Rice Design Alliance Creates Award to Recognize Emerging Architectural Talent

Rice Design Alliance (RDA) recently announced a new award to recognize exceptionally gifted architects in the early phase of their professional career. The award, called Spotlight: The Rice Design Alliance Prize, will be given annually and carries a $1,500 cash prize.

Antón García-Abril

The inaugural Spotlight Prize will be given to Antón García-Abril, founder of Ensamble Studio/Materia Inorgáncia in Madrid, Spain.

While the first prize will go to an international architect, RDA Executive Director Linda Sylvan says the newly created award fulfills the RDA mission of improving the built environment in Houston.

“The Spotlight Prize is intended to showcase the best new designers, and bring their ideas to Houston. We see it as a way to invigorate our local design community with fresh ideas,” Sylvan said.

Eligible honorees for the Spotlight Prize must be within their first 15 years of professional practice. An RDA committee of architects and academicians will convene annually to consider local, national and international architects who demonstrate design excellence and promise a great design future.

RDA board member and 2007 AIA Young Architect Award winner Lonnie Hoogeboom helped institute the Spotlight Prize and select this year’s winner.

“Garcia-Abril has a phenomenal body of work. His inventive design and construction methodology present architecture in new and surprising ways, such as infrastructural components in a residential context. The novelty and ingenuity of his work is what most impressed the committee. Antón is at the leading edge of the next wave of great architects,” Hoogeboom said.

Antón García-Abril founded Ensamble Studio in 2000. Key completed projects include a Concert Hall and Music School in Medina del Campo, Spain, and the Musical Studies Center in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. García-Abril also designed the gravity-defying Hemeroscopium residence in Madrid and the SGAE Central Office in Santiago de Compostela. For a special feature on the Hemeroscopium residence, see this article on Archinect.

García-Abril will be in Houston this spring to formally accept the new RDA prize. He will present his firm’s work at the Spotlight lecture.

DATE: Wednesday, 15 April 2009
TIME: 7:00 p.m. (pre-lecture wine reception begins at 6:00 p.m.)
PLACE: Brown Auditorium, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet, Additional parking is available until 7 pm for $3 in the museum garage located at the corner of Binz and Fannin Streets.
TICKETS: This event is free for RDA Members and students presenting identification.  Tickets for nonmembers are $25, but those who join RDA that evening will receive a free ticket. Tickets are required for entry and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 6 pm the evening of the lecture.  Seating is limited; attendees are encouraged to arrive early.