Finalists of the UPTO35 Competition Revealed

In June 2009, OLIAROS, a young Greek property development company, issued a call for architects up to 35 years old to submit proposals for the design and construction of a model, affordable student housing complex in Kerameikos and Metaxourgeio (KM), an area in the historic center of Athens, Greece.

Participants were asked to explore new building typologies that can house 18 students on the 200 m2 lot at 34 Marathonos Street in KM, and can potentially sprawl in the neighboring properties owned by third parties, aiming at creating a contemporary student housing hub.

245 proposals from 41 countries were submitted and reviewed by the jury committee between September 11 - 14 at OLIAROS’ premises in Athens, of which 242 complied with the competition rules.

The jury committee is comprised of a team of distinguished architects with diverse backgrounds and an influential practice on contemporary architecture plus the organizer. The jury members are: Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Kourkoulas, Marcel Meili, Iasson Tsakonas, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Yorgos Tzirtzilakis, and Elia Zenghelis.

These are the five finalists that the judges decided on:

101Design (Masamichi Kawakami, Yautaka Onari, Tsuyoshi Shinozaki) - Japan

Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu (Florian Idenburg, Ioannis Kandyliaris, Ilias Papageorgiou) - United States

Joao Prates Ruivo & Raquel Maria Oliveira - Greece

Kums (Marieke Kums, Dirk Peters) - The Netherlands

Suppose Design Studio (Makoto Tanijiri, Ryo Otsuka, Yuko Fukuma, Sachio Inagami, Keisuke Katayama, Manami Unegawa) - Japan

The five finalists will receive €3,000 each and were invited to further develop their proposals.

The final 5 projects will be exhibited on site from October 1 to 7, 2009 alongside all 242 entries. During the exhibition, the public will be invited to vote for one of the five finalists via text messaging. The project with the most SMS votes shall be deemed to have obtained the public vote.

The final winner, whose project will be developed by OLIAROS, will be determined in January 2010 by the votes of the seven members of the jury plus the one vote deriving from the public and will receive a €10,000 award as well as €30,000 commission.