Continuity rather than oblivion
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 fifth category to be examined is the most beautiful metamorphosis.
Created in 1984 (one year after the founding of the Architecture et Maîtres d’ouvrage association), the AMO Prize has been awarded since its revival in 2018 not only for the most inspiring collaborations between decision-makers and designers, but also for the most beautiful metamorphoses, the boldest implementations, the best urban catalysts, the most productive locations, the most creative typologies and the most instructive Franco-European collaborations.
In 2025, the co-presidents of the AMO association, Céline Bouvier and Matthias Navarro, would like to see the winning projects make a further commitment to ecological, social, economic and territorial transition. So what can we expect from the AMO 2025 Awards?
Award for the most beautiful metamorphosis, making the most of what is already there
Transformation is one of the great challenges of our time. In the face of depleting resources, pressure on land and climate change, building something new can no longer be the only option. Metamorphosis is becoming an act of commitment. It reveals the potential of what already exists, adapting it, extending it, magnifying it…
The award for the most beautiful metamorphosis rewards projects that transform without betraying. That take care of structures, memories and uses. Which choose continuity rather than oblivion, invention within constraints rather than a clean slate.
Halles become libraries, brownfield sites become schools, buildings converted into affordable housing: these projects don’t just recycle. They reconfigure the sites to bring them into a new era, with its own challenges, expectations and sensitivities.
Here, the past is a resource. Transformation becomes writing. And each reinvented building is a demonstration that it is possible to create something beautiful, useful and fair, without building more. The Best Metamorphosis Award recognises this ability to make existing buildings useful again.
Rediscover below the winning project in 2024 of the award for the most beautiful metamorphosis (the Wasquehal dojo designed by bureau face B for the town of Wasquehal) and follow this link to read the booklet bringing together all the 2024 winners.
