The landscape of architecture prizes has become a rather tangled forest, where media giants like the Pritzker coexist with diverse initiatives, each contributing to a specific conversation. Among them, the EUmies Awards – organized by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe and Creative Europe – have consistently emphasized the research-driven character of European architecture. With the EUmies Awards Young Talent, the discussion has expanded to include graduates recommended by European schools of architecture, urbanism, and landscape design.

The winners of the 2025 EUmies Awards Young Talent, announced in Venice as part of this year’s Architecture Biennale events, continue the path forged by past editions, shining a light on contemporary urgencies in cities and territories across Europe and beyond.

There’s a return to the inhabited, lived and public city in “Brave New Axis,” where Spyridon Loukidis, Markos Georgios Sakellion, and Georgios Thalassinos envision an Athens reclaiming its anarchic medieval core. The straight-line neoclassical planning imposed in the early 1800s is rejected, to highlighting instead four dynamic points, hidden in plain sight at the city’s heart (a forum, a phalanstery that reintroduces housing in the urban core, and two former parking lots reimagined as public spaces).

Landscape protection is the crucial value to “Forest and Phoenix” by Vera Kellmann and Carolina von Hammerstein (TU Berlin): the holistic approach to wildfire prevention in Brandenburg embodied by the project includes redesigning a competence center in the heart of the forest and developing hybrid structures to facilitate cross-pollination among the diverse knowledges and practices involved in fire prevention.

The role of abandoned buildings in cities takes center stage in “Hotel Interim” by Andreas Stanzel (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar). The project highlights the value of reuse over demolition through the case of a hotel in downtown Halle, Germany, slated for demolition but reimagined as a temporary space for the city’s University of Art.

The award also features a category open to schools outside the European Union, supported by Fundació Mies: the Young Talent Open. This edition’s winner is the University of Westminster in London with James Langlois’ “Poolside Politics”, returning to the theme of the right to the city – and especially to water – in a place like Marseille, where seafront monuments take priority while public swimming pools fall into disrepair. The abandoned Piscine Luminy, located between the city and the Calanques, is re-envisioned in collaboration with marginalized urban groups as an urban hub for small-scale production, public activities, and a shared right to enjoy inhabiting a place.

Opening image: “Brave New Axis” by Spyridon Loukidis, Markos Georgios Sakellion and Georgios Thalassinos, EUmies Young Talent 2025