Launched in 2005,the winner of the International High-Rise Award receives €50,000 ($77,500) to donate to a charitable cause.
Awarded by the City of Frankfurt,The German Architecture Museum (DAM),and DekaBank,the prize recognises a high-rise of “exemplary sustainability,outer shape,inner spatial qualities,and social aspects to form a superior building”.
Instead of demolishing the old AMP Centre at 50 Bridge Street in the city,Danish architecture firm 3XN – which developed the design with BVN – retained the southern side of the building and its core.
To create light-filled villages within the building,the architects added five cantilevered glass boxes,which they likened to wooden Jenga blocks.
Fred Holt,a partner at 3XN,was in Germany to accept the prize and described the process as “humanising the high-rise”.
Two-thirds of the beams,columns and floor slabs and 95 per cent of the original core built for the AMP Society in the 1970s were retained.