ULI’s Awards for Excellence celebrate boundary pushing
Winners of this year’s ULI Europe Awards for Excellence include the restoration of a historic market building in Porto, a project involving 182 individual schools in Flanders and the creation of a hybrid, mixed-use flagship development in Paris.
The awards are designed to recognise outstanding built environment projects in the private, public, and non-profit sectors, and celebrate excellence in land use practice across the entire development process.
The three winning projects were announced during the C Change Summit in Copenhagen, held last week.
Mercado do Bolhão, Porto, in Portugal, has been restored and modernised by Developer Gestão e Obras do Porto and is again a vibrant fresh produce market used by more than 80 traders, most of whom were retained. The market has seen a sevenfold increase in footfall, with 90% of sales made to locals.
Flanders’ Schools of Tomorrow (Scholen van Morgen) team – a public-private partnership of public authorities, AG Real Estate and BNP Paribas Fortis – financed, designed, and built 182 sustainable and cost-effective school projects addressing Flanders’ existing overcrowded and outdated provision in a large, complex process.
The Covivio and Hines-owned Stream Building, Paris, is a new flagship building linking the inner and outer suburbs and combines a mixture of uses under one roof. The building incorporated sustainability and resilience through a mixed wood-concrete structure, limiting its carbon footprint.
The awards jury comprised: chair Sophie Henley-Price, Studios Architecture, France; Clarissa Alfrink, UNStudio, Germany; Sigrid Duhamel, Deepki, France; Karolina Kaim, Blueprint Group, Poland; Tinka Kleine, PGGM, Netherlands; Jorge Perez de Leza Eguiguren, Metrovacesa, Spain; Dan Ringelstein, Arup, UK; Simone Santi, Lendlease, Italy; and Jörn Walter, City of Hamburg, Germany.
“The criteria for the Awards for Excellence, which focuses not only on all-round leadership in the design and development of a project but also the positive impact it has in a local community, coupled with the high quality and diversity of projects submitted for consideration, makes this programme simultaneously hugely rewarding and extremely challenging for the jury,” Henley-Price said.
Lars Huber, chairman of ULI Europe and CEO, European Region, Hines said: “This is an inspiring competition, as it reveals the abundance of creativity and innovation within our industry for delivering projects that truly push the boundaries in real estate to have a very real and positive impact on our cities, and our communities.”
