Joint first prize was won by the renovation of the banks of the Ljubljanica (Ljubljana, Slovenia) in the section flowing through the old city centre. The project, designed by Boris Podrecca, Atelier Arhitekti, Urbi, BB Arhitekti, Atelje Vozlic, Dans Arhitekti, Trije Arhitekti and Medprostor, cost £16.3m and covers an area of 65,000 sq m. The work shows ‘the capacity of the river to structure the city,’ said the jury. ‘It has demonstrated how to integrate a river system with urban patterns, giving a sense both of continuity and uniqueness of spaces. This large work is remarkable for its coherence since it covers the entire riverbank and includes the interventions of several architects who have sought to continue Josep Plecnik’s legendary project of bridges and riverbank buildings’.

The European Prize for Urban Public Space is an initiative by the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB), set up after its 1999 exhibition The Reconquest of Europe. The prize was established ‘in order to offer testimony to the process of rehabilitation of public spaces that has been occurring in many European cities,’ and aims specifically to recognise the public or civic character of spaces – ‘urbanistic interventions that promote the public dimension of urban space and its role in social integration’ – rather than their purely aesthetic qualities. Consequently, the prize is given not only to the design professionals responsible for the urban intervention, but also to the institutions that develop it.

The first award was made in 2000, and is now given biannually by a collection of organisations representing seven European countries – including the UK’s Architecture Foundation, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, and the Austrian, Finnish and German architecture museums. The institutions supply the jurors, who are advised by an extensive panel of experts – including architects, academics and critics – from across Europe.

Joint first prize was won by the Turó de Rovira project in the Carmelo neighbourhood of Barcelona, the landscaping of and improved accessibility to a lookout where the remains of an anti-aircraft gun emplacement combine with those of a shanty village that was later constructed there. The project cost just under £1m and covers an area of 9,611 square metres. Designed by Jansana, de la Villa, de Paauw Arquitectes and AAUP Jordi Romero i Associats, the work was commended for its ‘delicate and elegant treatment of a space that has a recent history and hitherto marginal position in the city. The space has been recovered for collective memory. It evokes the Civil War while adding value to the remains of a self-constructed housing settlement’ (phs: Lourdes Jansana).

‘With ideas of equality, plurality and progress constituting part of its very foundations, the European city is today facing new challenges arising from its exponential growth and increasing social and cultural complexity,’ says the explanatory statement. ‘Some of society’s main problems are radically expressed in the city’s public spaces. Segregation, rampant construction, homogenisation and privatisation of urban space are some of the phenomena that are putting into jeopardy the ideal of the open, plural and democratic community that has always been so distinctive of the European city.’

In 2000, 81 projects from 14 countries were entered for the prize; in 2012, 347 projects from 36 countries were submitted. From these, the jury selected two joint first prize-winners – a large-scale coherent yet dispersed transformation of the riverbank in the centre of Ljubljana by several architectural practices, and improvements to a Civil War lookout above Barcelona – and gave special mentions to three: Dixon Jones’ shared surface repaving of Exhibition Road in London, a walkway and slavery memorial in a former river wharf in Nantes and a moving image projection that enlivens a railway station in Malmö, Sweden. After much discussion – the jury was evenly split – it was decided to give a special award to the occupation of the Puerta del Sol in Madrid by a demonstration similar to that seen in cities around the world in the last year. Among the issues raised in the discussion was that of public space as ‘physical container and as an arena for social and civic expression’. The intervention ‘also gave rise to debate about basic issues of understanding the parameters of architecture,’ notes the jury.

The prizes will be awarded at a ceremony hosted by the CCCB in Barcelona on 29 June.

The repaving of Exhibition Road, London, designed by Dixon Jones, received a special mention. Street clutter was removed in accordance with ‘shared space’ principles. The project covers 26,000 sq m and cost £20m (phs: Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea).

A special mention went to the memorial to the abolition of slavery at Nantes, France, a new riverside walk in an old wharf on the Loire that replaces a car park. Designed by Wodiczko & Bonder, it covers 8,500 sq m and cost £6m. (ph: Philippe Rualt)

Another special mention went to ‘Annorstädes’ (‘Elsewhere’), a work in Malmo,̈ Sweden, designed by Tania Ruiz and comprising a permanent installation of projected moving images on the platforms of an underground railway station. Covering 4,500 sq m, it cost £765,000.

An award in a special category was made to the occupation of Puerta del Sol in Madrid, a large-scale demonstration by citizens demanding improvements in the democratic system.

The 2012 winners, along with most of the projects that have been presented since the Prize was first offered, can be viewed today in the European Archive of Urban Public Space at www.publicspace.org