The winners of the 2021 Next Landmark International Award

The tenth Next Landmark International AWARD, the international contest promoted by Floornature, the architecture and design magazine published by the Iris Ceramica Group, has just closed. The panel of judges, including Anna Bach (architect and co-founder of A&EB studio, Associate Professor at EINA Centro Universitario de Diseño y Arte in Barcelona), Gisela Loehlein, (architect, head of the Architecture Department at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University – XJTLU in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China), Federica Minozzi (CEO of the Iris Ceramica Group), Carlotta Zucchini (artistic director of architecture magazine THE PLAN) and Paolo Schianchi (architect and instructor at IUSVE, Istituto Universitario Salesiano di Venezia e Verona), has presented the Landmark of the Year Award to the "Casa en el Bosque" project by architect Moises Morales, co-founder of W.E.Y.E.S Estudio of Mexico. The Prize for Research, reserved for an unbuilt project developed in the academic world or independently, goes to “Regenerated Spaces (間) around Lighthouse”, a research project by Italian architect Selene Amico. The two winners will be offered travel to Venice with accommodations to visit the International Architecture Exhibition at Biennale di Venezia, online publication of their projects on all Iris Ceramica Group media, and a NEXT LANDMARK INTERNATIONAL AWARD 2021 winner’s certificate.

"Casa en el Bosque" is a project by architect Moises Morales in a residential neighbourhood in the municipality of Santiago, in the Mexican state of Nuevo León. Not a conventional single-family home, the house interacts and lives in symbiosis with its natural surroundings, in a project designed to make a minimal footprint and set an example for an alternative way of living demonstrating respect for the forest. The selected site is a lot measuring about 700 sqm on a steep slope, varying from 28 to 35%. The slope of the lot and the presence of dense vegetation represented major limitations on the project; architect Moises Morales decided to preserve all the trees on the site, even if this meant dividing the home into four independent volumes: four pavilions linked by stairways and walkways that blend into their natural surroundings and are each destined for a certain function. The first pavilion contains the garage and a storage room, while the second contains the living area, including a terrace and an interior patio, and the last two pavilions contain bedrooms and bathrooms for the owners and their guests.

“Regenerated Spaces (間) around Lighthouse” is a research project by Italian architect Selene Amico focusing on lighthouses and the contribution they make to the identity of coastal areas as symbols of collective memory. Her study begins with the experience of a specific area, classifying the lighthouses in the region of Campania, inspiring reflection on use of lighthouses as a resource for the territories in which they stand and casting light on the potential of this particular type of architecture to promote specific local features and therefore its positive impact on the territory, through economic opportunities centring around cultural experiences.

(Agnese Bifulco)

---

GALLERY