NEB Prizes 2023: All Applications

Ancient magical trees are the rooted foundation of this education initiative designed to open the minds and hearts of students to see with new eyes their shared natural heritage through interactive, place-based workshops. The entire community is invited into this joyous journey, as together we explore the ecosystem around us as well as our common historic and folkloric traditions. Together, we commit to a spirit of collaboration to nourish beauty and life for future generations.

The idea is to connect rooftops by bridges and thus create a unique new park –the Bridge Park. That practically creates a new park right there where we need it most – in the heart of the city. If it grows to be sufficiently large, the Bridge Park has the potential to teach city people a whole new way of pedestrian
traffic. It can become a network of green corridors that connects and augments existing parks thus providing uninterrupted, pedestrian-only flow among all parks and
gardens.

This is the studio of architecture and urbanism for children which operates locally, in the small town of Pančevo in Serbia. The main goal is to make unbreakable bonds between town and children, so the children who grow up in it, find out more about it through architecture, fall in love with it and one day make better urbanistic decisions about it. The results are far-reaching and a process is long term, but the children started to think differently and participate actively in the community.

My research on the use of natural processes in design began when I realized that the streets of my neighborhood are full of magnolia leaves in autumn. The question was “Wouldn't it be possible a new life for leaves and bark (waste of bio-resources) before they mix with nature?” So whilst I have decided to use different bio-waste such as magnolia leaves, pine and eucalyptus tree bark, pine tree needles, and more to create experimental materials.

The Alt_Shift SL Track involves a series of Community-engaged Architectural Design Learning courses (electives & design studios) organized at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture by the Altering Practices for Urban Inclusion (Alt_Shift*) Research Group. Through 'critical spatial practices' students engage in 'altering practices,' which question and transform the socio-political conditions of the spaces into which intervene and test the boundaries of their own disciplines.

The Fabmobil is a double-decker bus that has been converted into an art and digital workshop and is travelling across the rural countryside to bring digital education and the therefore necessary technologies to the people who need them. The workshop bus is in use for a variety of events and workshops, courses and target groups in the field of emancipatory and self-effective media education. Usually the bus travells the region and stops for 1-5 days to host the workshops.

Culinary students at Vocational school in Đakovo (Croatia) made pralines named Sophia's hearts. The idea was inspired by the story of bishop Mandić and his relationship with Jakob Haibel who was actually Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's brother-in-law and a prominent musician. He was invited to the Đakovo Cathedral for that particular reason. At that point, Jakob and Sophia got an opportunity for their romance. Their love story was an inspiration for our school's project Sophia's hearts.

Innovative day center in Derio that offers social and occupational support to people with autism. 24 people with an autism spectrum disorder receive support through an organized and coordinated set of actions carried out by a multidisciplinary professional team of 7 people, aimed to facilitate their personal and social development, their autonomy and their social and labor inclusion through activities such as gardening and agriculture, among others.

Faro for the Earthquake is a valorisation project to gather, in an archive of the memory, the testimonies of life and knowledge of each village hitten by the 2016 earthquake in center Italy, ispired by the COE Faro Convention, throught a partecipatory process.
The reconstruction of the towns destroyed by the earthquake will take time, but the community that will enter will be very different from the original, with the risk to lose the "human capital" of whom built and lived those villages.

Calcione Academy is a new model of training “incubator” that combines collaborative life experiences, training, design and realization of outputs aimed at enhancing and innovating the heritage of Castello del Calcione, the amazing location hosting the project. Calcione Academy has the goal of make Castello del Calcione a self-sufficient entity and an active point of reference in the area as in was in its glorious past, with a strong identity and important national and international connections.