The EU Prize for Architecture has a chance to be won today by the Ostrava gallery Plato

Barcelona - The jury in Barcelona will announce the winner of the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award, awarded every two years by the European Union, today. Among the seven finalists is the city gallery Plato from Ostrava, which is located in a former slaughterhouse building. A total of 362 projects competed for the award.

The Plato contemporary art gallery in Ostrava relocated to a renovated former municipal slaughterhouse building two years ago. The architectural design for the renovation was created by the Polish studio KWK Promes led by Robert Konieczny. The building includes five exhibition halls that can operate independently or interconnected. The original architectural solution allows six walls of the gallery to be rotated, thus opening it up from all sides. The gallery began operations in its new location in September 2022 and focuses on presenting contemporary art.

The five finalists in the Architecture category include not only the Plato gallery in Ostrava but also the study pavilion of the Technical University in Braunschweig, Germany, the Reggio school in Madrid, the Sainte-Lucie-de-Tallano convent in Corsica, and the public space Hage in Lund, Sweden.

In the Emerging Award category, the jury, which includes former Prague mayor Adriana Krnáčová, has listed the Gabriela García Márquez Library in Barcelona and the renovation of the square in the Portuguese municipality of Piódao among the finalists.

Members of the international jury visited all the projects that reached the finals in person in March. However, the finalists did not know the dates of the visits and were not allowed to communicate with the jurors. The awards ceremony for the Mies van der Rohe Award will take place on May 14, 2024, in Barcelona.