MVRDV’s projects Tainan Spring and WERK12 have both won prizes in the 2020 Architizer A+ Awards. Tainan Spring was selected by the jury as the winner in the Architecture +Urban Transformation category, while WERK12 won the popular vote award in the Commercial Mixed-Use category.

Tainan Spring is a public space design that includes the transformation of a former city-centre shopping mall into an urban lagoon surrounded by young plants that will develop into a lush jungle, reconnecting the city with nature and its waterfront while showing what solutions are possible for unused shopping malls now that online shopping is supplanting physical stores. The completed masterplan rejuvenates a ‘T-Axis’ to the East of the Tainan Canal, creating a new landscape strategy to unify the site of the former China Town Mall and a kilometre-long stretch of the city’s Haian Road.

WERK12 forms the nucleus of the Werksviertel-Mitte district, an urban regeneration plan on a former industrial site, and hosts restaurants and bars, offices, and a three-storey gym that includes one storey dedicated to a swimming pool. The project stands out with its bold and expressive art façade featuring colloquial expressions taken from the German version of Donald Duck comics in five-metre-tall lettering – creating a tribute to the graffiti culture and extensive use of signage found in the area.

A complete summary of the winners of the Architizer A+ Awards can be found here. Read more about Tainan Spring here, and about WERK12 here.