Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize Names Inaugural Winners

The College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) has announced the inaugural winners of its Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), an award program recognizing the best built works in the Americas.

From a pool of seven finalists, a jury selected two winners: the Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, by Álvaro Siza Vierira, the winner of the MCHAP2000-2008 award, and 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida, by Herzog & de Meuron, the winner of the MCHAP2009-2013 award.

“There were 36 outstanding projects and seven finalists, all of whom had amazing qualities,” says Dirk Denison, co-director of the MCHAP program. “The two selected were somehow the most complete in fulfilling their objects and profoundly effective in impacting their contexts.”

In addition to the award, the winners each will be recognized by the MCHAP chair at the College of Architecture for the following academic year and will receive funding of $50,000 in support of research and a publication related to the theme of “Rethinking Metropolis.”

Wiel Arets, the dean of the College of Architecture, established MCHAP and launched the program in February with Phyllis Lambert of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, and Denison, who, in addition to being MCHAP director, is also a professor in the College of Architecture.

“The College of Architecture at IIT has rebooted to concentrate on the issue of our cities, which will be the challenges our students face in their careers,” Denison says. “We understood the prize as a way of finding great examples of how other architects were identifying and solving these urban issues in their own works, and as a great source of understanding and reference.”