The inaugural Obel Award, a new international prize for architecture, will be presented in Aalborg, Denmark on 22 October 2019.
The Obel Award will be presented annually by The Henrik Frode Obel Foundation, founded by Henrik Frode Obel (1942-2014), and comes with a prize sum of 100,000 Euros and a unique artwork by Tomás Saraceno both donated by the Henrik Frode Obel Foundation.
The aim of the award is to honour recent and outstanding architectural contributions to human development all over the world. These contributions should offer seminal solutions to urgent problems.
The award is given to works or projects from the past five years. It can be given to an architect or group of architects, and the award-winning project can range from a manifesto to a masterplan and include buildings, landscape projects and exhibitions.
Each year, the jury will set a theme for the Award. For the 2019 edition it is Welfare Through Architecture which aims to put a focus on the transformative and social value of architecture.
The 2019 Obel Award Jury: Martha Schwartz, Chair (Founder, Martha Schwartz Partners, USA), Kjetil Trædal Thorsen (Co-founder, Snöhetta, Norway), Louis Becker (Design Principal and partner, Henning Larsen, Denmark), and Dr Wilhelm Vossenkuhl (Professor emeritus, Germany). From 22 October, the Chinese architect XU Tiantian(founding principal, DnA, Beijing, China) will join the jury.
Candidates for the award are proposed by a number of independent experts all over the world who are professionals and specialists within the field of architecture. This ensures that the award has a global perspective and reach. The Obel Award does not accept nominations from other sources.