World Architecture Community has been named as the winner of the 2020 Marina Waisman CICA Digital Communication Award at Dennis Sharp CICA Awards for Architectural Criticism 2020. 

The prestigious CICA Awards believes that architectural criticism has a wider and broader role apart from its bureaucratic restrictions and should encourage new forms of creativity in journalism. The CICA Dennis Sharp Publication Awards are given every three years, recognizing successful texts, essays, exhibitions and books. 

In the Marina Waisman CICA Digital Communication Award category, World Architecture Community has beaten US-based architecture media brand The Architect’s Newspaper and independent architecture magazine Viceversa, while the two media brands have received Honourable Mentions in the same category.

"WAC has and undaunted ambition to bring together the global community" 

Adding the Marina Waisman CICA Digital Communication Award category for the first time as exemplary forms of digital communication this year, "the website has an undaunted ambition to bring together the global community through World Architecture Community, with the chief editor Berrin Chatzi Chousein," said Prof. Wilfried Wang, Chair of the International Jury. 

"Bauhaus: Building the New Artist", curated by Maristella Casciato, Gary Fox and Katherine Rochester, and hosted by the Getty Research Institute, has been named as the winner in the same category. 

"The two winners of the CICA Marina Waisman Digital Communication Awards 2020 thus represent outstanding models of critical public discourse," Wang added.

"The Architect’s Newspaper is one an exemplary online news format with dense coverage, and "Viceversa" is an eminently readable and reflective source of architectural thinking," Wang continued.

The international jury comprised of Wilfried Wang - Chair, Germany/USA, Fernando Diez from Argentina, Karen Eicker from South Africa, Louise Noelle Gras from Mexico, Suha Ozkan from Turkey, Xing Ruan from China/Australia and Joseph Rykwert from USA/UK. Trenton A. Sexton (USA) is the Assistant to the Jury.

The winners will be announced at the online CICA Symposium to be held in conjunction with the UIA World Congress Rio de Janeiro 2021 on 19 July 2021 at 10 am Rio de Janeiro time over Zoom. Those who want to participate can join using this link and the information: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/91792143300. Meeting ID: 917 9214 3300. 

The award ceremony is free and open to the public, places are limited to 300 people. 

CICA Awards, distinguished from other awards, evaluates architecture criticism in innovative forms 

The International Committee of Architectural Critics CICA, a UNESCO affiliated organization, established in Mexico City in 1978, has been closely associated with the World Congresses of the International Union of Architects. The prestigious CICA Book Awards were first initiated at the XIV UIA World Congress in 1981 in Warsaw. 

The first major CICA book award was given to Prof Manfredi Nicoletti for his book L’Architettura delle Caverne (Laterza). 

The CICA Awards categories are given in four categories: "CICA Bruno Zevi Book Award", given for published books on architectural criticism, theory and history, "Pierre Vago CICA Journalism Award", given for an article of architectural criticism for individual, institutional or society magazines, newspapers and journals, "Julius Posener CICA Exhibition Catalogue Award", given for a critical text, preface or introduction published in an exhibition catalogue or supporting publication produced for an architectural exhibition.

Lastly, "Marina Waisman CICA Digital Communication Award”, given for non-print media and publications, which was added for the first time this year as a new category to the CICA Awards, aims to "expand the awards beyond the traditional three categories of books, exhibition catalogues and journal articles, discovering exemplary forms of digital communication." 

The current President of CICA is Joseph Rykwert and CICA Board Members are: François Chaslin (F), Manuel Cuadra (Germany), Louise Noelle Gras (Mexico), Suha Ozkan (Turkey), and Yasmin Shariff (UK).

CICA Awards recognizes WAC as an effective and growing community-led architecture platform 

Being an effective and growing community-led architecture website, World Architecture Community was recogzined for its significant mission, bringing architects, interiors designers and students from all over the world in various forms in the website.

Since founded in 2006, the main differentiator of WAC is to have its membership business model and allow its members to showcase themselves and their projects in various forms on the website. 

All members are able to publish their projects freely, participate in the WA Awards 10+5+X, showcase their offices, with links and description in dedicated pages, which are all described as a self-fulfilling prophecy realized by WAC's community efforts.

Having over 36,000 registered members, and with 2,000,000 million unique visitors and 6,700,000 page views, plus with a significant reach over its social media with over 1,000,000 million followers, World Architecture Community is one of the most powerful websites in the architecture world.  

Given the very large number of submissions in all categories, the Jury decided to recognize the outstanding quality with a larger number of prizes and honourable mentions than in the previous awards.

Scroll down to see the Winners and Honourable Mentions of CICA Dennis Sharp Publication Awards 2020:

CICA Bruno Zevi Book Awards 2020

Three Awards

Barsac, Jacques
Charlotte Perriand: Complete Works, Volume 4, 1968- 1999
Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich 2019.

Carpo, Mario
The Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence
MIT Press, Cambridge 2017.

Zein, Ruth Verde
Critical Readings
Romano Guerra and Nhamerica Press, Sao Paulo-Austin 2019.

Four Honourable Mentions 

Berger, Alan; Kotkin, Joel; Balderas-Guzmán, Celina (eds.)
Infinite Suburbia
Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton 2017.

Blau, Eve; Rupnik, Ivan
Baku: Oil and Urbanism
Park Books, Zurich 2019.

Eigen, Edward
On Accident: Episodes in Architecture and Landscape
MIT Press, Cambridge 2018.

Vassalo, Jesus
Epics in the Everyday: Photography, Architecture, and the Problem of Realism
Park Books, Zurich 2020.

CICA Julius Posener Exhibition Catalogue Award 2020

One Award

Vrachliotis, Georg; Kleinmanns, Joachim; Kunz, Martin; Kurz, Philip (eds.)
Frei Otto: Thinking by Modeling,
Spector Books, Leipzig, 2017.

Two Honourable Mentions

Alonso, Pedro Ignacio; Palmarola, Hugo (eds.)
Flying Panels: How Concrete Panels Changed the World
ArkDes, Stockholm, 2019.

López Manzanares, Juan Ángel; Fraile, María
Rafael Moneo, Una reflexión teórica desde la profesión – Materiales de archivo (1961- 2016)

CICA Pierre Vago Journalism Award 2020

Four Awards

Iturbe, Elisa
Architecture and the Death of Carbon Modernity
Log #47, Anyone Corporation, New York 2019.

Ho, Miriam; Jones, Ruth; O’Carroll, Aisling (eds.)
Deviant Devices
SITE #40, The Site Magazine, Toronto 2019.

O’Toole, Shan
Identity Check
Architectural Review, EMAP Publishing Ltd., London 2019.

Tuomey, John
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth: Reading the Plan of Ronchamp
arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, Vol. 23, Issue 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2019.

Seven Honourable Mentions

Ciarkowski, Blażej
Holidays with Totalitarianisms

Herito #29, International Cultural Centre, Kraków 2017.

Kamin, Blair
An Incredible Transformation? Not Really
Chicago Tribune, Tribune Publishing, Chicago 2018.

Kimmelman, Michael
Is This the Neighborhood New York Deserves?
The New York Times, The New York Times Company, New York 2019.

Knight, Christopher
An Open Letter to LACMA Architect Peter Zumthor: Stop Dissing L.A.’s Art
Los Angeles Times, California Times Publication, Los Angeles 2019

Mollard, Manon
Form Follows Failure
Architectural Review, EMAP Publishing Ltd., London 2019.

Mrduljaš, Maroje
Between Ecology and Spectacle
Oris #117, Oris House for Architecture, Zagreb 2020.

Murphy, Jack
Hyperreferential Architecture
Paprika!, Yale School of Architecture, New Haven 2019.

CICA Marina Waisman Digital Communication Awards 2020

Two Awards

Casciato, Maristella; Fox, Gary; Rochester, Katherine
Bauhaus: Building the New Artist, The Getty Research Institute
https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/bauhaus/new_artist/

Chatzi Chousein, Berrin (ed.)
World Architecture Community
https://worldarchitecture.org/ 

Two Honourable Mentions:

Morley, Jack B. (ed.)
The Architect’s Newspaper
https://www.archpaper.com/

Mosco, Valerio Paolo; Scelsi, Valter; Ferrando, Davide T.
Viceversa
viceversamagazine.com.

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