Irish architects pipped at post for premier prize

Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey have been pipped at the post for the premier Mies van der Rohe prize for European architecture, which went to the Philharmonic Hall in Szczecin, Poland.

Designed by Barcelona architects Barozzi-Veiga, the spiky new concert hall in the Baltic port city has been likened to “an iceberg in the middle of town”. Its translucent-glazed facade glows in the dark as a beacon of urban regeneration.

A large Polish delegation attended the Oscars-style presentation at the Barcelona Pavilion, a modernist masterpiece designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for an international expo in 1929, demolished soon afterwards and then rebuilt in 1986.

O’Donnell + Tuomey’s Saw Swee Hock Student Centre at the London School of Economics – a riot of brickwork off Lincoln’s Inn Fields – was runner-up on the shortlist of five. The jury, chaired by Italian architect Cino Zucchi was evenly divided until the end.

The other three finalists were the Antinori winery buried in a hill in the Tuscan countryside, by Italian architects Archea Associati; the Ravensburg Art Museum in southern Germany, by Lederer Ragnarsdottir and Oei; and the Danish Maritime Museum, by BIG.

Golden envelope

None of the finalists were told in advance who among them was the winner until the deputy mayor of Barcelona,

Antoni Vives

, who is also president of the Fundacio Mies van der Rohe, opened a golden envelope to announce the result.

Sheila O’Donnell said they had got a hint that things were not going their way when one jury member told them it would be “a day for sunglasses”.

John Tuomey added: “I’m very disappointed, but glad it went to the one we wanted, if we didn’t win ourselves.”

Earlier this year, O'Donnell + Tuomey won Britain's prestigious Royal Gold Medal for their lifetime achievement in architecture, but then missed out on the Royal Institute of British Architects' Stirling Prize for their extraordinary LSE student centre.

Political decision

The Philharmonic Hall in Szczecin was the first Polish project to make the Mies van der Rohe award shortlist, and there was a widespread view that this year’s jury had made a political decision to show how inclusive the EU has become since its expansion.

The Mies prize, funded by the European Union, is worth €60,000 to the winner.

Next week, O'Donnell and Tuomey will travel to New York to collect the $30,000 Arnold W Brunner Memorial Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.