Only three British projects make Mies longlist

Only three UK schemes have made it on to the 40-strong shortlisted for the prestigious Mies van der Rohe Award 2015.

They were picked from 20 British projects which were nominated for Europe’s biggest architecture prize at the end of last year.

All three are Stirling finalists: O’Donnell & Tuomey’s LSE student centre in London, Niall McLaughlin’s Bishop Edward King Chapel in Oxfordshire and Haworth Tompkins’s Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, which won the Stirling last year.

Two British architects have also been long-listed for overseas projects: Foster & Partners for its Vieux Port in Marseille and Hall McKnight for Vartov Square in Copenhagen.

The Anglo-German practice Sauerbruch Hutton was also long-listed for Immanuel Church in Cologne.

Other practices which made the cut from 420 nominations include Ireland’s Grafton Architects for University of Limerick Medical School; Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, OMA for De Rotterdam; BIG for the Danish Maritime Museum and Lacaton & Vassal for FRAC, the Regional Contemporary Artwork Collection in Dunkirk.

Copenhagen, Berlin and Rotterdam are the cities where most of the shortlisted works have been built.

British practices who were nominated but not shortlisted included Zaha Hadid for the Aquatics Centre; Caruso St John for Tate Britain; RCKa for its TNG youth centre; 6a for two London projects; Denizen Works for House Number 7; and Reiach & Hall for the Battle of Bannockburn visitor centre.

Five finalists will be announced at the end of February and required to present their projects to the jury on May 7.

The winner will be named at a ceremony on May 8 at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona, when an emerging architect prize will also be presented.

Antoni Vives, president of the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, said: “This edition of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe, confirms the high quality of European architecture, its creative and innovative potential and its ability to adapt to social, political and economic changes.”

No Brits made it on to the shortlist when the prize was last run two years ago.