Álvaro Siza and Herzog & de Meuron win first Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize in Chicago

In a large evening benefit dinner at IIT College of Architecture's S. R. Crown Hall in Chicago last night, Álvaro Siza and Herzog & de Meuron were announced as the winners of the inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP).

Established by IIT architecture dean Wiel Arets and launched earlier this year with Phyllis Lambert and Dirk Denison, the MCHAP honors what is considered the best built works in the Americas.

Siza received the MCHAP2000-2008 award for the Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil. For the MCHAP2009-2013 award, Herzog & de Meuron won for their 1111 Lincoln Road project in Miami Beach, Florida.

Find out more below.

The MCHAP award also includes the MCHAP Chair at IIT College of Architecture for the following academic year, and a US$50,000 prize to support research and publication in contribution to "Rethinking Metropolis", the college's ongoing theme envisioned by Dean Arets.

In addition to 1111 Lincoln Road and Iberê Camargo Foundation, the finalists also included:

• Altamira Residential Building in Rosario, Argentina, by Rafael Iglesia Arquitectura
• Capilla del Retiro in Auco, Los Andes, Chile, by Undurraga Deves Arquitectos
• Mestizo Restaurant in Santiago, Chile, by Smiljan Radic Studio
• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Bloch Building in Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. by Steven Holl Architects
• Seattle Central Library, in Seattle, Washington, U.S. by OMA / LMN

"MCHAP seeks to assess the state of architecture, created in partnership by architects and clients, that unites the Americas into a single continent of cultural diversity and richness. MCHAP also seeks to show students how built works—public or private, cultural or commercial—reinforce the public dimension of urban space and contribute at an infrastructural level."

Scroll down further to see the winning projects.

MCHAP2000-2008 winner: Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil by Álvaro Siza
Representing the project at the award benefit dinner were architects Álvaro Siza of Álvaro Siza Arquitecto and Jose Luiz Canal

"The Iberê Camargo Foundation building was completed in May 2008 and built to house the collection of Iberê Camargo, the Brazilian painter. The open, generous spaces of the Foundation building inspire the study and investigation of contemporary art in an uplifting atmosphere. The building responds to a site that is relatively small in size, narrow and bordered by a busy avenue. The shape of the building is dependent of the shape of the slope against which it is built. The front of the building is undulated in a symmetrical manner to the slope itself. 

In their deliberations, the Jury noted the importance of symbolic space in relation to the promenade -- the movement of the people through the structure. The Iberê Camargo Foundation building compels you to move through the space both because of its skillfully sculpted experiences and its masterfully expressed forms. At the edge of the city, the foundation combines the museum with parking, café, bookstore, and workspace, just as it stitches together the site between the water and the hill, bifurcated by the highway."

MCHAP2009-2013 winner: 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida, USA by Herzog & de Meuron
Representing the project at the award benefit dinner were architects Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Christine Binswanger and Jason Frantzen of Herzog & de Meuron as well as clients Robert Wennett and Jeff Weinstein of UIA Management.

"1111 Lincoln Road was completed in January 2010. Since then, it has become an iconic building and a gateway to central Miami Beach. The project comprises a former bank building, which is rehabilitated to include retail and a restaurant; a two-story building with the relocated bank on the ground floor and four residences on the upper floor; and a new mixed-use structure for parking, retail and a private residence. 1111 Lincoln Road is as much an urban redevelopment as it is a specific architectural response to the immediate site conditions. Joggers climb its stairs, skate boarders ride its ramps, yoga lessons take advantage of the breezes and tourists take in the expansive view. It is an extension of the public life on the street, a framework for new interventions and change.

In their deliberations, the Jury noted the significance of the parking garage, one of the most utilitarian forms of infrastructure and one of the most visible elements of the city. 1111 Lincoln Road proves that infrastructure can be a form that celebrates the potentials of architecture. The diverse programmatic elements embedded in the structure, combined with its embracing of landscape and the street, demonstrate a building’s potential to contribute to economic regeneration."

MCHAP Jury includes: Jury President Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture at GSAPP, Columbia University, New York; Wiel Arets, Dean of the College of Architecture and Rowe Family College of Architecture Dean Endowed Chair at IIT, Chicago; Jorge Francisco Liernur, Architect, Professor at Torcuato Di Tella University, and Researcher of Argentina’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Investigation, Buenos Aires; Dominique Perrault, Founding Principal, Dominique Perrault Architecture, Paris and Professor at EPFL, Lausanne; and Sarah Whiting, Dean and William Ward Watkin Professor, Rice School of Architecture, Houston.