Building the Future: Alanus Students Nominated for BDA Student Awards

Building the Future: Alanus Students Nominated for BDA Student Awards

With designs for the transformation of existing buildings, the shared use of historic sites, and the further development of evolved structures, students from the Department of Architecture at Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences in Alfter near Bonn impressed at the “Rundgang Architektur 2026” on Thursday, 2 July. Four final projects were nominated for the student awards of the Association of German Architects (BDA).

 The projects address key questions in architecture and construction: How can existing building fabric continue to be used? How can places for encounter and community life emerge? And how can buildings and urban structures be adapted to social and ecological change? Rundgang Architektur marks the ceremonial conclusion of the academic year at Alanus University and makes visible how students address these questions in their designs. With these nominations, the graduates also have the opportunity to compete with final projects from other schools of architecture.

BDA Masters nominations (best bachelor’s theses of the year)
The project “Single-Family House in Transition” by Dana Azizi (supervision: Prof. Swen Geiss, Junior Prof. Miriam Hamel) examines how the classic single-family house can be adapted to social and ecological changes and what possibilities exist for the further development of existing forms of housing.

Luis Bongardt, Nicolai Max Schwarz and Lena Stadtfeld explore in “Gut Melb in Bonn/Venusberg – Transformation of a Historic Ensemble into a Community-Oriented Center” the Gut Melb estate on the Venusberg (supervision: Prof. Ragnhild Klußmann, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Florian Kluge). Their design investigates how the site can develop through communal processes into a place for encounter, diversity, and collaborative creation.

Johannes Roos and Aljosa Tacevski dedicate themselves in “Building Within the Existing Fabric – Single-Family House in Kukljica, Croatia” to a small building ensemble on the Croatian island of Kukljica (supervision: Prof. Ragnhild Klußmann, Junior Prof. Miriam Hamel). They developed their design approach directly on site: One existing room became an exemplary laboratory in which material and structural elements were examined, decisions on how to work with the building were made, and these were implemented directly in construction.

BDA-SARP Award nomination (best master’s thesis of the year)
Julian Heiden was nominated for the BDA Master Prize for “On Living and Designing in Evolved Structures” (supervision: Prof. Miriam Hamel, Prof. Swen Geiss). His work examines inner-city courtyard structures as spaces for living and everyday life, where private areas, shared spaces, and neighborly coexistence meet. The focus is on the spatial conditions for community and the qualities that emerge from them for residents’ daily lives.

Photo, from left: Luis Bongardt, Dana Azizi, Nicolai Max Schwarz, Lena Stadtfeld, Aljosa Tacevski, Johannes Roos, Julian Heiden (Copyright: Alanus University / Alexander Conrads)

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