The Russian/German architect, Sergei Tchoban has been named as the recipient of Europe’s Highest Award for Architecture for 2018 by the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.

Selected as this year’s Laureate of The European Prize for Architecture, the architect was praised for "his powerful designs and a unique design vision that celebrates the best of modernist buildings that are internationally iconic, complex, enigmatic, provocative, and profoundly artistic."

Architectural Capriccio, Piazza Venezia or Two Worlds No. 2 for Film Stage Design Project, St. Petersburg, 2013. Image courtesy of European Centre

"His architecture encompasses an endless variety of forms, surfaces, colors, poetry, using the most contemporary methods of planning and sustainable solutions, in a variety of areas, ranging from cultural facilities tocommercial, office, and religious buildings—all with the purposes of achieving the highest intellect and,ultimately, a complex cultural content," stated the European Centre.  

"Moreover, Tchoban is also an extremely skilled draftsman who produces highly charged and emotional renderings that reminisce the high aesthetic of Boullée and Ledoux in their mystical overtones, combined with the energy and revolutionary zeal of the Russian Constructivists."

Coca Cola Headquarters, 2013, Berlin. Image © Claus Graubner

Tchoban's artworks go beyond draughtsmanship by using all kinds of materials like watercolour, red chalk, charcoal,and pastel chalk to express fictional spaces reminiscent of classical capriccio.

Throughout his career, Tchoban has developed a public, commercial, and civic architecture with a deep sentiment celebrates ordinary life in our complex urban cities and our diverse cultural situations. His work demonstrates an unyielding commitment to create an architecture that is as richly profound as it is inspiring.

Federation Complex, 2017, Moscow. Image © Aleksey Naroditsky

"We are delighted to present The European Prize for Architecture, stated Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, President and CEO, The Chicago Athenaeum, "to this highly innovative and creative Russian/German architect that has been instrumental in shaping in our time an unprecedented and inspiring discourse between art and architecture with the keen ability to bridge and transform imagination and the creative mind into the actual built works in the environments in which they are placed."

"His is a most rare, thought-provoking, and profound approach to architecture, extensions of his life, hisphilosophy, and his intellect, that fuse the power of imagination into the final end product—the building."

Future Bridges III, 2014.

"And despite vigorous activities in new architectural development, Sergei Tchoban is strongly influenced byhis origins, and his fondness for historical construction and traditional European cities," continued Narkiewicz- Laine.

The European Prize for Architecture is not a "lifetime of achievement award," but rather serves as an impetus to support new ideas, to encourage and foster more challenge-making and forward-thinking about buildings and the environment, and to prompt the pushing of the envelope to obtain an even greater, more profound result.

Museum for Architectural Drawing, 2013, Berlin. Image © Roland Halbe

The Prize also honors the commitment and achievements of the best European architects who have determined a more critical, intellectual, and artistic approach to the design of buildings and cities.

Architect Tchoban has offices in Berlin and Moscow, and designs, plans, and builds internationally. 

Museum for Rural Labour, 2015, Zvizzhi. Image © Dmitry Chebanenko

His most famous projects to date include the Federation Tower in Moscow, the DomAquarée CityQuartier in Berlin; ExpoForum and Nevskaya City Hall, St. Petersburg (together with Evgeny Gerasimov and Partners); Water Sports Palace in Kazan; Cubix Cinema, Berlin; the Jewish Cultural Center and Synagogue Chabad Lubavitch, Berlin; the Music and Lifestyle Hotel nhow, Berlin; Russia's Pavilion at EXPO 15 in Milan; and the building of the Museum of Architectural Drawing (with Sergey Kuznetsov), Berlin.

Music & Lifestyle Hotel nhow, 2010, Berlin. Image © Wolfgang Reiher

His office has specialized in designing buildings and complexes with various functional purposes, developingurban concepts, as well as designing interiors. Projects by SPEECH have been implemented in numerous cities in Russia (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, and others), as well as abroad (Berlin, Milan, Venice, Minsk).

In 2009, he also founded the Tchoban Foundation – Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin with the aim to foster the drawing skills of talented young architects and to make the founder’s collection accessible for study.

Reeling Monuments (from the Series "Totalitarianism and Architecture"), 2017.

The Foundation also promotes the validity of draughtsmanship to both the profession and the public at a timewhen computer generated imagery has become virtually ubiquitous. More specifically, the Foundation reasons that drawing is essential to architecture because "development and training of formal and proportionalinventiveness still proceeds via ideas which flow through the drawing hand."

"In my passion for architecture," states the architect, "I am guided primarily by cities and urban mise-en-scènesituations that I enjoy most, and the ones that I really like, I immediately try to capture on paper."

"More so, my drawings typically are finished compositions, unlike quick sketches that most architects do ontheir trips."

"I have a very straightforward attitude toward architecture. I always ask one simple question – would I want to draw one of my own projects or my colleagues’ projects? This criterion may be frivolous, but, in fact, it is quite rigorous."

Russian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale designed by SPEECH Techoban/Kuznetsov (Sergei Tchoban, Sergey Kuznetsov, Marina Kuznetskaya, Agniya Sterligova).

Tchoban will receive the award at a Gala Dinner Award Ceremony at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece on September 28. 

Previous Laureates include Bjarke Ingels (Denmark), Graft Architects (Germany), TYIN Architects (Norway), Marco Casagrande (Finland), Alessandro Mendini (Italy), Santiago Calatrava (Spain/Switzerland), LAVA Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (Germany), and most recently French  architect Manuelle Gautrand. 

Top image: Sergei Tchoban. Image © Lichtschwaermer Christo Libuda 

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