Prix W 2023 , Paris / Frankreich

 

The lack of housing is a growing crisis that is becoming universal. Homelessness is a major and additional handicap for people in difficulty. It is imperative to devise new types of accommodation to respond to the emergency situations but also to the never-ending waiting times for access to housing for many of our fellow citizens. Simple ideas which, once implemented with all the necessary pragmatism, could prove to be solutions to reduce this lack of housing and restore dignity to those, too many, who are still homeless.

 

Roofs shape the landscape of cities and countryside, they shape the horizon. A roof is a protection, it is a shelter to rebuild. It is a promise of a renewed family and social life.

 

Transition zones, commercial zones, activity zones, interfaces between urban and rural areas, city entrances have a high potential for development. On the outskirts of our cities, there are agricultural sheds, industrial wastelands but also obsolete railway infrastructures, unused military heritage and logistics sheds in commercial areas... These are millions of square meters of unused space that could change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

 

These unused spaces are the perfect stage for experimenting a new way of occupying urban edges, and expressing architecture. This allows program to revitalize dormant sites, to requalify city entrances and to develop a new way of living in the long run.

 

It will not be a matter of destroying to rebuild, but of using the existing framework and roofs of these empty buildings. Participants in the Prix W 2023 are invited to imagine, through architectural grafting, original solutions to reinvent housing and its immediate environment by developing a whole typology of quality housing, which will make it possible to soften this social crisis.

 

Launch of the tenth edition of the W Prize: December 31, 2022.

Deadline to submit questions: March 6, 2023.

Deadline to register online: March 15, 2023 at midnight.

Submission of your project: from March 10* to March 20, 2023 at noon online. 

Selection of projects by the jury: April 2023.

Inauguration of the exhibition in Venice: May 18, 2023

 

*You can send your projects on prixw@wilmotte.fr from March 10, 2023.

 

The prizes will be attributed as follows:

 

1st Prize: The first prize-winner will receive a 8,000 Euros grant.

2nd Prize: The second prize winner will receive a 6,000 Euros grant.

3rd Prize: The third prize-winner will receive a 3,000 Euros grant.

 

The three winners and the projects mentioned will be exhibited in Venice at the Wilmotte Foundation Gallery during the 2023 International Architecture Biennale.

 

All these projects will also be included in a publication dedicated to the Prix W. 

 

Participants will not be entitled to any other compensation.