The 8th of November 2008, Powerhouse Company’s Villa 1 has been rewarded with the AM NAI prize 2008. Villa 1 (see Domus no. 915, 2008) was announced winner of the four remaining nominations that were selected from 76 submitted projects.

The AM NAI prize is rewarded biannually to the best building by a young architect, under 40, completed within the Netherlands. Members of the jury were Mariet Schoenmakers (director of developing company AM), Tracy Metz (writer and architecture critic), Jeroen van Schooten (chairman of the BNA and chief-architect of Meyer & van Schooten architects), Jacob van Rijs (chief-architect of MVRDV), under the direction of Ole Bouman (director of the Dutch Architectural Institute).

The jury exemplified their decision with the following statement: “The jury agreed quickly about which of the nominated buildings should be awarded the AM NAI Prize 2008. In architecture, beauty is usually relative. But now and then it happens that beauty is so overpowering that you have to drop to your knees. That is the case with Villa 1 by Powerhouse Company. The jury even goes so far as to state that, though just completed, the house can already be considered a classic. It is deeply impressed by the architectural quality that the designers have managed to achieve in their first completed building. They succeeded in architecturally expressing the obvious pleasure they clearly must have had in designing the building. That promises much for the future.”

Powerhouse Company was founded in 2005 by architects Charles Bessard (1971, France) and Nanne de Ru (1976, The Netherlands). The office is specialized in architecture, urban design and urban research and is working on a wide range of commissions all over the world. Its offices are based in Rotterdam and Copenhagen.