Architecture by women

Angela Deuber is the winner of arcVision Prize – Women and Architecture, an architecture award for female designers awarded by Italcementi Group on March 6th at i.lab, in Bergamo

Angela Deuber is the winner of the third arcVision Prize - Women and Architecture, an international architecture award for female designers instituted by the Italcementi Group. Angela Deuber is one of the youngest nominees in the year edition of the prize, awarded on March 6th in the usual setting of i.lab, the Bergamo-based Italcementi's Research and Innovation Centre.

The jury recognized the directions of her architecture that at the same time successfully synthesized the important aspects of structural construction, judicious use of materials, involvement and concern for the social role of women architects.

Angela Deuber, Edificio Polifunzionale a Buochs. Photo © ADA Seefeld Eingang — arcVision Prize 2015's jury during the award ceremony in Bergamo

“Architecture today is defined less by beauty than it is by ugliness. We should begin architecture with a longing, a desire, an idea. We got lost in the complexity of architecture. Architecture is the backdrop for a piece of life for a society. When we build in the narrower sense, we build our life at the same time in the wider sense.

We should take the physical boundaries seriously again. Most things we build make our environment not better but worse. We live in a time in which it is predominantly impossible to understand how things are made. We should be able to understand how something is made intuitively. Construction is an underestimated and intrinsic part of architecture, but since we no longer build with our hands, construction has become indirect, remote and alien. My work is an attempt to escape this alienation.

The baseless separation of the idea and the execution degrades architecture. Creation and construction need to be inseparable. As architects, we have a great responsibility in society that we should take more seriously.” This is, in Angela Deuber’s words, the role of the architects.

Un momento nell'assegnazione del premio a Paula Nascimento — Paula Nascimento receiving the special prize

The Jury, whose meetings were coordinated by the Scientific Director of the Prize, Stefano Casciani, also awarded Special Mentions to Kate Otten (South Africa), Patama Roonrakwit (Thailand) and Samira Rathod (India).

This year, arcVision Prize has been enhanced through cooperation with WE-Women for Expo, an Expo Milano 2015 project set up to create a world network of women to Feed the Planet. During the event, a special award was presented to Paula Nascimento, an emerging figure in contemporary architecture and designer of the Angolan Pavilion at Expo 2015.

The award presentation was attended by Albina Assis Pereira Africano (General Commissioner for Angola and Chair of the General Commissioners Steering Committee at Expo 2015), His Excellency Florencio Mariano da Conceicao de Almeida (Angola’s Ambassador in Italy) and Luís Eugenio Saraiva de Carvalho (First Secretary at the Angolan Embassy in Italy).

Architect Angela Deuber was chosen after two days of discussion by the Jury, composed as in the past editions by outstanding professionals from architecture and socio-economic fields: Shaikha Al Maskari (Board Member of the Arab International Women’s Forum-AIWF), Vera Baboun (Mayor of Bethlehem), Odile Decq (owner of the Odile Decq architecture firm), Yvonne Farrell (co-founder of Grafton Architects) Louisa Hutton (co-founder of the Sauerbruch Hutton architectural practice), Suhasini Mani Ratnam (an Indian actress, producer and writer), Samia Nkrumah (President of the Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Center), Benedetta Tagliabue (owner of the Miralles Tagliabue EMBT architectural firm), Martha Thorne (Director of the Pritzker Prize, regarded as the “Nobel Prize” of architecture).