Sebastian Schützdeller, founder of MIRROR Architecture Group, has been appointed to the jury of the Badischer Architektur Preis 2026 — joining a panel of architects, engineers, and planners tasked with selecting this year's most significant built works across Baden-Württemberg.
The BADAP, founded in 2018 by Jürgen Grossmann, is a biennial prize awarded for outstanding architectural achievement in southwestern Germany. The jury reviews submissions across residential, public, hospitality and adaptive-reuse categories, with the brief to recognise projects that combine technical rigour with civic value.
For Sebastian, the appointment is his first formal jury role since founding MIRROR in 2017. He joins the jury alongside the chair Wolfgang Riehle and members including Astrid Piber, Andreas Schnubel and others — a group spanning practice, research, and engineering.
"Judging architecture is harder than designing it. You have to disappear from your own preferences and read the work on its own terms."
A jury, not a panel
The BADAP jury convenes in early 2027, with site visits and category nominations through spring. The award ceremony is scheduled for autumn 2027 in Karlsruhe. Submissions for the 2026 cycle close on 30 November 2026.
The work that lands on the jury table is — by its nature — work Sebastian could not have designed himself. That is the point. MIRROR's own working philosophy holds that architecture should reflect the client, not the architect. A jury role extends that thinking outward: the question is not which building feels closest to one's own taste, but which serves its site, its people, and its time most fully.
What the appointment means for MIRROR
The appointment does not change MIRROR's working structure. Each office continues to lead its own work. But the role brings a particular kind of reading practice — the practice of stepping inside many architects' decisions in a short window of time — back into the group.
Over the next twelve months, fragments of that reading practice will appear here, in the Voices archive, under the Letter category. Not the jury's deliberations (which remain confidential until publication) but the questions that emerge from looking at a lot of architecture at once.
— A note from the group, 14 June 2026