The verdict is out! SANAA's meandering Grace Farms “River” project has won the second Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, as announced by IIT College of Architecture Dean Wiel Arets and MCHAP Director Dirk Denison during a ceremony tonight at the S.R. Crown Hall in Chicago. First awarded in 2014, the biennial MCHAP is IIT's way of illuminating the most distinguished architectural projects built in the Americas. Projects for the second edition had to be completed between January 2014 and December 2015.
As part of their prize package, SANAA founders Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa will be appointed as MCHAP Chair at IIT Architecture Chicago for the following academic year and will receive up to $50,000 to fund research and a collaborative publication with the school.
SANAA won over an international group of finalists that included Michael Maltzan, Grafton Architects, and Patkau Architects + Kearns Mancini Architects, to name a few (projects pictured in photo gallery below).
The River has come quite a long way since SANAA first unveiled the scheme in 2012. Nestled within Grace Farms' 80 acres of landscape in New Canaan, the 83,000-square-foot community and arts facility accommodates Grace Farms' programs and aims to offer visitors a space of “peaceful respite and vibrant activity”. The building opened last October with a bustling itinerary of events, attracting approximately 50,000 people in its first six months.
The design for Grace Farms drew inspiration partly from Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, and other 20th-century icons who impacted American residential modernism while working in New Canaan. According to an MCHAP statement, “Although Mies and Johnson were not direct models, they helped set the aspiration for transcendent lightness: a structure that would float on the landscape while also being fully integrated with it.”
“Among a strong group of projects, Grace Farms emerged as a clear winner for the clarity and consistency of its architectural solution [...],” MCHAP Jury President Stan Allen said. “The firsthand experience of the building reveals a confident realization and the immediacy of its detailing.”
In this MCHAP competition, architecture students were invited to compete in the inaugural MCHAP.Student Prize, which the jury awarded to (a)typical office by Tommy Kyung-Tae Nam and Yun Yun from the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Nam and Yun “will be acknowledged with an IIT Architecture Research Fellowship and a $10,000 commitment toward a production of a Research Fellowship”.
Previous Archinect coverage:
Álvaro Siza and Herzog & de Meuron win first Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize in Chicago
SANAA's meandering "River" community center opens to the public
SANAA's Grace Farms River project to open in fall 2015
SANAA Unveils Design for First U.S. Building Since Pritzker Win
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