From among the twelve projects awarded this past 13 March in the eleven different categories of the MIPIM awards, the true winner turned out to be the European city and its regeneration.
From the DomRömer Project in Frankfurt’s historic centre to the neighbourhoods of Greenwich Peninsula in London (with the new Low Carbon Energy Centre), Wilhelmsburg in Hamburg (with Woodie, a residential complex for students), and Milles Arbres between Paris and Neuilly-sur-Seine to recovered and revitalised architectural complexes like ‘Il palazzo del sonno’ [The Palace of Sleep] of Florence’s Student Hotel, the new world headquarters of Parfums Christian Dior on the Seine, Kosmo, and Laborde (the building which contains the offices of the international Gide Loyrette Nouel law firm, also in Paris).
Even the Best Shopping Centre award went to a revitalisation project which, in Japan (the only prize given outside of Europe), transformed an abandoned station into Hirakata T Site, a new kind of public space, a community centre dedicated to reading, and a book store with more than 150,000 titles.
Alongside the process of regenerating urban centres, the objective of many contemporary urban projects is to create and promote the idea of community and of mixed functions within a fabric that has been redesigned and renovated, also incorporating infrastructures for communities like, for example, Zaryadye Park in Moscow (10 hectares of green space in the centre of the city with a new multifunctional centre for music), the Reims-Bezannes polyclinic hospital built from scratch at the margins of Grand Paris, or the Future Park in Yorkshire which creates synergy between architecture, green space, and infrastructure dedicated to the food and food research industry.
Italy won two awards, both in the tourism sector. One for the aforementioned Student Hotel in Florence, dedicated to a mixed community of students, professionals, and tourists; the other for the Club Med in Cefalù, the first of the five tridents in Mediterranean Europe.
