Prix de Rome Architecture 2022 at Het Nieuwe Instituut

The nominees have been selected by the international jury of the Prix on the basis of their design proposals for several different locations touched by social trauma. They have spent four months researching the fraught history of these places, the healing potential of spatial design, and the role they themselves play in society as architects, landscape architects and urban planners. Each tries to work in a way that restores their chosen building site, despite – or perhaps because of – its oppressive legacy.

Healing Sites

Over the centuries, the efforts of architects, urban planners and landscape architects have contributed to the development of a capitalist, colonial and imperialist legacy that is now impacting or even eradicating entire ecosystems. How do contemporary colleagues view the complicity of the field? How can they shape their own way of working so that their practice undoes that legacy?

exhibition

The four proposals in the exhibition are places of social trauma, positioned within the building of the former International Yugoslavia Tribunal, between the wreckage of flight MH17 in Ukraine, in the site of the former Colony of Benevolence in Veenhuizen where the poor were ‘educated’ through land labour and at the tax authorities' service offices where trust in the Dutch government was systematically violated. In addition to the work of the nominees, the exhibition also features historical examples of designs for healing locations of commemoration, encounter and restoration from the National Collection of Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning.

award ceremony

The winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome Architecture 2022 will be announced during a festive evening programme on 1 December. Gunay Uslu, State Secretary for Culture and Media, will present the prize – € 40,000 and a choice of residency – to the winner.

The Prix de Rome is the oldest prize in the Netherlands for architects younger than 35. This year the prize is organised by the Mondriaan Fund in collaboration with the Creative Industries Fund NL and Het Nieuwe Instituut, on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. Jap Sam Books is publishing the accompanying publication.

Arna Mačkić – Public Centre for Architectural Disaster and Collective Healing

Dividual – Celebrating the unproductive: Spaces, structures and rituals of empowerment

Lesia Topolnyk – No Innocent Landscape

Studio KIWI – Grounds of [in]Justice: Healing trust and building compassion