MCHAP.emerge 2014/15 Winner Announced

Illinois Tech College of Architecture Dean Wiel Arets, Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) 2014/15 jury president Stan Allen, MCHAP 2014/15 juror Florencia Rodriguez, and MCHAP Director Dirk Denison announced the MCHAP.emerge 2014/15 winner, Pavilion on the Zocalo; Mexico City, Mexico; Productora, at the April 1, 2016 MCHAP.emerge Symposium and Award Dinner at S. R. Crown Hall, the home of IIT College of Architecture.

The authors of the winning project, presented at the MCHAP.emerge Symposium by Wonne Ickx, will be recognized with the MCHAP.emerge Award, the MCHAP Research Professorship in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology for the 2016/17 academic year, and funding of up to $25,000 USD in support of research and a publication related to the theme of “Rethinking Metropolis.”

The MCHAP.emerge 2014/15 Symposium included afternoon sessions during which the practices of the finalist projects presented their work and engaged in substantive discussions with the jury, the IIT Architecture faculty and student body, as well as the larger MCHAP network and Chicago architecture community. In addition to Pavilion on the Zocalo; Mexico City, Mexico; Productora, the MCHAP.emerge 2014/15 finalists included:

The MCHAP.emerge 2014/15 Finalists were selected by the MCHAP 2014/15 jury from among the 55 MCHAP.emerge 2014/15 nominated works of architecture in the Americas, realized between January 2014 and December 2015, which have been put forward by 95 nominators from throughout the Americas. Nominations were received in January and February and were included in the MCHAP 2014/15 Exhibition held at S. R. Crown Hall on March 4 and 5, at which time the jury held its first jury session.

The MCHAP 2014/15 jury includes Allen, architect and former Dean of Princeton University’s School of Architecture (New York); Florencia Rodriguez, editorial director of Piedra, Papel y Tijera publishers (Buenos Aires); Ila Berman, professor of Architecture, University of Waterloo (Waterloo); Jean Pierre Crousse of Barclay & Crousse (Lima), and Arets (Chicago).

MCHAP is a biennial prize that acknowledges the best built works of architecture in the Americas. MCHAP.emerge is the corresponding biennial prize for the best built work from an emerging architecture practice. MCHAP was created by Arets who, in his 2013 inaugural address, offered “Rethinking Metropolis” as a strategic device for the college, for research, for the development of knowledge and skills, for taking part in design exercises, for debate, and for making. Arets outlined his plan for a revitalized curriculum in NOWNESS, a publication in which he announced MCHAP among other initiatives. MCHAP was officially launched in February 2014 at an event hosted by Phyllis Lambert at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and which featured Kenneth Frampton, president of the inaugural MCHAP jury.

L to R: Dirk Denison, Florencia Rodriguez, Stan Allen, Wonne Ickx, and Dean Wiel Arets.