RIBA International Prize 2024
Image: Peris + Toral Arquitectes, Modulus Matrix: 85 Social Housing, Cornellà, Spain, 2021.
Courtesy of Peris + Toral Arquitectes
ARCHITECTURE
Modulus Matrix: 85 Social Housing
RIBA International Prize
Modulus Matrix: 85 Social Housing has been named as the winner of this year's RIBA International Prize, a bi-annual prize recognising the world's best architecture. Designed by Peris + Toral Arquitectes, this six-storey social housing development of 85 homes, located in Cornellà, near Barcelona, Spain, aims to redefine residential design and construction. The concept of Modulus Matrix takes Japanese homes and interiors as a starting point for a modular system of rooms of exactly the same size. Based on the tatami mat module of 3.6m x 3.6m, the matrix of rooms makes up the building, which is then organised around a central communal courtyard, with four circulation cores at each corner.
About the RIBA International Prize
Dezeen Awards 2024
Image: Studio Sabine Marcelis and SolidNature, The Vondel Fountain, Stacked, Vondelpark, Amsterdam. © SolidNature
DESIGN
Studio Sabine Marcelis
Designer of the year
Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis is an artist and designer who runs her eponymous practice in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Marcelis works in the fields of product, installation and spatial design, using material research and experimentation to develop new and surprising visual effects that have a strong focus on materiality. Recent projects span an installation featuring four rotating glass pillars for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, a collaboration with Japanese artisans for London Design Festival and a water fountain made using repurposed onyx stone in Amsterdam.
Image: Marina Tabassum Architects, Khudi Bari (Small House), Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein, Germany.
ARCHITECTURE
Marina Tabassum Architects
Architect of the year
Bangladeshi practice Marina Tabassum Architects aims to root architecture to place, collaborating with geographers, landscape architects and planners, among other allied professionals. Informed by people, climate and geography, the studio focuses on raising the standard of living conditions for low-income populations. The studio recently developed a bamboo demountable house at the Vitra Campus in Germany, in response to the mass displacement caused by flooding in Bangladesh.
Image: CHZON, Cowley Manor Hotel, Cotswolds, United Kingdom. © Patrick Locqueneux
DESIGN
CHZON
Interior designer of the year
French interior designer Dorothée Meilichzon founded her Paris-based studio CHZON in 2009, which specialises in hospitality projects including restaurants, retail and hotels. Projects by Chzon include a boutique hotel featuring chequerboard details inspired by Alice in Wonderland in the Cotswolds, and a London restaurant with oakwood panelling, duck-egg leather stools and custom marble-topped tables in homage to Parisian bistros.
Bourse Saif Carte Blanche Étudiants
Image: Joël Jimenez, La rivière est un métier à tisser, le fil est une montagne [The river is a loom, the thread is a mountain], 2023-2025. © Joël Jimenez / Bourse Saif Carte Blanche Étudiants 2024
PHOTOGRAPHY
Joël Jimenez
Bourse Saif Carte Blanche Étudiants
The Bourse Saif Carte Blanche Étudiants 2024 was awarded to Joël Jimenez's project La rivière est un métier à tisser, le fil est une montagne [The river is a loom, the thread is a mountain] (2023-2025), which the grant will help to develop. Born in Costa Rica in 1993, Joël Jimenez is a multidisciplinary artist living in Madrid, Spain. His winning project focuses on the decline of the textile colonies that sprang up along the Llobregat river in Catalonia at the end of the 19th century. By examining the residues of industrialisation and the enduring presence of nature, the work explores how the identity of the colonies is shaped by the collision between past and present, and the interplay between the historical and mythological narratives that define these spaces.
About the Bourse Saif Carte Blanche Étudiants
Film London Jarman Award 2024
Image: Maryam Tafakory, Nazarbazi (2022), film still. Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella as part of BEYOND. Courtesy of Maryam Tafakory
ART
Maryam Tafakory
Film London Jarman Award
The Film London Jarman Award 2024 was awarded to Iranian artist Maryam Tafakory. Tafakory, who was born and raised in Iran but now lives in the UK, works at the intersection of film and live performance. She creates poetic collages from archival material and the cinema of post-revolutionary Iran to address issues of censorship and prohibition. By exploring the different registers through which images speak or refuse to speak to us, her work attempts to dissect veiled acts of erasure – of bodies, intimacies and histories. Her works include among others: Nazarbazi (2022), on representations of love and desire in Iranian cinema; Mast-del (2023), a necessarily oblique portrayal of a lesbian relationship; and Razeh-Del (2024), which tells the story of Iran's first women's magazine, Zan.
About the Film London Jarman Award
RIAS Doolan Award 2024
Image: John McAslan + Partners, Burrell Collection refurbishment, Glasgow, Scotland, 2022.
© Hufton + Crow
ARCHITECTURE
Burrell Collection
RIAS Doolan Award
Glasgow’s Burrell Collection is the winner of the Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, following a major refurbishment by John McAslan + Partners. The Burrell Collection is one of the leading museums in the country. John McAslan + Partners's comprehensive refurbishment of the museum was hailed by the Doolan Award judges as "an outstanding example of problem-solving and future-proofing that has rejuvenated an old friend", with the judges particularly impressed by how John McAslan + Partners’ respectful and deferential approach has transformed the building, without losing any of its architectural integrity.
Jameel Prize
Image: Khandakar Ohida, Dream Your Museum (2022), film still. Courtesy of Khandakar Ohida
ART
Khandakar Ohida
Jameel Prize
Indian artist Khandakar Ohida is the winner of the 7th edition of the Jameel Prize, the V&A's award for contemporary art and design inspired by Islamic traditions. Ohida received the award for her film Dream Your Museum (2022), a portrait of her uncle, Khandakar Selim, who has built an extraordinary collection of objects and memorabilia over the last 50 years. Ohida documented the collection as it was displayed in her uncle’s traditional mud home, which has since been torn down. The work challenges the formal nature of museums in India, particularly as bastions of nationalism that offer little room for alternative narratives. Dream Your Museum counters the colonial museum model, instead inviting people to find value in the seemingly banal objects that are an intrinsic part of their lives.
