The American Academy of Arts and Letters has just awarded two Spanish architecture firms.

Estudio Carme Pinós, led by Carme Pinós as their 2022 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize. The Spanish architect joins recent winners like Marina Tabassum as well as Eduardo Souto de Moura and Diébédo Francis Kéré, Alberto Campo Baeza and Phyllis Lambert, on a list of prestigious architects.

The Academy’s annual architecture awards program began in 1955 with the inauguration of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize and has since expanded to include four Arts and Letters Awards.

The prestigious 66-year-old prize grants $20,000 to an architect of any nationality who has made a significant contribution to architecture as an art form.
The Academy also awarded four $10,000 Arts and Letters Awards to  Ensamble Studio's Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa (whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction.  They are the founding principals of Ensamble Studio, an architecture firm based in Boston, MA), SO-IL founders Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, Johnston Marklee founders Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, Anthony Titus Studio founder and RPI professor Anthony Titus, for their unique own vision as the leaders of their respective firms.

This year’s winners were chosen from a group of 25 individuals and practices nominated by the members of the Academy. This year’s jury was composed of Toshiko Mori (chair), Marlon Blackwell, Peter Eisenman, Steven Holl, Annabelle Selldorf, Nader Tehrani, and Meejin Yoon.

"Carme Pinós’s architecture engages her strength of reason with compassion for humanity, harmonizing emotion, and rationality," Mori commented. "Each building is embedded within the terrain, connecting and transforming its context. Her curvilinear forms blend with their surroundings, blurring the boundary between physical world and memory. A complex series of sections within each project results in spectacular spatial experiences, while the innate rationality of her plans is influenced by her lyrical intuition to become fluid expressions of openness."
 2022 jury chair Toshiko Mori

More information

Carme Pinós i Desplat graduated with a degree in architecture from the school of Architecture in Barcelona (ETSAB) in 1979. In the mid 1980s the architectural proposals she developed in partnership with Enric Miralles obtained recognition in several architectural competitions. In 1991 she set up her own studio and since then she has combined her activity as an architect with teaching as a guest professor at different universities such as the Graduate Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation de Columbia University (1999), the École Polytechnique Féderale of Lausanne (2001-02), the Graduate  School of Design of Harvard University (2003), the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (2005-06) o la Universitá di Roma Tre (2007-08).

Her built work and projects have been exhibited at several galleries and museums. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris hold models of her projects in their permanent collections. Her work has been published in several monographs (Actar, 1998: Monacelli Press 2004; “Documentos de Arquitectura”, nº 60, 2006). In 2008 she received the National Prize for Architecture and Urban Space from the Catalan Government in recognition of her entire professional career.

Read more
Ensamble Studio is a cross-functional team founded in 2000 and led by architects Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa.

Balancing education, research and practice, the office explores innovative approaches to architectural and urban spaces, and the technologies that build them.

Among the studio’s most relevant completed works are Hemeroscopium House and Reader’s House in Madrid (Spain), Music Studies Center and SGAE Central Office in Santiago de Compostela (Spain), The Truffle in Costa da Morte (Spain), Cervantes Theater in Mexico City and, more recently, Cyclopean House in Brookline (USA) and Structures of Landscape for Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana (USA). Currently, bigger scale projects are being developed like Zip Tower, Plot Tower and Big Bang Tower, high-rise systems for residential and mix-use programs.

Their work has been extensively published in both printed and digital media, exhibited world-wide -MOMA NY 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2015, Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture 2013 in Shenzhen, GA International Exhibitions 2014-2010 in Tokyo, Venice Architecture Biennale 2010, etc.-  and awarded with international prizes -Austrian State Award for Architecture 2014, Iakov Chernikhov Prize 2012, Rice Design Alliance Prize 2009 to emerging architects, Architectural Record Design Vanguard Prize 2005, among others.

Beside their professional career, both principals keep a very active research and academic agenda, have been invited professors and lecturers at numerous universities and architecture forums, were curators of Spainlab -Spanish Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia- in 2012 and founded that same year the POPlab (Prototypes of Prefabrication Research Laboratory) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), that they continue to direct.
Read more
Published on: April 20, 2022
Cite: "Carme Pinós wins 2022 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/carme-pinos-wins-2022-arnold-w-brunner-memorial-prize> ISSN 1139-6415
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...
Loading content ...