The Fifth Cycle of the Golden Cubes Awards is Now On.
Now we are announcing the fifth cycle of Golden Cubes Awards. The Award is triennial and you can now prepare for your entries that will be judged in 2023. We want entries that mirror activities or publications digital or physical performed or produced 2020-2023.
Started in 2011, the Architecture and Children Work Program, UIA has published the results of its fourth cycle of the triennial Golden Cubes Awards for the year 2020/2021. The Golden Cubes Awards (GCA) honour people and organizations that help children and young people to develop a better understanding of architecture and the built environment. Entrants will be invited to submit entries describing activities or products designed to teach children and young people, from pre-school up to and including the age of 18, about architectural design and the processes by which our environment is formed.
The Awards will be presented in four award categories:
1. Audio-visual Media (films, audio-visual educational material, web sites…)
2. Written Media (books, magazines, non audio-visual educational tools)
3. Institutions (organisations, institutions, museums…)
4. Schools (directors, teachers, students)
The UIA Architecture & Children Golden Cubes Awards process is not a ‘competition’ for which Entrants are expected to produce new projects. Instead they are invited to present submissions relating to an activity, which is currently active, or to a product produced, or an event which has taken place.
The Award Process has two phases: National and International.
In the first phase each UIA National Member Section participating in the Award will organise a selection process at National level and nominate one entry for submission for the International Awards. In the second phase the International Jury will evaluate the Nominated Entries and select one UIA Architecture & Children Golden Cubes Award in each category.
Note that this cycle will be entirely digital on international level.
DOCUMENTS FOR ENTRANTS TO DOWNLOAD
DOCUMENT FOR NATIONAL ENTRIES
GOLDEN CUBES AWARDS 2020/2021. RESULTS
Following a national selection process, 29 countries submitted their nominations to an international jury which met virtually on 26 March and 16-17 April to evaluate the 71 nationally nominated entries and to award one entry in each category. The jury also selected five additional entries for Special Mention.
The Jury was impressed by the range of projects and products presented and the great work done by individuals and by organisations of all sizes from all over the world.
The jury has selected the following winners and special mentions:
Institutions Golden Cubes Award:
Prizewinner: “An Expanding City", Järfälla municipality/Järfälla culture, Sweden
“An ambitious project connecting schoolchildren, architects, planners, and the municipality in a fast-growing suburban area. Through interactive and practical activities, children get the opportunity to understand and participate in the urban development of their city. With the help of the municipality, the project is implemented in both school and leisure time”.
Prizewinner: “An Expanding City", Järfälla municipality/Järfälla culture (Sweden)
Prizewinner: “Interactive School”, Benaa-Habitat Community School (Egypt)
Special Mention:“Tactile models for Blind and Visually impaired Children”, Re Genera Espacio, Mexico
“A sensitive project aimed at reaching blind and visually impaired children. Through tactile models and sound experiments, children’s awareness of architecture and the urban environment is developed”.
Special Mention: ”BUILD”, MATT+FIONA, United Kingdom
“A complex design-build project addressing a variety of issues and scales. Children are challenged, they design, take decisions and build to learn, take responsibilities and achieve realistic long-term architecture objectives”.
Schools Golden Cubes Award:
Prizewinner: “Interactive School”, Benaa-Habitat Community School, Egypt
“A reality-based project. It relies on the participation of the school community. It lifts the children’s environment in poor and vulnerable areas, addressing especially the dropout from education. Children participate in the refurbishment of their own school, using available and recycled material, and thus feel that they really belong to their school, and the school belongs to them".
Special Mention: “Comunidad Flotante / Floating Community”, School Colegio Áleph, Peru
“An enjoyable project-based-learning approach. The project is holistic, based on the development of several technical and theoretical aspects, as well as creativity and understanding of architecture as a multi-dimensional discipline”.
Prizewinner in the Written Media category: “Urbanity” game, KultúrAktív Egyesület in Budapest (Hungary)
Written media Golden Cubes Award:
Prizewinner: “Urbanity” game, KultúrAktív Egyesület in Budapest, Hungary
“A large-scale game based on engaging group activities. Created primarily for teenagers, it is a dialogue-based street board game on urban phenomena. The game is very flexible, addressing various urban questions, in order to increase awareness of the complexity of town planning, architecture and civic culture”.
Special Mention: “An Architect’s Monopoly”, Hand Over Projects, Egypt
“A strategic board game which presents an innovative way of introducing multiple architectural aspects including the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals to children. The game also emphasizes the importance of the built heritage”.
Prizewinner in the Audio-Visual category: “The Sound of My City”, Frederiksberg Library, ATT. Astrid Myrup (Denmark)
Audio visual media Golden Cubes Award:
Prizewinner: “The Sound of My City”, Frederiksberg Library, ATT. Astrid Myrup , Denmark
“An original and inspiring installation to introduce children to architecture and the city, focusing on the experience of sound in relation to space and built environments. The project interacts with the local context of outdoor and indoor spaces to explore places, identities and soundscapes”.
Special Mention: “Home-made Architecture (L’architecture faite maison)”, architect Emelie Queney,
“Ten short inspiring do-it-yourself movies introducing several aspects of architecture and sustainability in a playful way”.
The international jury members were:
-
Jan Gehl, Architect, urban design consultant and founding partner of Gehl Architects
-
Saria Sidky, Pedagogic, President of Amesea (Africa and Middle East Society for Education through Art)
-
Stan Neumann, Media specialist, director and writer
-
Mia Roth-Čerina, Architect, Guest, UIA Architecture & Children Work Programme
-
Suzanne de Laval, Architect, Codirector, UIA Architecture & Children Work Programme
-
Carolina Pizarro, Architect, UIA Architecture & Children Work Programme
-
Mina Sava, Architect, UIA Architecture & Children Work Programme