The BED&BUNKER project, which was developed and implemented by a team of interior design students from Mainz University of Applied Sciences and Polis University of Tirana, has been nominated for the “European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture—Mies van der Rohe Award 2015.” The project involves the conversion of a former artillery bunker on the Mediterranean coast of Albania into a hostel for independent travelers.
Prior to this, Mainz student Iva Shtrepi had explored the design possibilities of such a conversion in her thesis. The idea was adopted and, during the 2012 summer semester, developed in collaboration with the Albanian students into a set of construction drawings that were nearly ready for building. To this end, the German group traveled to Albania in March 2012 for an initial meeting and to take measurements. In July 2012, the Albanian students came to Mainz to finalize the plans. In September, the BED&BUNKER team converted the gun bunker within 14 days: sleeping quarters, a kitchen, a bathroom with a toilet, and even a sun terrace were built entirely by the students themselves, from the first screw to the last. Not least because Albania is one of the last countries in Europe to be virtually untapped by tourism, the international media response was enormous. The symbolic significance of converting a bunker in a country that had long been isolated helped draw even more attention to the project.
The “Mies van der Rohe Award,” endowed with a total of €60,000 and established in 1987 by the City of Barcelona and the European Commission, is Europe’s most prestigious architecture prize and is awarded every two years for buildings completed in the preceding two years. The award’s objective is to highlight outstanding examples of recent architecture and to emphasize that contemporary architecture in Europe’s cities and countries is socially and culturally rooted and indispensable to everyday life. This year, 420 buildings across Europe have been nominated for the award. The winners and finalists will be announced in late January 2015.
Group photo
