EU Awards Prizes For Beauty After Extensive Administrative Assessment Of Looking Nice
Thirteen projects have won New European Bauhaus prizes, proving beauty can survive a sufficiently detailed application form.
BRUSSELS, The European Commission has awarded the 2026 New European Bauhaus Prizes to 13 laureates from EU countries, Ukraine, North Macedonia, Japan and Brazil. The prizes cover sustainability, inclusion and beauty. This confirms that loveliness, like most other things, now needs a filing system. Hendrik Annex reports.
The ceremony advances the EU’s long campaign to make the future sustainable, inclusive and beautiful, preferably in that order and with the correct attachments. Previous generations were apparently expected to spot beauty for themselves. Citizens can now relax. A panel has checked it and given it an administrative shape.
According to the unofficial Office for the Measurement of Pleasantness, a project counts as beautiful when it improves a place, welcomes people and does not collapse beneath its own explanatory brochure. The office’s acting deputy assessor, Maudlin Kershaw, described beauty as “the bit where the spreadsheet briefly experiences a warm feeling”.
“Beauty is subjective, but only after being cross-referenced with Annex B.”
Applicants faced the usual task: prove that their work was practical and inspiring at once. This is often managed by putting a bicycle rack next to a paragraph on social cohesion. A man standing nearby said he had always considered a good bench beautiful. He now felt he ought to provide evidence that it could accommodate several identities and survive a moderately damp Tuesday.
That bench has company. The prizes take the New European Bauhaus idea beyond the EU, with winners from Ukraine, North Macedonia, Japan and Brazil among the 13 laureates. An international exchange of design principles and cultural perspectives is now under way, along with increasingly elaborate ways of describing a shared public square without simply calling it a square.
Professor Ivo Plinth, of the fictional Subcommittee for Non-Obvious Charm, said the judging process had settled the ancient question of whether beauty is subjective. “It is,” he said, “but only after being cross-referenced with inclusion, sustainability and Annex B, page 47.” He then gave a certificate to a potted plant for maintaining an appropriately hopeful posture.
The Commission’s announcement leaves Europe with a new standard. Buildings, neighbourhoods and public projects must be good for the planet, open to everyone and pleasant to look at, while remaining inside the approved definition of pleasant. The next problem is whether a beautiful form can be submitted in an ugly font. Officials at the Office for the Measurement of Pleasantness said it probably can. In triplicate, naturally.