2023 Mentions

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Public Landscapes
The Park of Encounters

The Park of Encounters is a complex design that deals with the public use of a once-army base. Built by the Nazi regime in 1937 and taken over by Allied forces after the war, Campbell Barracks later served as NATO HQ for Europe, which closed in the mid-2010s. Decades of army use left a palimpsest of traces that were waiting to be reinterpreted.

The jury recognises how difficult and yet successful it was to redesign this army-charged site with ‘respectful lightness’ and a ‘slight twist of humour’ as if the designers wanted to decompress the site and add play in a witty, nearly mischievous way. That is evident, for example, in a stripe of play elements that run through the entrance checkpoint, emphasising its disuse, or colouring and displacing the found artefacts from the 1970s. In a different configuration, stripped of their original use, these artefacts represent the retreat of control, repression and are abstracted into new constellations, provoking new interpretations and ways of interaction.

The jurors appreciated this underlying attitude, also resulting in elegant and much more subtle means of change, for example, mixing and shredding of the existing pavements and using them anew. The material/colour palette is exceptionally well thought-through; it communicates the different layers of the site’s palimpsest and connects different parts into a coherent whole.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Public Landscapes
Guangzhou Wanggang Park – A Timeless Community Park Bringing together Young and Old

The jury recognized the masterful dialogue between the old and new, the more restrained approach to the redesign of ‘urban villages’ in dense Chinese city centres. Wanggang Park is a social space that is, above all, generous to its users and respectful of traditional elements from the rich Chinese culture. Several concrete elements of the existing structures were rearranged to reference ancient calligraphic elements. The abundance of features for sitting and covering provides shelter in less favourable weather conditions. Wanggang Park is, considering its historical milieu, a remarkable social space well equipped for transgenerational use.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Public Landscapes
Forest path in the Roques Blanques Cemetery in the Collserola Natural Park

The Forest Path is part of a larger, existing cemetery, where Batlleiroig designed one of their first projects as early as 1985. A shift in people’s relation to burial traditions and issues of space brought the need for a new, more nature-friendly means of burial practice.

Batlleiroig designed a Krainer wall structure, ready to host plants and wooden urns that contain the ashes. With time, the wooden logs and the urns will disintegrate, leaving behind a slope overgrown by plants that will further change through the passing of seasons. This reference to the cycle of life effectively acts as the memorial whilst providing more efficient use of land, infrastructure and other resources.

Besides the progressive and innovative solution, the jury was also charmed by the elegant design of the Forest Path and its forest-edge ambience.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Other Typologies
Fire Ring

The Fire Ring is an object in the landscape, seemingly simple yet a complex node of several design intentions. The simplicity of the circle is challenged by the playful displacement of the logs and by orientation. The elegance of the shape is contrasted by the rough treatment of the surface of the logs. Furthermore, there is an ambiguous relation between the Fire Ring having a public or private feel. In this regard, the jury appreciated the scale, being too large for groups to claim it for private use and too small to lose the sense of ‘togetherness’. In terms of the overall attitude that shaped this object, and in the words of the designer, the Fire Ring transcends» one’s own body, local culture and global lifestyles«. That makes the Fire Ring not only an object or a playscape but (also literally) a hotspot that captures and radiates multiple relevant notions and contextual particularities.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Other Typologies
The Red Pavilion

The jury was impressed by this subtle an elegant physical transformation that is at the same time bold in its colour and scale. A generous covering of the central courtyard reveals a whole new dimension of this tourist centre and of the overall spatial context. The jurors specifically appreciated the way in which the shape of the roof channels the rainfall and thus allows for the emergence of the entrance ‘garden’.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Private Gardens
Betania Forest Garden

At first glance, this garden completely ignores or even challenges all the dogmas of garden design ‘by the book’. However, at a closer look, it offers a number of appropriate statements and manages to remain open to interpretations.

The oversized stairs seem to have no excuse, yet they embody a sculptural dimension whilst providing seating in a peculiar grove of densely planted trees and shrubs. More importantly, the stairs lead out of the garden, through a small door in a wooden fence, into the forest, where a ‘forest garden’ ambience is achieved by almost nothing – a table and a hammock.

There are several different dialogues between pastureland and forest, private and public, an object and its context, inside and outside, but above all, between a garden as a notion and its relation to the surroundings. The design seems to be based on questioning, yet it feels entirely confident at the same time.

This garden is full of deliberate contradictions, contrasts, beautiful strangeness, and the jury was inspired by the scope of questions it poses with so little.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Private Gardens
The Ruins

Estudio Ome again receives recognition with a lush garden, and the jury was impressed by Ome’s ability to blur the margins between the ‘wild’ and the ‘tamed’. The garden establishes a firm and fitting relation between the geometry of the architecture, new features and the forest. The designers added the notion of ‘ruin’, where the intention was to render some new structures rapidly overgrown by the lush vegetation as if they were historic remains being rediscovered. This is achieved carefully through vegetation letting it kick in and, formally, by just the right amount of suggestion that doesn’t feel overdone at all. Or, in the words of the designers, they questioned ‘how the landscape project could possibly disappear with time or reappear when used’. Such a design statement reflects a mature attitude where playfulness also embeds a much larger question of the temporality of the garden.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Campuses and Corporate
Werkspoorcampus

Werkspoorkwartier is a commercial/production area near Utrecht. It looks similar to many other such areas across Europe. A rhythm of warehouses where open space is mostly defined by parking and lorry access, and there is a critical shortage of pedestrian and green infrastructure. The lack of a sensible masterplan is often the main issue, especially as these are vibrant spaces where people work or spend time as customers.

Flux designed spaces around an old bridge factory which now hosts businesses, restaurants and event venues. The other part of the project is the Werkspoor path, a 2,5km pedestrian necklace commissioned by the municipality. Both parts can act as benchmarks for improving warehouse areas. The jury appreciated the systemic approach to the redesign, the sense of the visual language effortlessly handling all the challenges, and the translation of the industrial feel of the site into a contemporary work environment. The project, at the same time looks ordinary and excels in detailing, materiality and implementation of green infrastructure.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Residential Landscapes
Buurtschap Te Veld

Buurtschap Te Veld is a temporary, mid-term residential area that was pushed into being by the critical shortage of housing around Eindhoven. Built on a plot that is close to the highway and not meant to be built permanently, a plan was accepted that will offer a 30-year interim solution and will also be used to strengthen the ecological characteristics of the landscape once the housing is moved. Only the bare minimum is hardscape, ensuring routes for pedestrians, cyclists and cars. The rest is landscape, used as ‘commons’. Hundreds of new trees will be planted, re-creating the ‘chambers’ structure of the original landscape that was lost. The landscape that will further be populated with small clusters of housing, based on the old Dutch principle of a ‘Buurtschap’ a small neighbourhood that is characterised by its tight-knit social network and mutual help. The land in between the houses is shared and treated as commons. A robust water system is implemented for buffering and infiltrating water.

The jury praises the experimental approach, both in housing typologies and the experiment of how communities can live together based on a shared public space/landscape without private appropriation. The jury is curious how the landscape will grow and mature in the coming three decades and what the profession can learn from this approach.

LILA 2023 Special Mention in Infrastructure Projects
Fish Cycle Wieringermeer

Fish Cycle Wieringermeer is a fish habitat, an ecological link between the Amstelmeer canal and the water system of the polder.

The project represents an interesting blend of the more playful approach to design and technical, ecological measures.

The jurors appreciated the honestly artificial, visibly anthropogenic structure that doesn’t aim to pretend to be a result of natural processes and is entirely oblivious of any »ecological aesthetics«. The true ecology is found in the complexities of litoral morphology with shifting sun conditions that result in a biodiverse water habitat and give the necessary living environment to fish.