The winning SAPLAB team, consisting of Shiran Potié, Arno Goedefroo, Maurice Demeyer and Robin Feys, came from Belgium. The architects’ focus was on the Hub’s innovation centre, which uses the modern opportunities of steel to create a highly efficient building while enhancing the local culture. The Innovation Farm combines the functionality of the infrastructure for the agricultural supply chain with the mental and physical wellbeing of the workers offered by the relaxation areas. Great emphasis was placed on the various Manni Group technologies, which are present in every part of the building, and on the optimisation of the materials chosen for the construction. The “Golden Stool” of Ashanti culture is the concept for the design of the roof, where the curved structure of the green roof is supported by Manni Sipre’s heavy steelwork: each truss made with the GreenROOF system has an identical geometry, but is rotated differently to define the roof’s inclination; the secondary structure is made of local softwood beams, which reduces the cost caused by transport. Isopan sandwich panels were chosen for the walls, here characterised by a surface pattern inspired by the typical Kenthe fabric print: technological innovation in thermal insulation systems is thus combined with the history and local culture of Ghana.
MANNI GROUP
The Manni Group international architecture competition for young designers.
The Manni Group Design Award will involve a community of more than 4000 professionals worldwide. To judge their projects will be a remarkable jury composed of top-level archistars such as Patrik Schumacher (Zaha Hadid Architects), Ben Van Berkel (UNStudio), Stefano Boeri (Stefano Boeri Architetti), Antonio Cruz (Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos) and Giovanni De Niederhausern (Pininfarina).
A unique chance, therefore, for the designers to show their talent and get in touch with the precious judgment of the archistars.

The international archistars who have evaluated the competitions
III Manni Group Design Award - 2021
The Manni Group Design Award reaches its third edition: every year through this contest we involve designers from all over the world to create unique creations through offsite technologies, evaluated and awarded by internationally renowned Architecture Firms. Only 3% of the agricultural crop in Africa is managed through a system capable of maintaining the cold chain, thus wasting more than half of the products. The designers will therefore have to give life to the face of the Ghana Innovation Farm, a place to share skills and create wealth, a Cold Pole created to improve the economic and social conditions of the area.

II° Manni Group Design Award - 2020
Detroit Waterfront District precisely focuses on the most fascinating canvas of all: the urban void overlooking the river amid downtown skyscrapers. Detroit Waterfront District is the competition promoted by Manni Group in collaboration with Sterling Group to design the future leisure and entertainment heart of the city of Detroit.
Architects will deal with the area where stood the Joe Louis Arena beside the place where- according to tradition- Detroit’s founding fathers landed. Participants will have the opportunity to design a building complex to redefine the city skyline. They will generate superb architecture masterpieces to become the symbol of the revival of one of the most iconic and controversial cities of the history of the United States of America.

I° Manni Group Design Award - 2019
A new rail terminal will define the meeting point between East and West. It will be located at the end of the Silk Road. For centuries, generations of geographers and merchants had considered this place the most remote destination. This new rail terminal will be at the crossroads of the old and the new, the Yin and the Yang of the opposite poles that generate the future of human society on a daily basis.
Here, millions of roads will intersect. Millions of journeys will start and end. Millions of lives, expectations and hopes will meet in the frantic and unaware atmosphere of travel-related places. This is because a station is more than a simple railroad platform, travelling is more than an experience. After all, the journey is the most real and genuine metaphor for the human condition.

For the creation of such high-profile contests, Manni Group has relied on YAC, Young Architects Competitions: a company that promotes competitions of ideas and architecture, aimed above all - but not only - at young designers, through the periodic proposal of concrete themes architecture and urban planning capable of provoking interlocutors and generating solutions capable of imagining physical places for increasingly dynamic human activities.
The YAC platform makes it possible to reach a community of 4,200 professionals all over the world: an enormous potential in terms of visibility for architects who are preparing to participate in the Manni Group Design Award.