The winning projects of the Archiprix 2026 - the prize for graduation projects in architecture, urban planning, interior and landscape architecture – have been announced. Magdalena Salinas (Master Interior Architecture, 2025) wins Archiprix 2026 with her graduation project 'With Salt it Hurts, With Salt it Heals'. Congratulations Magdalena!
Through highlighting innovative, socially relevant designs and addressing issues like climate change, migration, and urban density, Archiprix serves as a vital link between emerging talent and the professional field.
The shared second prize went to BX Nord by Cédric Dries, Kikanzu Cambamba by Helena Fernandes De Raeymaeker, and Of Water and Matter by Lilli Malou Selcho. This year 26 graduation projects from across the Netherlands have been nominated, each addressing pressing social and environmental themes. As in 2025, Archiprix will be teaming up with the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) who will be acting as producer for the upcoming exhibition.
The jury about the winning projects:
"The winning projects are characterized by a strikingly addressing, experimental design attitude. They call for action and reflection, but at the same time embrace the complexity of the issues at hand. Through often unconventional, philosophical approaches, they explore issues in which the relationship between humans, nature, well-being, and public space is under pressure."
Magdelena Salinas about her project in Archined:
"What began as an intuitive curiosity (an interest in researching salt as a possible material for architecture) gradually unfolded into the discovery of a far more complex and difficult reality: the ecological consequences of the lithium industry in my home country. Through salt, I found myself disentangling an invisible territorial network of extraction, evaporation, and water depletion embedded within the global transition toward renewable energy.
This process led to the title With Salt it Hurts, which refers to this initial phase of research: a stage of discovery, confrontation, and acceptance of the often-unspoken costs behind so-called green technologies, costs that were directly affecting the landscapes, ecosystems, and communities of my own land. The subject therefore began not from certainty, but from material curiosity and research; and then evolved into a critical spatial investigation into the hidden geographies of extraction."
