Pfann-Ohmann Prize 2025

Pfann-Ohmann Prize to Simge Pehlivan, Lena Werle, Lukas Schiffner, Paula Ewald “Peatland Campus”

The project „Peatland Campus“ by students Simge Pehlivan, Lena Werle, Lukas Schiffner, Paula Ewaldwas chosen by the jury of this year’s Pfann-Ohmann Prize as the best work out of 25 nominated submissions. The work was created as part of the bachelor’s programme „Archipelagos: Towards a Cosmopolitical Architecture“ in the summer semester 2025 and was supervised by María Páez González und Brendon Carlin betreut. Congratulations on this award!

The project rethinks the type of the campus as three spatial interventions along the River Shannon in the Callows area, proposing a framework that redefines Ireland’s relationship with water — from extraction to regeneration. It explores how peatland restoration and monastic archetypes can hybridise to create spaces of care. 

At the Extraction Void, a concrete volume mirroring the pipeline’s ten-minute water extraction makes water commodification visible while recalling the typology of Irish holy wells. At Redwood Bog, modular and temporary stations for research and restoration reference early Irish dwellings. The Peatland Cloister Campus unites these ideas into a framework for collective learning and ecological care. 

The project proposes a forward-looking model for inhabiting restoration and resilience. It challenges extractive paradigms, not through oppsition, but through architectural propositions that reframe learning as a ritual of stewardship.