13.11.17 - News

November 14th, 2017

The Urban Land Institute, or ULI, is a non-profit research and educational organization created in 1936 with a mission to provide leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide.

 

Aside all the organisation programs and initiatives, ULI awards yearly a selection of architectural projects for their excellence in defining the standards for real estate development practice worldwide. 

 

This year, among 12 other projects, the Azkuna Zentroa formerly known as Alhóndiga Bilbao is the only European project to be awarded by the ULI Global Award for Excellence. 

Azkuna Zentroa is the art, culture and leisure center in the heart of Bilbao, located inside one of the city’s most iconic buildings, the former municipal wine warehouse.

In 2006, the building’s rehabilitation was commissioned to Philippe Starck, with the goal of creating a multidisciplinary space open to all and fostering personal growth and the development of human relationships.  Almost 8 years after its opening, it is a public center that, with dynamism and innovation, hosts a range of activities dedicated to the diffusion and fusion—for the first time in the same space—of all the aspects, concerns, disciplines, curiosities, and hobbies that a person can have.  

 « It is not my project, it is our project. It is a project only dedicated to life, to the life of Bilbao people, of Bilbao, Spanish, European, world people and that is the beauty. It is a tool to learn, meet, work, create, love and build your own life and the future.

I stuck to the idea of the elegance of the Economy with a capital “E”: no architecture, no decoration, nothing superfluous, just the spine, the bone, the square root of our dreams. Alhóndiga I think and I hope is the prototype of the reconstruction of honesty for the new value of our future ». Ph.S

More information on Alhóndiga Bilbao
More information on the Urban Land Institute