© Cristobal Palma
Barclay & Crousse Architecture’s Edificio E, University of Piura in Peru has been announced as the winner of the 2018 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), recognizing the most distinguished architectural works built on the North and South American continents.
The project was selected from a shortlist of six finalists, joining SANAA’s Grace Farms, Alvaro Siza’s Iberê Camargo Foundation and Herzog & de Meuron’s 1111 Lincoln Road as winners of the highly-regarded prize which was established in 2003.
© Cristobal Palma
An academic building in northern Peru, the scheme encourages social interaction among disadvantaged rural students at the University of Piura while offering an “element of sheltering softness amid a harsh savannah landscape.” The scheme was designed by the Lima-based Barclay & Crousse Architecture, led by Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse.
© Cristobal Palma
It not just a project but an exploration on a type, and therefore a set of spatial notions that invite emulation and even replication. The building is technically undemanding for its simple rules and its recourse to well-tried materials and well established building procedures.
-Rodrigo Perez, Jury Member
© Cristobal Palma
Set in a dry forest 600 miles northwest of Lima, the scheme accommodates a growing student population, designed as a series of lecture halls and offices arranged into a square. The 11 structures are woven together via a network of semi-exterior pathways and spaces, doubling as informal meeting spaces for students and staff.
© Cristobal Palma
The ambiguous, shaded exterior spaces sheltered by the buildings that form the whole were created to provide a place for informal learning and for life in the broadest sense. It’s been immensely rewarding to see how students and professors occupy the structure and to see how it’s created a new centrality on campus, where people stay independently of having classes.
-Sandra Barclay and Jeanne Pierre Crousse
Learn more about the MCHAP from our previous coverage, including a roundup of this year’s shortlist.
The MCHAP 2018 Jury included Jury Chair Ricky Burdett CBE, Professor of Urban Studies and Director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age Programme (London), Jose Castillo, Principal, Arquitectura 911sc (Mexico City), Ron Henderson, Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology and Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism (Chicago), Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, Professor, Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Estudios Urbanos, Pontificia Universidad Católica (Santiago), and Claire Weisz, Founding Principal of WXY (New York).
News via: MCHAP