civic typology that enables an engaging, permanent, and direct discussion between the public and the state, businesses and politicians in a wider range of formal civic discourses ranging from politics and economics to environment and culture creating.