Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize reveals 2022 nominees and jury

Coming off a two-year Covid-related hiatus, the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology has officially announced the jury and list of nominated projects for the 2022 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP).

The award was launched in 2013 to highlight built works in the Americas that recognize the "architectural quality and the complicity between architects and communities, institutions, or individuals at the origin of each project,: according to 2022 jury chair Sandra Barclay of Barclay & Crousse, who won the 2018 Prize for their 'Edificio E' education building at Peru's University of Piura.

The six-member jury for the fourth cycle for the biannual award includes Barclay, MCHAP Director Dirk Denison, Detroit’s Prince Concepts President Philip Kafka, Córdoba National University professor Mónica Bertolino, URBAM Centro de Estudios Urbanos y Ambientales Director Alejandro Echeverri, and Koning Eizenberg co-founder Julie Eizenberg, FAIA.

This year’s cycle will consider works completed between January 2018 and June 2021 and coincides with the MCHAP Prize for Emerging Practice, which recognizes the superlative works in the Americas authored by firms operating in their first five to ten years of practice. Both will be the subject of special symposia and awards ceremonies at IIT’s landmark S.R. Crown Hall in the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023 respectively.

The list of nominees includes some of the most significant new buildings of the past few years with a strong diversity of location and names like Zaha Hadid Architects and Studio Gang pitted against much smaller projects and other superlative efforts such as Michael Maltzan's Winnipeg Art Gallery expansion and OMA's new Audrey Imas Pavilion in Hollywood. 

Jurists for this year’s prizes will consider nominees along newly-refined criteria that include a host of environmental and community-centric priorities. Denison personally noted that the thirty-five countries of the Americas include "a range of diverse, dynamic conditions that architecture must engage" as well as the "unique North–South axis that creates potential for urgently needed crosscultural learning at a moment of global change and crisis."

The prize is sponsored by the AIA, Kohler Co., and the Mies van der Rohe Society at Illinois Institute Technology (IIT). Past winning projects have included SANAA’s River Building at Grace Farms arts center in Connecticut and Herzog & de Meuron’s 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami. 

Click here for the complete list of this year’s nominated projects for both prizes.