5 Architecture and 2 Emerging Architecture Finalists for the EU MIES AWARD 2026

BC architects & studies & materials is an architecture practice founded by Laurens Bekemans (1986), Wes Degreef (1986), Nicolas Coeckelberghs (1986) and Ken De Cooman (1983), committed to regenerative and bioregional architecture. They design buildings that are deeply rooted in their environment and informed by material knowledge. Their projects respond to social dynamics and cultural contexts. They often emerge from hands-on processes that reconnect architecture with craftsmanship, local sourcing, and collaborative creation. Each project serves as a prototype for systemic transformation, a space to experiment, challenge norms, and rethink the architect's role. From sourcing local earth, fibers or timber to crafting elements on-site with communities and artisans, their practice is grounded in direct engagement with materials and people. Their sites become places of learning, collaboration, and shared authorship.

BC architects & studies & materials, BC stands for Brussels Cooperation and points to how BC grew - embedded within place and people. They operate through 3 legal entities registered in Belgium: BC architects bv (architecture company), BC studies vzw (non-profit education laboratory), BC materials cv (material production cooperative). BC is a hybrid practice, designing and undertaking "acts of building" towards systemic change in the construction sector. They strive for bioregional, low-tech, circular, beautiful and inclusive design. They work with their minds and their hands, undertaking activities such as community organisation, material production, contracting, teaching and prototyping. They aim to impact positively on people's ideas and the planet. They act on behalf of the generations after us.

Onze04 is an architecture studio founded in 2006 in Barcelona by Gustavo Silva-Nicoletti.

Gustavo Silva-Nicoletti holds a degree in architecture from the Escuela Tècnica Superior de Arquitectura del Vallès (ETSAV), UPC, Barcelona.

Onze04 primarily develops public development projects (facilities and social housing), which it enters through national and international competitions.

In addition to working in Spain, the firm has developed a significant portion of its projects in France since 2011.

Onze04's work has received numerous awards in Spain and France, including:

.- Finalists and Shortlisted for the FAD Architecture Awards in 2012, 2016, and 2025 (Gustavo was selected to the FAD for Ephemeral Architecture as a student in 1999).
.- Winners of the French ADC Awards in 2016 and 2020
.- Winners of the Trophées de la Construction in 2015, 2020, and 2021, among others.

Internationally, Onze04 has received the Architecture Masterprize four times (twice in 2021 and twice in 2022) and has just received the European Best Architects 2026 award.

Dinko Peračić was born in Split in 1977, where he graduated from the Classical Gymnasium. He is an architect from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb (2001) and got his master’s degree at IAAC in Barcelona (2005). He is the founder of the Architects’ Collective Platforma 9.81 and a partner in Architects’ Office ARP. He has worked as an assistant at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Geodesy in Split since 2008, and in 2016, he was appointed an associate professor at the Architectural Design Department.

He is the author of a series of architectural projects, with a particular focus on public spaces and buildings, especially cultural facilities. Among the completed projects, notable ones include the Faculty of Civil Engineering building in Osijek, the Market and Fish Market in Vodice, and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka. Other projects, still unrealized, such as the Youth Center in Split, Pogon Jedinstvo in Zagreb, the Market in Dubrovnik, or the Olive House in Tisno, have been more prominently presented to the public.

In 2018, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Zagreb Salon of Architecture; in 2023, he was awarded the Grand Prix of the Zagreb Salon of Applied Arts and design; and three times he was awarded the second prize of the Zagreb Salon (2006, 2009, 2015).   He was also awarded with Piranesi award in 2015, the Architecture Medal and Conceptual Design Medal by the Croatian Chamber of Architects (2016 and 2017). He was also awarded the Bernardo Bernardi Award by the Croatian Association of Architects in 2018 and the Grand Prix BIG SEE 2022.  His works were nominated for many other national and international awards.

He has extensive experience participating in architectural competitions and has won numerous awards. He has taken part in numerous domestic and international architectural and art exhibitions. Through the programs of the association Platforma 9,81, he is involved in various research and public activities related to spatial culture. He serves as a moderator at the Days of Oris symposium in Zagreb (alongside M. Mrduljaš). He was the curator of the Days of Architecture in Sarajevo in 2018. He actively contributes to the public discourse on space and architecture through frequent public lectures, discussions, workshops, actions, published texts, and by judging urban planning and architectural competitions. At the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, he represented Croatia as part of a team with M. Veljačić, E. Višnić, and S. Tolj with the work "we need it – we do it". Together with Miranda Veljačić, he held a solo exhibition at the 56th Zagreb Salon of Architecture.

Miranda Veljačić (born 1976, Zagreb) is a Croatian architect (from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb 2002), researcher, and cultural worker. She is a co-founder, coordinator, and current president of Platforma 9,81, one of the longest-lasting NGOs focused on architectural research and practice related to alternative and youth culture, activism, urbanism, and the heritage of modernity.

Veljačić was an editor of Oris and Čovjek i prostor, two major Croatian architecture magazines. In 2016, she represented Croatia at the Venice Biennale of Architecture together with Dinko Peračić, Emina Višnić, and Slaven Tolj.

In 1999, while still a student, Veljačić co-founded the architectural research association Platforma 9,81 in Zagreb with Dinko Peračić and Marko Sančanin, following their involvement with the European Architecture Students Assembly. She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb in 2002.

Since 2003, she has lived and worked in Split with her husband, Dinko Peračić, and their two children.

Platforma 9,81 is a Croatian collective of architects, theorists, designers, and urban planners operating as a non-governmental organisation that stimulates interdisciplinary debate on urban spaces, globalisation, and architectural practices. In addition to being documented online, its research was published in the 2004 book Superprivate. In 2011, the collective participated in the exhibition program Contemporary Art Archipelago, a series of site-specific works in the Turku archipelago in Finland.

Veljačić became a member of the presidency of the Association of Architects of Split in 2006 and a member of the programming committee of the Multimedia Cultural Center in Split. Her work focuses on research and elaboration for the preservation, protection, and promotion of modernist architecture, including the Senatorium in Krvavica by Rikard Marasović. In 2009, her collaborative work with Dinko Peračić on the revitalisation of the Youth Centre in Split won the Salon of Architecture Prize. This project completed work on the monumental building originally started in the 1970s by architect Frane Grgurević and left unfinished due to halted cultural funding. Over the course of 12 years, the architects reconfigured the structure, which had been squatted by various groups, to make it functional and give it a new purpose. She also co-developed, with Dinko Peračić, a project for the reconstruction of Tvornica Jedinstvo, a former factory in Zagreb, into the Regional Multifunctional Cultural Center Jedinstvo, which is still awaiting reconstruction.

At the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture, their collective project We Need – We Do It was documented in the catalogue Reporting from the Front, including the contribution “We need it – we do it: policy pragmatics and utopias,” as well as in the publication We Need It – We Do It, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia. The publication also discusses several other projects by Veljačić and her collaborators. In 2018, the project received the Grand Prize of the 53rd Zagreb Salon of Architecture.

Veljačić frequently speaks at international and local art events, presenting her architectural practice, most often in collaboration with Dinko Peračić, and advocating for public–civil partnerships and urban commons.

Vidic Grohar Arhitekti was founded in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2016 by Anja Vidic, assistant professor at the Ljubljana Faculty of Architecture, and Jure Grohar, a PhD architect. In their projects, they do not follow a pre-set architectural agenda, but freely develop new specific architectural, design, and curatorial solutions through the rearticulation of given situations. As design critics they were invited and held lectures at the University of Limerick, University College Dublin, MOME Budapest, TU Berlin, USI Mendrisio, TU Munich, TU Vienna and Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana. Their work has been presented as part of the international project Objects of Fascination in Brussels (MAD Brussels) and Paris (Pavillon de l'Arsenal), and the New Praxes, New Tools event in Ljubljana (ŠKUC Gallery), Berlin (AEDES Metrolab), and Vienna (TU Vienna). Together with Mertelj Vrabič Arhitekti they were authors of The Pavilion of Slovenia at The 18th Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, which was accompanied by a catalogue (published by MAO Ljubljana). The Pavilion was remade in Freilichtmuseum Molfsee, Germany in 2024. Recently they executed a temporary National Theatre Drama in Ljubljana, Slovenia, which was awarded with the international Piranesi Award 2024 and has been shortlisted for EU Mies Award 2026.