United States site instead?Jury awards First Prize to Austria’s urbanFish.architects for design of the new conference center over the Danube; practices from Turkey, Argentina and the United Kingdom among the winners
Budapest – Boston, June 19, 2002 – Graphisoft, developer of the pioneering 3D model-based architectural CAD solution Archicad®, announced today the results of the International Ideas Competition. The challenge was to design Graphisoft’s new Conference Center in Budapest over the Danube. The competition drew more than 500 registrants from 55 countries, and resulted in 230 submissions for the competition, which opened January 2, 2002.
Approved by the International Union of Architects (UIA), the competition was administered by the Hungarian Association of Architects, and juried by a distinguished panel of judges: Axel Schultes (Germany), Erick van Egeraat (The Netherlands), Nóra Demeter (US/Hungary), Tamás Nagy, jury president (Hungary) and István Schneller, chief architect of Budapest. Convening between June 5-6 in Graphisoft Park, the Company’s headquarters and site of the proposed conference center, the jury announced the following winners in the International Ideas Competition:
Prizes awarded in the International Ideas Competition:
First Prize $30,000; Second Prize: $15,000; Third Prize: $8,000
Pointing out the extremely wide range of creative ideas of the submissions from all continents, the Jury highly appreciated intuitive entries that created a synthesis with the natural and the built environment of Graphisoft Park.
“The Graphisoft International Ideas Competition presented an enormous spectrum of entries and creative submissions,” said jury member Nóra Demeter. “The challenge of the site – to integrate the prominence of the Danube River edge with the surrounding Graphisoft Park environment – presented many interesting solutions. I was impressed with the diversity of the approaches, as well as the range of graphic ideas. ”
“The Graphisoft Competition exploits the full potential of today’s glittering realm of architectural developments, from sober, down-to-earth tradition up to ‘architectures of a jumping universe’. I am sure the Graphisoft people will make the best out of it,” added jury member Axel Schultes.
The Conference Center, to be dedicated to the architectural profession, will host architectural design exhibitions, conferences of international Archicad® and ArchiFM® user communities, and other major events promoting architecture and Graphisoft’s products and technologies.
“Architecture should be inclusive, not exclusive, it should be about connecting and making things possible. What I like very much about this Competition is that you can also apply this aspect of architecture to the products of Graphisoft,” pointed out Erick van Egeraat. “The competition showed extremely well the great variety of ideas. The essential part of this Competition was to connect as much as possible: Graphisoft with the Park, Park with the river, site with the city, virtual with physical.”
The winners will officially be presented and celebrated at Graphisoft’s twentieth birthday party on July 25, part of the official program of the XXIst UIA World Congress in Berlin, July 22-26, 2002. Graphisoft, as main sponsor of the event, will host a Meeting Point for design professionals throughout the Congress. An exhibition of the winning entries will be among exciting events to be held in Berlin.
“Graphisoft Park was conceived and constructed as an inspiring setting for both the region’s software industry and the architectural profession. I am very pleased that the worldwide interest for our International Ideas Competition has reflected this concept,” said Graphisoft chairman Gábor Bojár.