A Spanish social housing project and the Stirling Prize-winning Town House by Grafton Architects are among the five finalists in the architecture category of the Mies van der Rohe Award for 2022.
Organised by the European Union and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, the prize is awarded biennially to the best architecture project completed in Europe in the past two years.
For the 2022 edition, the award programme also celebrates projects completed as far back as the past 2.5 years, due to delays to the event caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Among this year's finalists are a timber social housing scheme in Spain by Peris+Toral Arquitectes, the Frizz23 co-working space in Germany by Deadline and urban agriculture facility The Railway Farm in France by Grand Huit and Melanie Drevet Paysagiste.
The Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture in Belgium by Francesca Torzo also made the cut, alongside the Grafton Architects-designed Town House at Kingston University in the UK that recently won the 2021 RIBA Stirling prize.
A prize will also be given to the best project completed by an emerging architect, for which the Enrico Fermi School in Italy by BDR bureau and La Borda in Spain by architecture collective Lacol are the finalists.
The biannual award is named after modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
This year's jury included Francesca Ferguson, the founder of the MakeCity Festival, the CEO of Pendlarchitects Georg Pendl, and Habiter Autrement founder Mia Hägg.
The panel said the five finalists were selected as they offer "models and references for local city policies".
"The works also focus on the productive and self-sufficient city which is developed in a pedagogical way, dignifying the space that we inhabit and use," added the jury.
"They are also a result of well-developed construction processes, and the care in the use of materials and details: a dignification of the day to day architecture, a dialogue between monumentality, education and heritage."
Finalists were selected from a shortlist of 40 projects revealed in January 2022. The jury will now visit all five projects in March to select a winner.
The architecture prize winner and the emerging architect winner are set to be announced at the end of April, before the award ceremony on 12 May 2022 at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona.
The previous winner of the EU Mies Award was a renovation of 1960s housing in France carried out by Frédéric Druot Architecture, Lacaton & Vassal Architectes and Christophe Hutin Architecture.
Other winners include Barozzi Veiga's Szczecin Philharmonic Hall in Poland, the Harpa Concert and Conference Centre in Iceland and David Chipperfield's Neus Museum in Berlin.
The main photo is by José Hevia.