EUmies Awards Young Talent winners revealed at the Venice Architecture Biennale

The Fundació Mies van der Rohe, jointly alongside Creative Europe, has announced three Young Talent winners of the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture / Mies van der Rohe Awards category as part of the EUmies Awards Day 2025 in Venice.

The awards are organized to recognize “exceptional student projects that respond to today’s social, urban, and environmental challenges.” The event was held within the context of the 2025 Venice Biennale, bringing together winners, jury members, and institutional representatives for a day of dialogue around four key themes: Artificial, Natural, Collective, and Intelligens.

“These awards – and today’s event – are dedicated to you, exceptional young talent in European architecture,” said Glenn Micallef, European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport. “The next generation shaping Europe’s built environment. Crafting spaces that reflect our unique history, shared values, and our ambition for the future.”

“Designing more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient places for us to live and thrive in,” Micallef added. “As I always say, Europe’s architecture – today’s culture – is tomorrow’s heritage. And your work is essential to making sure that future generations inherit a Europe that reflects our shared vision. For greener, more open, and inclusive societies. Where everyone feels that they belong.”

The three winning projects were joined by a parallel Young Talent Open winner. Below, we have listed more details on each winner. You can compare this year’s edition to those of previous years by reviewing our ongoing coverage of the awards here.

Brave New Axis – Spyridon Loukidis, Markos Georgios Sakellion, Georgios Thalassinos from National Technical University of Athens, Greece

Description excerpt: Axis, an imaginary line that connects, divides, shaping space and movement. Its points hold unseen multiplicities—if they change, does the whole transform? With this begins an enquiry, a project redefining a strict 19th-century line, that comes to delineate the anarchic ancient form of Athens. Athens' 1833 plan imposed neoclassical order on its medieval fabric. A monumental axis running east to west, accommodating civic and private uses, gradually dissolved into a linear urban zone. A pivotal zone that links four urban mosaics, a sequence of urban voids-points concealing a lost linear path. Yet, the city itself has rejected the classical notion of the axis. A new approach is needed—one that redefines this path, not as a rigid line, but as a series of dynamic points - fields one encounters along the journey.

Forest & Phoenix – Carolina von Hammerstein, Vera Kellmann from Technical University of Berlin, Germany

Description excerpt: The increase in forest fires requires multidisciplinary approaches for the development of necessary measures. Architecture can be seen as a mediator of the correlations in order to make them visible. The design introduces hybrid infrastructures as mediation spaces for the prevention of forest fires. Forest fires are not only the result of climatic changes, but require a consideration of the interdependencies between territorial and social changes over time that favor this phenomenon. The concept of this work promotes the idea that architecture in the 21st century, beyond its design character, should be an inclusive practice that incorporates different forms of knowledge. The complexity of forest fires and the measures to be developed, as well as the involvement of the community in terms of prevention, require a holistic approach involving various disciplines and experts.

Hotel Interim – Andreas Stanzel from Bauhaus-Universitaet Weimar, Germany

Description excerpt: Hotel Interim reassesses the material and immaterial value of a soon to be demolished hotel in Halle. It explores how the vacant space could serve as an interim of the University of Arts, viewing the building as a resource, the space as a site for experimentation, and its current state as a stage. What will be lost if the former Interhotel is demolished? Can waiting be an active state? How can the waking dream become a tangible encounter? Rising costs prevent both the hotel's demolition and the university’s long-anticipated studio expansion. This presents an opportunity: Instead of demolition, could repurposing offer a solution? Hotel Interim explores how adaptive reuse can mediate between conflicting interests, rethinking architecture’s role in uncertain times — perhaps even as a way to prevent the building’s disappearance.

Poolside Politics – James Langlois from University of Westminster, UK (Young Talent Open Winner)

Description excerpt: A collective of marginalized citizens gathers at the water's edge of Piscine Luminy, united by a vision to revive this once vibrant civic oasis. Through a construction-driven Radical Municipalism, they aim to reimagine/restore the beloved municipal pool, reclaiming it for the people of Marseille. The theme Radical Collective closely interrogate the collective, as a form of socio-political and cultural practice and in the speculation of new architectural typologies. We examined the origins of contemporary collective action, questioned its practices today and speculated new forms of radical collectivism. The investigation was brought to the urban and rural contexts of Southeast France. Here students carried out their own research, wrote their briefs and chose their own sites critically informed by their socio-political, political and environmental contexts.