Benedetta Tagliabue’s studio EMBT wins the Piranesi Prix de Rome for lifelong achievement

The Piranesi Prix de Rome award for lifetime achievement has been presented to the Benedetta Tagliabue of Barcelona studio EMBT. The announcement was made on 18 February 2020 following the decision of the Piranesi Prix de Rome Scientific Committee in collaboration with the Order of Architects, Landscape Architects, Planners and Conservation Workers of Rome and the province of Rome.
An important new name has been added to the golden list of winners of the award instituted in 2010, when it was presented to Rafael Moneo. The Piranesi Prix de Rome for lifetime achievement is awarded to architects from all over the world "who have made contemporary architecture the privileged field of application for ongoing research into the essence of architecture and the permanent value of the classical in the complex process of change and evolution of reality", as explained in the presentation of the prize. Benedetta Tagliabue’s illustrious predecessors over the past five years include architects Francesco Venezia (2019), Alberto Campo Baeza (2018), Eduardo Souto de Moura (2017), Yoshio Taniguchi (2016), Bernard Tschumi (2015).
The awards ceremony held at Casa dell'Architettura – Acquario Romano in Rome with a lectio magistralis by the winner of the Piranesi Prix de Rome for lifetime achievement is the most important event in the Settimana Adrianea, an annual week-long event in Rome focusing on classical study of the relationship between architecture and archaeology.

Spanish studio EMBT was founded in Barcelona in 1994 by Benedetta Tagliabue and Enric Miralles. The two architects, partners in life as well as work, are responsible for projects such as the Edinburgh Parliament in Scotland, the city hall in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the Gas Natural Group headquarters by the sea in Barcelona, the renovation of the market in Santa Caterina, Barcelona and the architects’ own home in the old city. Following Enric Miralles’ premature death, Benedetta Tagliabue has continued as the studio’s sole partner, supervising a number of architecture, interior design, restoration and landscape architecture projects.

EMBT is now a steadily growing multicultural workplace with offices in Barcelona and Shanghai. It is currently active in various parts of the world with projects of various kinds, including educational, residential, commercial and industrial buildings as well as restoration and landscape architecture projects. Recent projects in China include the Business School at Fudan University in Shanghai and office towers in Xiamen and Taichung. EMBT’s recent projects in Europe include the Hafen City public spaces in Hamburg, Germany, Clichy‐Montfermeil metro station in Paris, France, winner of the first prize in the design competition held for the project, and the central metro station in Naples, Italy. Also in Barcelona, last summer the studio completed the Kálida Sant Pau Centre, a new centre for cancer treatment and the first Maggie's Cancer Caring Centre outside of the UK. Another interesting project involves a UNESCO World Heritage Site property in Barcelona, the Art Nouveau complex of Sant Pau Hospital originally designed by architect Domènech i Montaner, a great master of Catalonian Modernism.

(Agnese Bifulco)

01-02 Images courtesy of Piranesi Prix de Rome, photo by Enrico Basili
03-15 Images courtesy of Miralles Tagliabue EMBT, render by EMBT
photos:
(11) Spanish Pavilion – Expo Shanghai © Shen Zhonghai
(12-15) Kálida Sant Pau Centre photo © Lluc Miralles

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