Two Utrecht buildings have been nominated in the national competition for the Best Building of the Year. This concerns a building in the De Kwekerij area and the education building of the Nimeto vocational school. The buildings have a chance to win both the professional jury prize and the audience prize.
Nominated buildings must have been completed in the current year of the competition. The new building of the Nimeto vocational school will be completed in the summer of 2023. The Nursery partly already existedbut in 2023 new homes were built in the area.
‘The art of transformation’
Of the almost one hundred entries, eleven ultimately survived. According to jury member Marcia Luyten, there is a clear trend this year.
“It shows how much architecture is intertwined with the major tasks of our time: sustainability, circularity – reusing buildings and materials, and promoting social cohesion,” says Marcia. “Architecture is increasingly becoming the art of transformation.”
Nimeto on Smijerslaan also followed this development. The school building looks modern, but in essence it is still the building of the 1960s. They worked sustainably with what was already present in the building. By using the space within the building intelligently, the renovation of the educational institution also turned out to be cheap.
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De Kwekerij also focuses on sustainability, climate adaptation and energy savings. There is, among other things, rainwater collection and local energy generation.
The water tower
De Kwekerij has been nominated in the ‘best living experience’ category and Nimeto in the ‘Stimulating environment’ category. Good architecture alone is not enough to win prizes. “The user and experience value, the added social value and the quality of the collaboration are also taken into account,” writes the organizer of the competition, the Dutch Architectural Firms Branch. “So it is more than beautiful or good.”
It was last year the water tower nominated on the Amsterdamsestraatweg. The building did not win any prizes at the time. You can vote for the People’s Choice Award until May 7. The competition awards ceremony will take place on May 23 in the Bunkertoren in Eindhoven. That building won prizes last year in the Identity and Icon Value category.
