Winner: World Building of the Year 2016

WORDS Lindi Brownell Meiring IMAGES via kwkpromes.pl

The World Building of the Year award – announced at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin – went to the National Museum in Szczecin’s Dialogue Centre Przelomy.

Designed by architect Robert Konieczny of KWK Promes, the project began as an attempt to blend the ideas of a spacious open plaza with that of a built-up quarter, much like the one that was destroyed during the Second World War in the Museum’s location. Much of the museum is in fact built underground.

“This project enriches the city and the life of the city,” says World Architecture Festival judge and architect Sir David Chipperfield. “It addresses a site with three histories, pre-World War II, wartime destruction, and post-war development, which left a significant gap in the middle of the city. This is a piece of topography as well as a museum. To go underground is to explore the memory and archaeology of the city, while above ground the public face of the building, including its undulating roof, and be interpreted and used in a variety of ways.”

View more about this building at kwkpromes.pl. View 2015’s World Building of the Year here.