Angela Deuber is the winner of arcVision Prize 2015

Angela Deuber is the winner of the third arcVision Prize – Women and Architecture, an international architecture award for female designers instituted by the Italcementi Group. Angela Deuber is one of the youngest nominees in the year edition of the prize. The jury recognized the directions of her architecture that at the same time successfully synthesized the important aspects of structural construction, judicious use of materials, involvement and concern for the social role of women architects.

The ArcVision Prize was awarded today in the usual setting of i.lab, the Bergamo-based Italcementi’s Research and Innovation Centre.

Architecture today is defined less by beauty than it is by ugliness. We should begin architecture with a longing, a desire, an idea. We got lost in the complexity of architecture. Architecture is the backdrop for a piece of life for a society. When we build in the narrower sense, we build our life at the same time in the wider sense. We should take the physical boundaries seriously again. Most things we build make our environment not better but worse. We live in a time in which it is predominantly impossible to understand how things are made. We should be able to understand how something is made intuitively. Construction is an underestimated and intrinsic part of architecture, but since we no longer build with our hands, construction has become indirect, remote and alien. My work is an attempt to escape this alienation. The baseless separation of the idea and the execution degrades architecture. Creation and construction need to be inseparable. As architects, we have a great responsibility in society that we should take more seriously.

Architect Angela Deuber was chosen after two days of discussion by the Jury, composed as in the past editions by outstanding professionals from architecture and socio-economic fields: Shaikha Al Maskari (Board Member of the Arab International Women’s Forum-AIWF), Vera Baboun (Mayor of Bethlehem), Odile Decq (owner of the Odile Decq architecture firm), Yvonne Farrell (co-founder of Grafton Architects) Louisa Hutton (co-founder of the Sauerbruch Hutton architectural practice), Suhasini Mani Ratnam (an Indian actress, producer and writer), Samia Nkrumah (President of the Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Center), Benedetta Tagliabue (owner of the Miralles Tagliabue EMBT architectural firm), Martha Thorne (Director of the Pritzker Prize, regarded as the ‘Nobel Prize’ of architecture).

In line with the Italcementi entrepreneurial vision, the arcVision Prize aims to promote ideas and projects with a strong focus on innovation and functionality that are both sustainable and socially significant. It puts the accent on the “female” vision of architecture, to regenerate and design existing and future architecture.

“In the year that Milan is hosting the World Fair, for its third edition arcVision Prize wanted to involve the ambassadors of WE-Women for Expo,” said Italcementi CEO Carlo Pesenti. “We believe that ‘good architecture’ combines creative and technical capabilities, but also imagination, emotions, the heart. Qualities that women know how to enhance, filling their daily activities – as actresses, athletes, business leaders, architects – with meaning and sensitivity.”  

“ArcVision Prize,” added Pesenti “recognizes innovative, sustainable and social ideas and projects that incorporate beauty and functionality in construction and housing. The award puts the spotlight on a ‘feminine’ vision of architecture combining technology and environment, materials and form, style and efficiency to regenerate the city and the community.”

ARCVISION PRIZE 2015

The third edition boasted impressive numbers: 50 candidates, a short list of 21 designers from 16 countries – with all continents represented: Spain, India, Mexico, Italy, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, USA, Japan, Egypt, South Africa, Thailand, Morocco, Australia, Greece, Jordan.

The Jury, whose meetings were coordinated by the Scientific Director of the Prize, Stefano Casciani, also awarded Special Mentions to Kate Otten (South Africa), Patama Roonrakwit (Thailand) and Samira Rathod (India).