The winners of the Italian Architecture Award and T Young Claudio De Albertis Award

The awards ceremony of the Italian Architecture Award and T Young Claudio De Albertis Award was held on June 24 at Triennale di Milano.
Now in its second edition, the contest is organised by Triennale Milano and MAXXI with the support of the Italian Culture Ministry and the young Italian architects’ section of the Claudio De Albertis Award Committee. The annual competition, which alternates between Rome and Milan, was established to promote Italian architecture through the works of Italian architects and architectural practices and those working in Italy, on the basis of the individual experiences of two important organisations: the Gold Medal for Italian Architecture awarded by Triennale Milano and the YAP – Young Architects Program at MAXXI in Rome.

A panel of experts selected by the Triennale and MAXXI nominated 30 candidates for the Italian Architecture Award and 45 for the T Young Claudio De Albertis Award. The nominations were followed by an initial selection process in which 6 and 7 finalists were identified for the two awards, respectively, from among whom an international panel of judges chose the winners.
The first section of the Italian Architecture Award is for the best building constructed in the last three years, and was assigned to the LCM 2018 / CASA-ASILO project by architect Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo, who transformed a nursery in Mazzarone, Catania into a residence. The judges acknowledged the project’s “value as a civic and professional example for its ability to identify the strong points of an anonymous building apparently similar to so many others all over Italy, reinterpreting it in a skillful orchestration of precise, discrete, unostentatious interventions; a project that gives back to the community a sense of time and plurality. A work inviting reflection on the responsibility involved in the act of building in everyday reality”.
The judges also awarded an honourable mention to Onsitestudio for its Mapei Football Center, a sports centre built in Sassuolo (MO) in 2019.

The award for best architect under 35 is presented every other year, going to the winner of the YAP Rome project at MAXXI in one year and to the winner of the T Young Claudio De Albertis Award at the Triennale the next. In 2021 the prize was awarded to architect Simona Della Rocca, co-founder along with architect Alberto Bottero of studio BDR bureau and creator of the Enrico Fermi School project in Turin (2019), chosen “for its ability to positively integrate the new requirements of teaching into architectural study”. The judges also presented an honourable mention to architect Margherita Manfra of Orizzontale for her CIVICO CIVICO project in Riesi, Caltanissetta (2020), a virtuous example of redevelopment and rebirth of a property confiscated from the mafia, transformed through the Human Laboratory of Territorial Regeneration, a workshop representing a model of do-it-yourself construction with the involvement of designers, local artisans, young architects and the general population.

Lastly, in the third section of the award, the judges unanimously presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to architect Paolo Portoghesi.
All the finalist projects in the Italian Architecture Award and T Young Claudio De Albertis Award will be on exhibit in an exhibition at Triennale Milano from June 25 until August 22, 2021.

(Agnese Bifulco)

Images courtesy of Triennale Milano & MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo – Roma

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