Every two years the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) College of Architecture is awarded to a built work in the Americas that best represents architectural excellence. The 2018 winner is Edificio E, an academic building in northern Peru that provides an element of sheltering softness in a harsh savannah and encourages intensive social interaction among students at the University of Piura. The selection was announced by 2018 MCHAP Jury Chair Ricky Burdett CBE.
Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse of the Lima-based Barclay & Crousse Architecture, the designers of Edificio E, will receive $50,000 in funding toward research and the development of a publication as well as the MCHAP Chair of Architecture at IIT. The announcement concluded a benefit dinner held in IIT?s historic S. R. Crown Hall, a Ludwig Mies van der Rohe?designed landmark and MCHAP?s center of operations. The ceremony followed a day of dialogue between the six finalists and their clients, members of the award jury, and IIT students and faculty, including a public symposium focused on the current state of architecture in the Americas. The benefit dinner was co-chaired by founding MCHAP board member Helyn Goldenberg and Chicago-based philanthropist Michael N. Alper.
This year?s prize recognizes the best built project in the Americas completed between January 2016 and December 2017. MCHAP Director Dirk Denison remarks, ?Though they come from diverse contexts ...