Bold Architecture
Applications for the Prix AMO 2025 award are open until 30 June 2025 (follow this link to find out more). Since 2019, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui has been a partner of the award, and are now presenting a series of articles to explore the six categories that have established this award’s reputation. The first category to be examined is the one rewarding the boldest implementation.
Since 1983, the AMO / Architecture et Maîtres d’Ouvrage association has celebrated the strong conviction that a project is never the work of a single person. It is always the result of dialogue. One year after its establishment, the association has launched its architecture prize to celebrate the most inspiring collaborations.
In 2018, the award underwent a transformation. Under architect Martin Duplantier’s leadership, the traditional categories have given way to more sensitive and open themes such as metamorphosis, audacity, urban catalysts, productive places, inventive typologies and Franch-European dialogues.
Now, with Céline Bouvier and Matthias Navarro taking over as co-presidents, the Prix AMO is evolving once again. While dialogue remains at its heart, transitions – ecological, social, economic and territorial – are becoming a central criterion.
From 2025 onwards, the AMO Prize will be awarded to those who transform, not just build. Those who repair, invent and connect. Of all the projects submitted, only one will be awarded the Prix AMO: the project that best embodies the award’s ambitions, transcending its own category.
Award for the boldest implementation, where the construction site becomes the manifesto.
At a time when the construction industry is reinventing itself due to the combined pressures of climate change, resource shortages, and growing social demands, a clear idea is emerging: the construction site is becoming a place of innovation. It is in the materials used, the way they are assembled and the construction process itself that a new approach to building is being developed. This is precisely what the prize for the boldest implementation celebrates.
This prize celebrates more than just technical innovation. It recognises courage. The courage to take risks in order to do better. Better in terms of sustainability, impact, and coherence. Better for the region, the industry and the planet. In the face of a sector long dominated by standardisation and the logic of volume, it rewards positive breakthroughs: hemp concrete instead of plain concrete, roof tiles made from building site rubble, structures made from local laminated wood instead of imported steel, frameworks screwed together for easy dismantling and prefabrication using the dry process.
However, boldness isn’t just about materials. It also lies in the process. It is evident in the work carried out with artisan trainers, in the production cooperatives integrated into the projects and in the hybrid construction systems born of unprecedented alliances between engineers, workers, designers and agricultural sectors. It is embodied in the flexibility of a schedule, the shared governance of a batch and the collective decision to take a risk.
This is what the AMO Prize jury has come to recognise and celebrate: not a spectacular gesture, but an in-depth transformation. The ability to deal with complexity without taking the easy way out. A commitment to placing the act of building at the service of life.
What if boldness were to become the norm in the future? What if bio-sourced materials, short supply chains, and demountable structures ceased to be the exception and became the norm? The prize for the boldest implementation sends a message. It tells the profession that it’s time to do things differently. And to those who have already taken the plunge, it says: you are the trailblazers.
Rediscover below the winning project in 2024 of the award for the boldest implementation (the Léo-Lagrange educational centre designed by architects Jean and Aline Harari for the town of Les Mureaux) and follow this link to read the booklet containing all the 2024 awards.
