Towards a more inclusive city
Association of Architects and Project Owners, AMO’s mission is to facilitate dialogue between those who commission and those who design in order to create quality real estate projects.
The renewal that public and private commissions are undergoing today invites us to reconsider this binomial through the prism of current changes in the profession.
In addition to the duo [architects – project owners], investors, users, companies, associations, operators and manufacturers are invited to take part in the fab lab of a capable city. Today, it is their visions, inputs and resources that must converge to anticipate new ways of living, working, moving and consuming, as well as financing and building the city.
A new relationship to the living, to time, the dissolution of boundaries between private and public, between inside and outside, above and below: the making of a city is changing paradigms and abandoning the program’s stagnation in favor of the dynamics of uses by welcoming new entrants.
It seems essential to encourage the transmission of an architectural culture and the creation of a common project culture. Reinforcing the complicity between architects and project owners means consolidating the foundation on which to build new practices. By opening the circle, AMO wishes to update this common culture and index it to new practices and new feedback.
Martin Duplantier – Chairman, AMO
Strengthened ambitions
AMO has drawn a 7-points strategy:
- Promote new practices in the conception, design and management of real estate projects.
- Defuse conflicts of competence in favor of new ways of managing, pooling and co-building the city.
- Approach the city through the prism of construction but also of transformation, addition, superimposition and reuse.
- Anticipate and participate in the emergence of new uses, new activations, new temporalities in the urban project.
- Assume responsibility for the construction sector’s carbon footprint by encouraging sober practices, operating methods and materials.
- Addressing all scales and valuing the positive externalities that each can generate.
- Finally, bring together the most daring players and share pioneering experiences.

2020, FRANCE-SPAIN YEAR
At a time when the recent health crisis is re-examining the urban, the « living-together » and our use of public spaces, AMO association (Architecture & Maîtres d’Ouvrages) states its ambition of a common design and project culture through the launch of the 2020 AMO Prize, under a France-Spain banner.
5 transversal awards open to particpants from both countries will enlighten this year ever more audacious, innovative and anticipatory approaches to new uses. The TransEuropArchi Prize will recognize the best Franco-Spanish cross-border collaboration that has given rise to an ambitious project and asserts an architectural ethic shared by both project owners and architects. A Grand Prize will be chosen among the 6 awards.
Resistance of the Spanish experience is remarkable and exemplary in many ways. Drivers of strong economic growth, large-scale projects undertaken in the 1990s have imposed a Spanish architectural signature on the international scene. An architecture of rare depth, contextualized, sober and capable of continuity with the past all by embracing the present.
From the construction boom to the real estate crisis in the 2000s, Spain has been able to question its exigencies, reviving its tradition of compact-cities and sustainable use of soils. Opening the Prize to Spain is an opportunity to underline the savoir-faire of the Spanish architect-engineers. Their design have reach a model of sparing architecture, responding to strong economic constraints and hard climatic conditions. One of the 2020 Prise’s goal is to help reach this balance between architectural audacity and sobriety of the environmental footprint, to draw inspiration from a resilient city, solidarity and sustainability.
Most beautiful metamorphosis Award
Reconversion, restructuring, rehabilitation, extension: so many terms that designate the transformation of a building to accommodate other uses, writing a new page. This award recognises the most beautiful metamorphosis, whether carried out according to the rules of art or frankly disconcerting.
Most daring approach Award
Materials, sectors, building systems, whether ancestral or innovative, mixed or unitary: this award adresses the ability to generate the extraordinary by going off the beaten track, taking risks, convincing users, investors, communities, companies, etc…
Most creative typology Award
Place of life, place of work, third places, extra space, mutable space: this award distinguishes imagination, convinced that space can de-normalize our emotions.
Best productive site Award
How do we work in the era of the 4th industrial revolution? Is it time for the tertiary industry? Would work have become physical again? Whether we are talking about permanent or ephemeral commercial spaces, open or partitioned offices, local or multinationals, or industrial or craft production units, this prize rewards the answer that increases well-being at work and not just productivity, the one that values sustainable development.
Best urban catalyst Award
A project can act virtuously on its environment and its territory. Good practices, positive externalities, extended ecosystem, cross-fertilization: the vocation of architecture is social and its commitment is sustainable.
TransEuropArchi France-Spain Award
Valuing new ways of building Europe and restoring perspective to the European architectural scene: the TransEuropArchi category rewards the best cross-border collaboration that has given rise to an ambitious project and asserts an architectural ethic shared by project owners and contractors. This year the AMO Prize opens the French-Spanish border.
The Jury’s Grand Prize
A Grand Prize will be chosen among the 6 previous awards.
Calendrier
Opening of submission
Deadline for application
Technical commission
Jury
Letters to the finalists
AMO awards ceremony
How to participate ?
Submissions : 22 september 2020 – 26 february 2021
Click on the “Submit” button below to create a team and choose one or more categories in which you wish to present your project. Then submit your application. Please note that only one person is required per application. You will then be able to complete your profile and add file elements thanks to the “Connexion / Log-in” button on the top right.
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