Stefan Tischer is being specially honored for two projects. The first is a landscaping scheme, in collaboration with Susanne Burger and Philipp and Stefanie Oswalt, to turn the former women’s concentration camp in Ravensbrück, Brandenburg, into a memorial site. “It was necessary to perform a tightrope act between design and authenticity. That this tightrope act should win a competition is by no means a foregone conclusion.”
Thies Schröder
He is also being honored for his essay “Four Proposals for Urban Concentration in Bolzano,” a strategy devised in collaboration with Helene Hoelzl and the Milan studio MetroGrammA. The essay presents development scenarios for making landscape itself the rule in urban planning and a source of inspiration for architects. Here Tischer attempts to remedy the architectural blunders committed during the economic boom of recent decades and to “aerate” the city, allowing it to grow anew on historical and landscape-specific layers.