Kenneth Frampton, Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) Jury President, announced the seven inaugural MCHAP finalists at a public event in Santiago, Chile on the evening of July 9th. The winner of the inaugural MCHAP will be announced at the MCHAP Conference on October 22nd in Chicago.
The finalists, in alphabetical order, are:
1111 Lincoln Road in Miami, Florida, by Herzog & de Meuron
Altamira Residential Building in Rosario, Argentina, by Rafael Iglesia
Capilla del Retiro in Auco, Los Andes, Chile, by Undurraga Deves Arquitectos (Cristián Undurraga)
Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, by Álvaro Siza Vieira
Mestizo Restaurant in Santiago, Chile, by Smiljan Radic
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Bloch Building in Kansas City, Missouri by Steven Holl Architects
Seattle Central Library, in Seattle, Washington, by OMA / LMN – Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus (Partner in Charge)
MCHAP was founded by Wiel Arets, Dean of the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), to honor the best built work in the Americas. The prize was launched in February with Phyllis Lambert at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, Wiel Arets and Dirk Denison, MCHAP Director and Professor in the College of Architecture at IIT.
The seven inaugural MCHAP finalists, dating from 2000 to 2013, were announced after visits to the building sites by the inaugural MCHAP Jury, which includes: Jury President Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture at GSAPP, Columbia University, New York; Wiel Arets, Dean of the College of Architecture and Rowe Family College of Architecture Dean Endowed Chair at IIT, Chicago; Jorge Francisco Liernur, Architect, Professor at Torcuato Di Tella University, and Researcher of Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Investigation, Buenos Aires; Dominique Perrault, Founding Principal, Dominique Perrault Architecture, Paris and Professor at EPFL, Lausanne; and Sarah Whiting, Dean and William Ward Watkin Professor, Rice School of Architecture, Houston
“These seven built works are creative responses to the challenges of building in the 21st Century here in the Americas,” said Arets. “By highlighting them as MCHAP finalists, we wish to focus the public conversation on the opportunities of the modern metropolis – we seek to create a hub and it is our ambition to create a dialogue, that unites architects working in the Americas, but at the same time opens the discourse with others involved in the discipline around the world."
“The concept at the heart of MCHAP is to foster a deeper conversation about Architecture in the Americas,” said Denison, “The jury’s visits to the realized works, and our meetings with the architects and clients proved the value of such conversations in creating outstanding works of architecture.”
MCHAP was created as part of Dean Arets’ strategy for the College of Architecture at IIT emphasizing progressive research and a new curriculum. It was announced in NOWNESS March 2013, a publication introducing 'Rethinking Metropolis' as a theme for the College of Architecture. As part of the MCHAP program, the MCHAP.emerge – for a work by an emerging practice – was awarded to Poli House by the Chilean practice Pezo von Ellrichshausen at a ceremony held in Mies’ iconic S.R. Crown Hall on the campus of IIT in May. Nominees for both MCHAP and MCHAP.emerge, announced in April, were chosen by 70 professionally diverse, international ambassadors from throughout the Americas.
The authors of the MCHAP finalists will be celebrated at an event to be held at Crown Hall on October 22, 2014 where the jury will name the winner and engage in a direct dialogue about what qualities make for the most innovative and impactful contemporary architecture in the Americas.