site.btaNew European Bauhaus Festival Presents Annual Prizes Friday, Bulgaria's Concrete to Culture Project Is among Finalists

The Concrete to Culture project of Bulgaria’s Collective Foundation is among the finalist for the New European Bauhaus (NEB) Prizes 2024. The prizes will be presented Friday evening in an event that will be culmination of the New European Bauhaus Festival in Brussels.

The Festival is taking place April 9-13.

There are 49 finalists in the competition for the NEB prizes, that were selected among 5,000 entrants in four established categories: Reconnecting with nature; Regaining a sense of belonging; Prioritising the places and people that need it the most; and Shaping a circular industrial ecosystem and supporting life-cycle thinking.

In each of the four categories, two parallel competition strands are established: New European Bauhaus Champions, which is devoted to existing and completed projects with clear and positive results; and New European Bauhaus Rising Stars for concepts submitted by young talents aged 30 years old or younger, which can be at different levels of development.

The Bulgarian project is competing in the Regaining a Sense of Belonging category in the NEB Champions Strand.

The Collective Foundation launched Concrete to Culture in 2023 with a view to transforming an office complex adjacent to the residential Mladost neighbourhood at the outskirts of Sofia. The project brought together commuters to the office and local residents, using a combination of art and architecture, dissolving the boundary between the two community groups, the Foundation said. The initiative demonstrated that they both could find a new sense of belonging in their surroundings. Residents of the Mladost district can now enjoy more accessible outdoor areas, while office workers benefited from having a community.

The initiative has turned the office complex into a mixed-use public space for arts, recreation and shared activities through a collective design process that brings together local people, experts and artists.