The beginnings of collective transformation
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 sixth – and last – category to be examined is the one rewarding the boldest implementation.
Created in 1984, 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 best urban or rural catalyst, a place for a thousand resonances
Some projects change more than their plot. They trigger. They inspire. They reveal an area to itself. They activate new practices, forge new links and create ripple effects far beyond their initial programme. They are catalysts.
The Best Urban or Rural Catalyst Award recognises projects that can act as a lever. To rebalance a local dynamic, to invent new uses, to reconnect isolated fragments of an area, whether dense or dispersed.
It could be a cultural facility in a declining market town. A café in a forgotten neighbourhood. A rural bistro. A school in a village that also becomes a place to live, to welcome people and to exchange ideas. What these projects have in common is that they are not seen as ends in themselves, but as the beginnings of a collective transformation.
They prove that the right kind of architecture can play a decisive role in forging links, reinventing central areas and building local resilience. The Prize for the Best Urban or Rural Catalyst rewards those who design places that force people to move around them.
Find out more below about the winning project in 2024 for the Best Rural Catalyst Award (the revitalisation of the Dixmont town centre by Atelier Cité Architecture for the town of Dixmont) and at this link to the booklet containing all the 2024 awards.
