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Open Competitions

Mothe Chandeniers

Common Ruins

YAC invites architects to dedicate their own design action to one of the most fascinating ruins in the world - The castle of Mothe Chandeniers. They will do so by designing a visitors’ center aiming at ensuring a unique, spiritual and regenerating hospitality experience.

Common Ruins

There is a special fascination in ruins. There is a sublime hint in dissolved architectures. There is something moving in the pulverizing of time.

Silence takes over the architecture. In the long sunset that follows abandonment and preludes destruction, nature completes the design of mankind by taking space back according to its own pace. In that moment, something magical happens. In that moment, architecture gives way to ruins.

The castle of Mothe Chandeniers is a perfect ruin. It is lost in the French countryside. It is a gothic lace embroidered in stone. It is an enchanted mirage fluctuating on a calm lake. It is embraced by jealous vegetation that has been twining its bastions and architectures as a greedy lover. The castle evokes an intimate embrace between history, architecture and nature. Faraway from mankind, this place has achieved its most resplendent beauty. However, now it needs mankind in order to forestall its ultimate destruction.

Dartagnans is a fund aiming at protecting and safeguarding the international artistic heritage. Recently, it has purchased the castle thanks to more than 27,910 shareholders’ donations. Today, through YAC, Mothe Chandeniers invites designers to highlight the natural fascination of the castle in order to transform it into a destination of contemplation and relax for tourists and visitors from all over the world.

How to transform a ruin into a cutting edge tourist-accommodation facility? How to make a neo-gothic shell communicate with contemporary architecture?

These are the questions on which Common Ruins lays its foundations. This competition offers designers the opportunity to dedicate their own design action to one of the most fascinating ruins in the world. They will do so by designing a visitors’ center aiming at ensuring a unique, spiritual and regenerating hospitality experience.

At the sunset of a building, architecture itself has to protect the remarkable combination of human action and natural activity that is the fascination of Mothe Chandeniers. Architecture has to save the castle from the erosion of time in order to give it back to the community that purchased it. It is an unprecedented challenge that invites designers to deal with a place with a surreal beauty able to create oneiric and refined holiday scenarios. Designers will have to highlight such feature carrying out an architectural intervention aiming to be the milestone of contemporary architecture.

Yac thanks all the designers who will take part in this challenge

Winners

First Prize

D-D-D

Hiroshi Toda, Mitsuki Shibairi, Kahara Mori

D-D-D

Second Prize

Blonde Architects

Andrea Carpentieri

Blonde Architects

Third Prize

Ali Habibianfar-Parisa Davoudi

Pirooz Shadanpour, Ali Habibianfar, Parisa Davoudi

Ali Habibianfar-Parisa Davoudi

Gold Mention

Mesa atelier

João Varela, Ana Santos, João Tavares, Paulo Dias

Mesa atelier

Gold Mention

A2A

Andrea Fortunati, Riccardo Daniel

A2A

Gold Mention

Victoria Tsygankova

Victoria Tsygankova

Victoria Tsygankova

Gold Mention

AI Architects

Ivan Kolmanok, Tomashenko Alexandr, Alexander Sokolov, Yuriy Sheredega, Mariia Pakhomova, Anastasia Belenko, Andrew Likhachev

AI Architects

Jury

Each jury is nominated with utmost care and is composed by professionals of the highest repute whose activity is consistent with the theme of the competition.

Partners

YAC thanks all the people who have been engaged in organizing the competition by sharing time, materials and resources to make the experience of architects unique.

DartagnansLombardini22Edoardo TresoldiChateau de la Mothe ChandeniersRudy Ricciotti ArchitecteLD+SRCibic WorkshopAtelier FemiaRI-EG Rintala EggertssonAnish KapoorAdopte un chateauGrupe MercurePatrimoine environnment

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