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American Academy Of Arts And Letters announces Architecture Award Winners for 2022

United States Architecture News - May 02, 2022 - 13:24   1491 views

American Academy Of Arts And Letters announces Architecture Award Winners for 2022

The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the annual architecture program honours prominent architects, artists, writers, and composers from the U.S, has announced the recipients of its 2022 Architecture Awards.

Spanish architect Carme Pinós has been awarded the 2022 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, the highest accolade given "to an architect of any nationality who has made a significant contribution to architecture as an art." 

Carme Pinós, the founder and principal of Estudio Carme Pinós, an architecture and design firm in Barcelona, will be awarded the $20,000 cash prize. 

Carme Pinós designed the 2018 MPavilion in Melbourne's Queen Victoria Gardens, commissioned by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation to a different architect each year. Carme Pinós became the first Spanish female architect who designed a public work in Australia.

Ensamble Studio founders Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa, SO-IL founders Florian Idenburg & Jing Liu, Sharon Johnston & Mark Lee, founding principles of Johnston Marklee, and Anthony Titus have been named as the 2022 winners as well.

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. 

This year’s winners were chosen from a group of 25 individuals and practices nominated by the members of the Academy. 

This year's jurors composed of Toshiko Mori (chair), Marlon Blackwell, Peter Eisenman, Steven Holl, Annabelle Selldorf, Nader Tehrani, and Meejin Yoon.

Antón García-Abril & Débora Mesa has been awarded with a $10,000 cash prize and is given to "American architects whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction." Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa are the founding principals of Ensamble Studio, an architecture firm based in Boston, Massachusetts.

American Academy Of Arts And Letters announces Architecture Award Winners for 2022

SO-IL designed "Beeline" at the Amanda Levete-designed MAAT Museum in Lisbon. Image © Iwan Baan

New York-based firm SO-IL founders Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg have been awarded a $10,000 cash prize. The prize is given "to American architects whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction."

Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg spoke to WAC as part of our Live Interview Series last year. Themed as "The Role of Artistic Interventions in Architecture", the talk discussed the studio's latest works and design philosophy. 

American Academy Of Arts And Letters announces Architecture Award Winners for 2022

The Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas, United States, which was completed in 2018. Image © Richard Barnes

Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, founding principles of Johnston Marklee, an architecture firm based in Los Angeles, CA, and Cambridge, MA, have been awarded a $10,000 cash prize. An award is given "to American architects whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction."

Johnston and Marklee founded Johnston Marklee in 1998, the studio has been recognized internationally with over 40 major honors and awards. The studio's recent projects include the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas, a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the design of the new Dropbox global headquarters in San Francisco, California, and the new UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California.

Watch an exclusive interview with Sharon Johnston on "Rethinking Architectural Education, Studio Culture and the Future of Architecture Profession" on WAC. 

Lastly, Anthony Titus, the founder of Anthony Titus Studio, an interdisciplinary art and architecture practice in New York City, has been awarded with a $10,000 cash prize. The prize is given "to an American who explores ideas in architecture through any medium of expression." He is also a professor of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. 

Early members include William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Edward MacDowell, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, and Edith Wharton. The Academy’s 300 members are elected for life and pay no dues.

Top image: Carme Pinós' 2018 MPavilion in Melbourne. Image © John Gollings.

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