Some of the world’s leading architects are among sixty-seven firms from twenty-four countries who have submitted their candidacy for the first stage of the architectural competition for the EU TUMO Convergence Center for Engineering and Applied Science. They include three laureates of the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor, Arata Isozaki, RCR Arquitectes and Shigeru Ban, as well as major firms such as Bjarke Ingels Group: BIG, Kengo Kuma and MVRDV, and numerous highly accomplished local and international architects.

The Convergence Center, funded by the European Union, is an educational and technology hub comprising TUMO’s hands-on educational programs, facilities for learning and work, shared labs, the 42 coding school and the computer science and mathematics faculty of the French University in Armenia.

Three of the competing firms will be selected by the competition jury to enter the second and final stage of the competition. One of those three will be announced the winner in September and commissioned to design the Convergence Center. Construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2020 and completed in stages over the following two to three years. The competition jury is headed by Hashim Sarkis, Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and curator of the 2020 Venice Biennale.

Located in a 25,000 square meter campus next to the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan, the project is the region’s most ambitious new education ecosystem for engineering and applied science. The Convergence Center will be a vibrant community bringing together learning and entrepreneurship and connecting students, young professionals and local ventures to their global peers.