Sustainability and Health Award. CSCAE 2026 ARCHITECTURE Awards
The Strategic Regeneration Plan for Playa de Palma, developed by the joint venture led by Victoria Fiol Duran and LANDLAB, Landscape Laboratory, has received the Sustainability and Health Award at the 2026 CSCAE ARCHITECTURE Awards, organized by the Higher Council of the Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE).
The project, commissioned by the Palma City Council and developed by Victoria Fiol Duran and LANDLAB (Miriam García and Jordi Miró), proposes a comprehensive transformation of Playa de Palma to address the challenges posed by climate change and biodiversity loss in one of the Mediterranean’s most important tourist destinations.
The ARCHITECTURE Awards are among the most prestigious recognitions in the field of architecture in Spain. In this edition, the winning projects were selected by a jury of renowned architects from a shortlist of 25 finalists. These finalists had previously been chosen from 209 shortlisted projects by Spain’s Regional Chambers and Councils of Architects, from a total of 534 submissions.
Playa de Palma is a mature tourist destination in need of profound modernization. In response to an urban model that has become detached from the physical characteristics of the territory and its natural resources, the Strategic Plan represents the first phase of a comprehensive process of climate adaptation and transition towards a more circular tourism model. The proposal promotes the naturalization of streets and parks through nature-based solutions, sustainable urban drainage systems, and climate-adapted planting strategies, while also integrating criteria related to energy, mobility, water, materials, and waste management.
The plan establishes a green and blue infrastructure designed to mitigate climate impacts, optimize natural resources, and improve spatial quality, livability, and public health, placing people at the heart of urban and territorial regeneration. The strategy recognizes the potential of spaces often overlooked by conventional planning and transforms them into active components of an ecological network capable of enhancing resilience and collective well-being.
The jury particularly highlighted the project’s ability to address the relationship between sustainability and health through an integrated approach in a territory subject to intense human pressure. In its assessment, the jury emphasized how the proposal identifies ecosystem functions in places traditionally perceived as urban voids: abandoned plots reclaimed by nature, flood-prone areas, coastal edges, and transitional landscapes between urban and rural environments.
The jury also valued the creation of a network of ecological spaces, nodes, and corridors that requalify the urban environment through rigorous sectoral studies and nature-based solutions, integrating resilience, sustainability, and health through a broad, complex, and multidisciplinary vision.
This award represents an important recognition of LANDLAB’s ongoing commitment to projects that combine architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture to address the major challenges of our time. It reinforces an approach to design that places ecological regeneration, climate adaptation, and human health at the center of the transformation of cities and territories.
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