EDITORIAL: LAUNCH OF THE PRIX W 2027

Dear students and young architects,

For this new edition, we invite you to take a fresh look at an iconic monument of the Mediterranean: the Château d’If.

A legendary fortress, a witness to history and collective imagination, the Château d’If becomes a space for experimentation, where contemporary reflection brings together heritage, artistic creation, and ephemeral architecture.

Your mission ? To imagine a contemporary intervention — light, reversible, and evolving — capable of revealing the monument in a new way. Whether it takes the form of a performance pavilion, an artistic installation, a maritime theatre, or a landscape intervention, your proposal should create a sensitive dialogue between the memory of the site and the challenges of contemporary creation.

Through this edition, the PRIX W invites you to explore the potential of architecture as a cultural experience, by imagining a monument enhanced through live performances, artistic practices, and the Mediterranean landscape. The aim is to design bold, responsible, and reversible projects, capable of adding a new layer to the history of the Château d’If without ever altering its identity.

We look forward to discovering your visions and interpretations of this exceptional site.

More than just a competition, this new edition is an invitation to experiment, to create a dialogue between architecture, art, and heritage, and to imagine interventions that transform the way we perceive a historic place.

We are counting on you to make this new edition of the PRIX W a significant moment of reflection and architectural creation.

To your pencils, models, and screens!