PERSPEKTIVE Fund 2024 Architecture Ideas Competition

The PERSPEKTIVE fund is pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 Ideas Competition for Architecture—Dream Kitchen.

This year, the Architecture Ideas Competition invited participants to design a kitchen that responds to the challenges of our modern society. What does the kitchen look like when all major cities today are experiencing housing shortages? When inflation is continuing to drive up food prices and when restrictions on resources impact the lives of millions of people? Whether small or large, indoor or outdoor, communal or individual, designed for conventional energy sources and food or for experimenting with new forms of cooking—anything was possible. The theme was narrowly defined and the only limits were the imagination and creativity of participants.

In total, the organizers received eighty-nine applications from Germany and France. The profiles of applicants who submitted projects were highly diverse by their backgrounds. The Franco-German jury consisted of Sophie Delhay (architect and director of the architecture section at EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland), Lauriane Gricourt (director of Museum Les Abattoirs, Toulouse), Jan Liesegang (co-founder of raumlabor Berlin and professor at Bergen Architecture School, Norway), and MITKUNSTZENTRALE (a collective of architects, designers, and artists—Martina della Valle, Erik Göngrich, Susanne Schröder, and Nora Wilhelm—who run the Berlin-based art space SATELLIT).

For this edition, the jury elected to divide the prize money of 10,000 Euros between the three best projects, i.e. each winner receives 3,333.33 Euros. By opting to award these three projects equal prizes, the jury recognizes their excellence in their respective fields. The first three prizes go to (winners in alphabetical order):

Harry’s Bude as Cuisine Commune, Cuisine Commune as Architecture by Fanti Baum and Sebastian Klawiter (Munich, Germany). The jury was impressed by the project’s concept of transforming a church into a space for cooking and distributing food to those in need. They praised how the idea engages the former function of the heritage site. The project aims to replace a precarious food distribution location with a permanent structure. The jury also selected a bona-fide community kitchen where meals are prepared once a week, thus forging social bonds and opening up the space of the church to the city and its inhabitants.

Gastrobahn by Yann Motreff (Paris, France). The project immediately stood out for its originality and conceptual coherence. It addresses a major issue of our time: food insecurity—which affects over 8.5 million people in France and Germany. The idea for the Gastrobahn was born out of the realization that in order to solve the problem a 1760-km-long dining table would have to be built; a huge infrastructure for cooking and serving meals stretching across Germany and France.

Soupes Populaires by Camille Rouaud (Uchizy, France). The jury was convinced by the impact of the idea, which revisions the soup kitchen concept with a “cyberpunk twist” by relocating them to the “coupes”—high-end cars that are no longer permitted to be driven today due to environmental regulations, thus questioning the social inequalities of our time. The project intelligently addresses current environmental challenges by transforming these polluting cars into hybrid vehicles thanks to the new LPG technology, which can be used for cooking. The jury also valued that this way of hospitality can be implemented in countless places.

The jury gave a special mention to Device by Zaur Huseyn-Zada and Victoria Fernandez, for its originality in addressing the highly topical issue of the increasingly important role that artificial intelligence plays in our daily lives, and to the Fermen-table project by Thilo Sebastian Preuß, for its insightful examination of nutritional, health, and environmental, combining fermented foods with the advanced technology.

The award ceremony will take place on Friday, November 8, 2024 at the Aedes Metropolitan Laboratory in Berlin with the three winners in attendance, the jury, and the organizers of the competition. The ten best projects shortlisted for their quality will be presented in an exhibition. The ceremony will be accompanied by a lecture by Thibaut de Ruyter reflecting on the theme of “Dream Kitchen”.