This exhibition shows the architectures that Dorte Mandrup, George Arbid, Angelika Fitz, Ștefan Ghenciulescu, Kamiel Klaasse, María Langarita and Frank McDonald have selected among the 383 works nominated for the EU Mies Award 2019 after hours of discussion and a week travelling around Europe. A diverse group that gathers 40 unique stories that are the result of a complex process over a period of time. Among them, the Halle Perret in Montataire (France) designed by the Atelier d'Architecture Pierre Hebbelinck in collaboration with HBAAT.

The winning and finalist projects are unfolded around a central core surrounded by the shortlisted ones. Through photos, videos, models, drawings and writings, multiple travels start: from small works embedded in rural areas to grand public space interventions in urban contexts; from devices that provide luxurious spatial experiences in public housing to experimental projects that go beyond the established regulations; from brand new buildings that trigger activity in old urban fabrics to innovative ways of dealing with pre-existing constructions.

Some of the thoughts that emerged from the jury’s debates appear here as written quotes, inviting us to think about diverse new and old topics. These words are fragments extracted from a collection of texts gathered together in the EU Mies Award catalogue, a complementary tool to interpret a prize that celebrates contemporariness in architecture.