The Brick Award 20 is an international established award and presents outstanding brick architecture from all around the world.

For more than a decade Winerberger AG has been hosting the international Brick Award every two years, providing a stage for excellent brick architecture and its architects.

The Jury

An international jury of renowned architects, who change with every award; selects the winners within the categories including the grand prize winners. This years jury included:

• Helena Glantz– Urban Design (SE)
• Tina Gregoric– Dekleva Gregoric Architects (SI)
• Mette Kynne Frandsen– Henning Larsen Architects A/S (DK)
• Toni Gironès Saderra– Estudi d’Arquitectura Toni Gironès (ES)
• Jonathan Sergison– Sergison Bates Architects (CH, UK, BE)

Categories

The winners are chosen based on these categories:

• Feeling at home: single-family houses, semi-detached houses and small housing projects of high architectural quality
• Living together:  multi-family houses: innovative residential solutions taking into account the trends & challenges of urbanisation
• Working together: comfortable, aesthetic and functional commercial buildings, offices and industrial buildings
• Sharing public spaces: comfortable, aesthetic and functional public buildings for education, culture & healthcare, public places and infrastructure projects
• Building outside the box: innovative concepts and ways of using brick, use of new construction technologies, special brickworks, custom-made bricks & new ornamentation

The award categories are subject to slight changes depending on the year and the development of trends and current topics.

Award Winner’s

The winners are announced biennially at an award ceremony and presented, along with 50 nominations in the accompanying Brick Book. This years winners are:

University of Silesia, Faculty of Radio and Television- Katowice, Poland

The grand prize & Category Winner Sharing Public Spaces, went to Silesia University’s Radio and TV Department in Katowice, Poland. Designed by BAAS Arquitectura (Spain), Grupa 5 architekci (Poland), Maleccy biuro projektowe (Poland).

The dark and stained brick is full of meanings that speak about the past and the Silesian coal mines.

Grand prize winner- Brick Awards 20

This building cleverly narrates the history of Katowice which was once a coal mine and at the same time shows the future of the town. A surviving dark brick tenement building has been renovated and wrapped in a screen of bricks sheltering a new university faculty of radio and television.

Can Jaime I n’Isabelle- Palma, Spain

Special Prize Winner – Category: Feeling at Home. The Can Jaime I n’Isabelle was designed by TEd’A arquitectes, Palma/Spain.

Constructed as a single family house in Mallorca, the Can Jaime I n’Isabelle- Palma is a classic courtyard house with a variety of spaces carefully integrated in it. The architects designed this building so intricately that the interior spaces look like outdoor spaces pulled inwards – and the other way around.

City Archive Delft

Category Winner -Working Together. Designed by Gottlieb Paludan Architects (DK) and Office Winhov (NL).

With their geometric arrangements, the fully enclosed facades of the archive area make one think of a bookshelf: slender slabs made of prefabricated concrete parts form the “shelves”, between which brick pilasters, reminiscent of book spines, protrude at various lengths. The degree of abstraction of the reliefs meets the haptic qualities of the bricks and creates a sculptural solitaire that is both closed and accessible. With story high windows etched into the ground concrete floor of the building it keeps with its public function creating a modest, open and soothing environment for its users.

Iturbide Studio- Mexico City, Mexico

Category Winner- Feeling at Home. Designed by TALLER | Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo, Mexico.

Consisting of three stacked, 28-square-meter rooms, the structure is a three story touret that rises out of its surrounding with bold and carefully articulated reddish-brown brick patterns clothing it.

Thanks to the openwork masonry, a play of light and shadow, which changes with the position of the sun during the day, emerges inside. Thus, the studio is shielded from the outside world without being completely disconnected from it.  

Maya Somaiya Library- Kopargaon, India

Category Winner- Building Outside the Box. Designed by Sameep Padora & Associates, India.

The Maya Somaiya Library almost seamlessly blends with its surrounding as it rises graciously from one end to another. Using a rather complicated building technique the architects where able to archive such a prudent and functional building.

Prototype Village House- Kigali, Rwanda

The prototype village house wins the category prize- Living Together. Designed by architects; Rafi Segal and the MIT Rwanda Workshop Team, USA.

As a Solution to the problem of high building costs as a result of the use foreign resources a team of MIT Africa students headed by Professor Rafi Segal conducted a three-week project in the village of Mageragere. Together with villagers and local laborers, they worked out a prototype for an affordable house which is completely tailored to Rwandan needs. The wall system of the house features a core of panels made of compressed straw fiber combined with 10×10 centimeter thick concrete posts. and clad in long-lasting red bricks.

For more information visit https://www.brickaward.com/Winners