WINNERS
All 359 submitted graduation projects were reviewed and discussed by the jury - Rahel Shawl, Aric Chen, Marlene Wagner, Nathalie Jean-Baptiste and Stacy Passmore. They were impressed with the overall quality of the projects, to say nothing of the range of questions they ask and the breadth of approaches to architecture that they take. The jury nominated 22 projects for an award. The 6 winners of the awards were announced at the Award ceremony on 2 December in the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. The winners of the 11th edition of Archiprix International are, in alphabetical order:
Sebastián León, Cinthia Olate, Constanza Jara > CHOYÜ-FEN PARK
Universidad Autonoma, Arquitectura, Temuco Chile
The jury: The project is set in a contested place, which is also subject to a lot of tension. The designers use architecture to take a site, the site of the Mapuche, and propose a meeting place between two cultures – that of the oppressed and that of the oppressor – for a shared history. It’s a beautiful project that shows the potential of architecture as a tool of significance.
Icao Tiseli > Mapping the Feke
University of Auckland, School of Architecture and Planning, Auckland New Zealand
The jury: A highly conceptual project and, at the same time, a political statement. The celebration of indigenous knowledge also amounts to a questioning of the Cartesian world view. The project narrates a cosmological journey based on indigenous Tongan culture and provides an ontological understanding with architecture as a processual spatial framework for continuous observation and learning.
María Martínez-Morón > Silk-Skin City
Universidad Europea de Madrid, Escuela de Arquitectura, Ingeniería y Diseño, Madrid Spain
The jury: The project is socially relevant. The designer has dealt not only with the building but also with the activities around it, and the significance of the building for its surroundings. Silk-Skin City deploys architecture to force change and does this in a convincing and consistent way, with an eye for details.
Andrew Zi Hang Law > The Ark of Antwerp
University of Glasgow / The Glasgow School of Art, Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow Scotland
The jury: As a speculative infrastructure, the project relates conditions of land-water transformations throughout centuries and proposes human spatial interventions such as the preservation of the city as memory to dissolve in phases, thinking 200 years ahead.
Tamar Ofer > Towards a New Architect
Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Architecture, Jerusalem Israel
The jury: Many young architects reflect on the role of the architect and research new ways of practising architecture. For them, architecture is more than building. Towards a New Architect is a taxonomy of the profession of architect that pays attention to all stakeholders. It is a thoughtful and mature project, a handbook for architecture today.
Toby Fong > wild [ life ] nomad bootcamp_
The National University of Singapore, Department of Architecture, Singapore SingaporeThe jury: The project shows architecture as a process of transition and speculates on what this transition process could look like. With the suggestion of rewilding for food production security as a shared responsibility, the project conveys un-learning and re-learning with processual, indigenous, generational and endangered knowledge, mediating between urban and rural life as a reciprocal plant-architecture relationship.
A last word from jury member Nathalie Jean-Baptiste: “My message to the participants is that we should not forget that the majority of people around the world build because they need to: whether is it a shelter, a road, a school, a health facility, a public space, etc... Architects have the opportunity to rethink and rework means and ways to foster protection and restoration of inner peace and harmony. This is needed more than ever! The time has come for a collective reassurance that we are better than what we have built and currently destroy, and the new generation of architects – that is you – is far better equipped to face and address the challenges of today.”
Photos award ceremony: Fred Ernst
News Overview
