NEB Prizes 2022: All Applications

The vision of building green cities using circular building methods provides answers to problems we face today. As a local and recyclable resource, clay can make a big difference in the pursuit of implementing this vision. This project demonstrates how versatile the construction material is: rammed earth modules provide habitats for various species by offering hollow spaces and shaped surfaces. Placed in the right context, the bricks become the foundation for the development of small ecosystems.

Waste is a design flaw: our cities are large, man made material deposits. We have never had more metal, plastic, oil-based composite materials and minerals around us than now. Yet we exploit natural resources to obtain new building materials. The installation emphasizes reuse through using construction materials as service and not as products. Thus the material is used uncut and joined by rope to allow full disassembly and further reselling by the producer.
 

The open space behind the st. George church seems to be self-evident these days, but it was historically never a city square. With the renovation and the revitalisation of the area, the new market square is nowadays a bustling hotspot of the medieval town of Ptuj.

Citizen-led site development in Gottsunda, Sweden, with a focus on testing and developing new methods for involving residents and local actors in the development of existing and future spaces.

For a year, ten sites and ten different issues were explored together with ten different target groups. The tests led to physical interventions and to lessons learned about Gottsunda today and in the future. 

"Talk with students, not about them." By institutionalizing 'student civil servants' at municipalities, one can improve the conversation regarding the needs of students, which is now important more than ever. In cooperation with this, 'Social & Wellbeing Hubs' will be created to encourage students, giving tools and training to improve social engagement. Inspiring and supporting students to make an impact on their own world. Increase knowledge exchange between each hub from other cities.

TWIN project has the ambition to define a replicable territorial model for the benefit of marginal and fragile territories crossed by slow lines, combining itinerant tourism along cycling and walking paths, social inclusion and building recovery. It is an initiative of the research group TWIN of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of Politecnico di Milano and it is a winning project of the Call Polisocial Award 2019. A first experimentation has already been tested: the TWIN Hut n.1.

The greater Douais, as with all post-industrial areas, is a forgotten urban fabric awaiting a fresh start. If the term “degrowth” often describes the image of an area in decline, it is also a substantial keyword to sustainability! Therefore, Breeding Ground is inspired by a positive and sustainable degrowth, embed in a territory capable of change, and allowing smart densification and profound economic changes. Above all, applying circular tools can sprout a new commons called resilience. 

The circular pavilion is a crafted hands-on construction project that worked experimentally in order to understand and prototype reuse construction. Built as a temporary object, the design was intended to be unbuild and recycled again. 

The pavilion is intended as the first in a series of small scale, experimental architectures that work with raw and reclaimed materials in order to provide an open-source, physical catalogue of circular details. 

BeeVacc contains a potential symbiotic partner for wild bees! 
The microhabitat provides space in the human-developed city for the solitary wild bees and inhibits diseases such as the deformed wing virus.

Fungi's mycelium of the Ganoderma genus can immunize bees against consequences of the varroa mite. It is too big for being a parasite of wild bees, but they can get infected by visiting the same flowers as infested honey bees. The difference is, one is bred for numbers, the other one is not.

Domingo Club promotes fermented plant proteins and build tools so that everyone can make them at home for the benefit of our lives and our planet. We deeply believe that big changes come from everyday habits, we therefore invite everyone to join the club and start fermenting our food and building a brighter and healthier future together.