EUmies Awards

The European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award honors projects that redefine architecture’s social mission, celebrating spaces that empower communities and rethink how we live together. This year’s edition recognized works that turn architecture into an act of care - civic, environmental, and emotional.

Among the winners stands the Gabriel García Márquez Library in Barcelona, a project that reimagines the library as a living infrastructure for collective experience. For the architects, this recognition carries a profound message. “Architecture works on a slow timeline,” they reflect. “Recognition like the EU Mies Award arrives years after the first sketch, when the building is already living its own life. For us, this acknowledgment is both a reward and a responsibility: it gives visibility to collective, public, and ecosystemic projects that are often less visible than iconic ones.”

Located in the Sant Martí de Provençals district, a historically working-class and activist neighborhood, the library rises from what was once a parking lot behind a police station, “a true non-place.” Now affectionately known as the “Guggenheim of La Verneda,” it has become a cultural and social landmark. “The library is not only a center of knowledge but also an integrative public space that responds to the neighborhood’s historical demands,” the team explains.

Its sculptural volume, evoking blocks of stacked books with folded pages, sits on an elevated plaza that fosters pedestrian movement and extends over an open area shaded by existing trees. The facades open differently to each street, shaping a dynamic dialogue with the city. A 45-degree oblique geometry defines its courtyards and structure, guiding light and circulation while shielding the building from direct views toward the police station.

Beyond its striking form, the project embodies a new paradigm for civic architecture. “Contemporary libraries are no longer temples of knowledge but living infrastructures of care, connection, and learning. Their value lies in what can’t be downloaded: atmosphere, encounter, collective experience.”

In this sense, the Gabriel García Márquez Library becomes more than a repository of books, it is a living organism, a journey of relationships that evolves with its community and redefines what it means to belong.

_learn more at EUmies Awards
_location: Europe

_article written by Daniela Moreira da Silva
_photo courtesy of EUmies Awards