10 projects by emerging practices in the Americas
selected by the MCHAP 2022 jury as outstanding
CHICAGO, IL (21 July 2022) – The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) announces 10 projects by emerging practices in the Americas as Outstanding, from the exceptional body of projects nominated for the 2022 MCHAP.emerge. The 2022 jury found extreme diversity across the nominated projects. This diversity is a result of projects which respond to their local conditions and offer lessons for a whole continent. Different contexts produce different values, provide specific materials and processes, and produce very diverse projects.
“How can architecture not just serve as a static monument but positively impact the specific context in which it stands?” asks MCHAP 2022 Jury Chair Sandra Barclay in a statement prepared by the jury, “Some architecture is big, some small, some built to manifest the novel innovation of human intuition, and other projects showcase the feats of our brain with large scales and modern technologies. No direction is better than the other. The most vital projects seem to effortlessly and elegantly solve problems appropriate to their context and offer people new ways to think about, experience, and use the world around them.
This is the Americas - a body of Earth spanning from far North to far South that offers a diversity of all sorts. Projects were assessed not in competition with others but measured by their ability to portray the needs and aspirations of their societies meaningfully and their capability to provide a new significance to their surrounding context.”
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MCHAP 2022
The fourth prize cycle considers built works completed in the Americas between January 2018 to December 2021. The MCHAP 2022 jury is composed of Jury Chair Sandra Barclay (Lima, Peru), Founding Partner of Barclay & Crousse Architecture and Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; Mónica Bertolino (Córdoba, Argentina), Owner of Estudio Bertolino-Barrado and Professor at the School of Architecture, Urbanism, and Design at Córdoba National University; Alejandro Echeverri (Medellin, Colombia), Director of URBAM Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Ambientales, Owner of Alejandro Echeverri + Valencia Architects, and Distinguished Professor at TEC de Monterrey; Julie Eizenberg, FAIA (Santa Monica, USA), Founding Principal of Koenig Eizenberg Architects; Philip Kafka (Detroit, USA), President of Prince Concepts; and MCHAP Director Dirk Denison (Chicago, USA), Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture, ex officio.
The winner of the MCHAP.emerge prize will be announced on September 21, 2022 and the MCHAP main prize winner will be announced in April 2023. Both events will be held at an award ceremony in Chicago at S.R. Crown Hall, bringing together nominated architects, their teams and clients, and students and faculty into conversation on IIT’s historic Mies Campus.
Restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic forced a two-year suspension of the biennial prize, but created an opportunity to assess its impact and reaffirm its agenda: to learn from architectural excellence that enriches lives. For this cycle jury criteria have been refined, and include consideration of how projects integrate natural, built, and human ecologies; create safe and new public spaces; engage communities as agents of change; use local workforces and materials; improve life in challenged communities; and more. The prize’s territory, the thirty-five countries of the Americas, includes a range of diverse, dynamic conditions that architecture must engage today. “MCHAP reinforces a unique North–South axis that creates potential for urgently needed cross-cultural learning at a moment of global change and crisis,” said MCHAP Director Dirk Denison.
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ABOUT MCHAP and MCHAP.emerge
The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) is a biennial prize that acknowledges excellence in built works of architecture in the Americas. The MCHAP Prize for Emerging Practice (MCHAP.emerge) is a corresponding acknowledgment of the best built work in the Americas authored by a practice in its first ten years of operation. MCHAP was conceived by the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology in 2013. Beyond simply identifying exceptional works, MCHAP brings nominators, jury members, students, faculty, practitioners and clients into an essential dialogue about what architecture makes possible. The result is a rich array of outputs: engaging events and symposia, inventive studios and workshops, and sophisticated, globally recognized publications.
Website: www.mchap.co/
Instagram: @miescrownhallamericasprize
MCHAP is currently in its fourth awards cycle, recognizing built works of architecture completed between January 2018 to December 2021. See the press release of the latest awards cycle here.