The European Prize for Architecture was awarded to the concert hall in Iceland

Brussels - One of the most prestigious awards in the field of European architecture, the Mies van der Rohe Award, was today awarded to Danish and Icelandic architects for the Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik, Iceland. This was reported by the European Commission. The jury selected from five finalists, among which were buildings from Denmark, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal.
    The award, subsidized with an amount of 60,000 euros (about 1.5 million crowns), is granted every two years and is highly prestigious for European architects.
    The concert hall associated with the Harpa conference center opened in 2011 at the Reykjavik harbor. The project was collaborated on by the Danish architectural firm Henning Larsen, along with the Icelandic studio Batteríiö and artist Olafur Eliasson.
    The 43-meter tall building consists of two geometric objects and is unmistakable due to its glass façade, which is divided into fields, evoking the shape of basalt crystals. Inside, there is a concert hall for 1,800 spectators, three smaller halls, and a conference center.
    "Harpa is a kind of iconic, transparent, and permeable quasi-cube that appears as an eternally changing play of colored light and invites a dialogue between the city and the life inside the building," stated the chairman of the jury, Wiel Arets, in his reasoning.
    The European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, named after the famous architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, will be presented to the winners at a ceremonial event in Barcelona on June 7th. This year, the jury selected from a total of 335 nominated buildings, including those from the Czech Republic.
    In previous years, projects such as the Berlin Neues Museum by British architect David Chipperfield and the Norwegian Opera House in Oslo have won. Czech representatives have made it into the broader selection several times, most recently represented in the catalog by the Trappist monastery in Nový Dvůr designed by architect John Pawson.