MCHAP.emerge award goes to Community Production Center Las Tejedoras by Natura Futura + Juan Carlos Bamba

The winner of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) Cycle 5 Emerging Practice Award has been announced as the Community Production Center Las Tejedoras in Chongón, Ecuador. 

Architects José Fernando Gómez Marmolejo (of Natura Futura) and Juan Carlos Bamba are credited to its design and say their architectural partnership has “continuously explored how architecture can respond to the unique needs of Latin America’s smaller cities and communities.”

The project, a meeting space for women with classrooms, cafeteria and hygienic services in nave wing and learning workshops, sleeping space, warehouses, and a storage/product showroom for their knitwear products in another.

The building's storefront also serves as an exhibitions space. Teak wood, combined with masonry walls as is traditionally used to make the old stilt houses that dot the area, were used for the main structure. Endemic vegetation was thereafter incorporated to stoke a debate on public policies aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

The 2024 MCHAP Jury Chair Maurice Cox complemented the project as being "infused with civic presence capable of dignifying the entire community."

"The building operates as a teaching tool," he continued. "The involvement of local women artisans in the project’s construction gives true meaning to the South African expression ‘nothing about us, without us, is for us.’ The project not only provides employment in the community but also facilitates skill development through active participation in the construction process. Notably, the structure stands as a physical symbol of community, reflecting the contributions of the local women in its construction. This agency embedded into the project scope from the client partner, the Young Living Foundation, to the hands that built it represents its mission for education, small-business enterprise, and the right of all people to have access to beauty."

Gómez Marmolejo and Bamba follow Taller Capital (2022); Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura (2018); PRODUCTORA (2016); and Pezo von Ellrichshausen (2014) as previous winners of the MCHAP.emerge award.