A total of 420 projects across Europe were nominated to compete for the 2015 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award, regarded as the highest-ranking prize in European architecture for projects less than 2 years old. The biennial €60,000 prize was initiated in 1987 by the European Commission and the Barcelona City Hall to highlight recent projects that are exemplary of the prize's mission to foster design and technological innovation as well as noteworthy contributions from architects across the continent. The prize also gives an outlook of the evolving creative process of present-day architects working in Europe.

With 420 nominees, perhaps it's still too early to predict which projects will get shortlisted and then become finalists by the end of January 2015.

A few of the 2015 nominees include:

Spots - a conversion of former transformation stations in Košice, Slovakia by Architektonické štúdio Atrium

Hideg House in Kőszeg, Hungary by Béres Architects

The Library Learning Center, Vienna University of Economics and Business in Vienna, Austria by Zaha Hadid Architects

Danish Maritime Museum in Helsingør, Denmark by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

FRAC Centre - Permanent and Temporary Exhibition rooms in Orléans, France by Jakob+Macfarlane

Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin, Germany by nps tchoban voss

The Court of Justice in Hasselt, Belgium by J. Mayer H.

MMMMMS House in Girona, Spain by Anna & Eugeni Bach

Projects are nominated by individual experts from all over Europe as well as members of the Architects’ Council of Europe, the Advisory Committee of the Prize, and various national architects’ associations. The list of previous grand prize winners give a sense of the prize's caliber, or at least of what the jury is attracted to. This includes many globally recognized names like David Chipperfield Architects, SNØHETTA, Zaha Hadid, OMA, Nicholas Grimshaw, Peter Zumthor, Dominique Perrault, Foster + Partners, Álvaro Siza Vieira, and Henning Larsen Architects.

In addition to the grand prize, professionals at the start of their careers can compete to win the Emerging Architect Award (€20,000), while the newly added Young Talent Architecture Prize (YTAP) will award Europe's top master's degree projects for current students.

Click through the thumbnail below for more projects that caught our attention. You can also check out the full list here.