Belgian urban designers Dogma win the 2023 RIBA Charles Jencks Award

Brussels-based urban design firm Dogma has been announced as the winners of the 2023 Charles Jencks Award by The Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

The award has been given out annually since 1993 in honor of practices or individuals whose work has made substantial contributions to both the theory and practice of architecture in honor of the late theorist and architectural designer who passed away in 2019.

Dogma was founded in 2002 by Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara, both current faculty members at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven respectively. Their work has mostly focused on the design of large-scale urban development projects in supplement to their educational and writing activities. The firm was the first-ever winner of the Iakov Chernikhov Prize for emerging architectural practice in 2006, expanding since that time to include consultancy work with several cities and municipalities in the European Union and abroad.

“We are truly delighted and honored to receive this award. We are especially honored because it is dedicated to Charles Jencks, whose practice combined history, theory, and design, which are also inseparable aspects of our work. Over the last ten years, we have tried to put forward ideas to improve the way in which we live and work in our houses and in our cities, and have done this both through design proposals and by revisiting some of the most salient and often forgotten chapters of the history of our discipline. We would like to share the award with past and present collaborators without whom our work would have not been possible,” the pair said at the announcement.

The Financial Times  architecture and design critic Edwin Heathcote complemented Aureli as a “hugely influential figure” that “reinforces his ideas with a drawn language which is as rigorous and instantly recognizable as his theory.”

He was joined by the Foundation's founder, Lily Jencks, who said: "Few architects have had a greater influence on students’ thinking and representation over the last 10 years than Dogma. Through teaching, exhibitions, competitions, and books, they follow a clear and uncompromising project to dismantle the relationships of architecture and capital. While Dogma have not built many projects, all of their work takes the material construction of buildings seriously, and has implications on the building profession. They are an important counter to the commercialized architectural profession, using their deep knowledge of architectural history and theory, to propose alternative ways for us to live together.” 

In addition to the £3,000 prize, the pair will deliver a lecture at RIBA's 66 Portland Place headquarters in London on May 16th, 2024. Tickets will be available starting in January.