1 April 2026
The award was presented to the Podgorica Museum District and Park of Arts & Culture, currently under development in the capital of Montenegro, and previously the winner of first prize in the international competition organised by the Ministry of Spatial Planning, Urban Development and Public Assets.
The Green GOOD DESIGN programme identifies the most significant global examples of sustainable design, highlighting innovative environmental strategies and raising public awareness of eco-friendly design. For the 2026 edition, an international jury selected projects from 30 countries from among hundreds of entries.
The Podgorica project is based on a clear principle: to integrate architecture and landscape into a continuous system, reconnecting the city with the River Morača. The new cultural quarter is conceived as an open public infrastructure in which the museum and the park become a single entity: ‘the museum is the park, the park is the museum’.
Three distinct volumes – the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Natural History Museum and the House of Architecture – emerge from the river landscape as interconnected elements, forming a new urban landmark and a civic destination for the community. The accessible green roof returns space to the city, becoming a new public topography that extends the park above the buildings.
The environmental strategy is at the heart of the project: passive and active systems reduce energy consumption, whilst the use of local materials and contemporary construction techniques helps to minimise the overall carbon footprint. The landscape design, based on blue-green infrastructure, enhances biodiversity and improves environmental performance, including the conservation and expansion of existing vegetation.
This prestigious award adds to the list of international accolades received by the project. The Podgorica Museum Quarter was designed by a-fact architecture factory in collaboration with LAND, Maffeis Engineering and Charcoalblue, and exemplifies an approach in which architecture, landscape and sustainability function as a single integrated system.
