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      • The Park of Encounters is a complex design that deals with the public use of a once-army base. Built by the Nazi regime in 1937 and taken over by Allied forces after the war, Campbell Barracks later served as NATO HQ for Europe, which closed in the mid-2010s. Decades of army use left a palimpsest of traces that were waiting to be reinterpreted. The jury recognises how difficult and yet successful it was to redesign this army-charged site with 'respectful lightness' and a 'slight twist of humour' as if the designers wanted to decompress the site and add play in a witty, nearly mischievous way. That is evident, for example, in a stripe of play elements that run through the entrance checkpoint, emphasising its disuse, or colouring and displacing the found artefacts from the 1970s. In a different configuration, stripped of their original use, these artefacts represent the retreat of control, repression and are abstracted into new constellations, provoking new interpretations and ways of interaction. The jurors appreciated this underlying attitude, also resulting in elegant and much more subtle means of change, for example, mixing and shredding of the existing pavements and using them anew. The material/colour palette is exceptionally well thought-through; it communicates the different layers of the site's palimpsest and connects different parts into a coherent whole.
      The Forest Path is part of a larger, existing cemetery, where Batlleiroig designed one of their first projects as early as 1985. A shift in people's relation to burial traditions and issues of space brought the need for a new, more nature-friendly means of burial practice. Batlleiroig designed a Krainer wall structure, ready to host plants and wooden urns that contain the ashes. With time, the wooden logs and the urns will disintegrate, leaving behind a slope overgrown by plants that will further change through the passing of seasons. This reference to the cycle of life effectively acts as the memorial whilst providing more efficient use of land, infrastructure and other resources. Besides the progressive and innovative solution, the jury was also charmed by the elegant design of the Forest Path and its forest-edge ambience.
      No site is 'tabula rasa', but sometimes, sites demand more creation than translation. This is the case with The Unbound, an imaginative design for a tourist resort based on being with the landscape, observing nature, and participating in food production. Despite the non-site-specific design language that unnecessarily neglects this area's history as a characteristic dutch polder, the design for this high-end tourist resort adds to the bigger picture of a new, more natural green recreational wedge in the city of Amsterdam that brings tourists and inhabitants closer to the landscape and nature. Resort guests are invited to take part in the outside world, by which The Unbound gives new meaning to recreation in a city like Amsterdam. Complex pathways together with strong low vegetation allow for the space to feel mysterious, a space that needs to be explored. Once the trees grow, another layer of complexity will reveal itself and add additional dynamics to the site.