Meet the winners of the 2019 IABsp Awards

The Institute of Architects of Brazil - São Paulo Department has announced the winners of the IABsp 2019 Awards. Divided into 17 categories that cover social housing, commercial and cultural projects, urban design, and restoration—both built and unbuilt—as well as publications, photography, ephemeral architecture, and student projects, the IABsp 2019 Awards aim to identify the advancements and challenges in contemporary national architecture and urbanism. The initiative recognizes ingenious and significant proposals, particularly those that effectively contribute to the development of technique, knowledge, and the built environment in dialogue with nature, society, economy, and culture.

Unlike previous editions, this year's awards balanced the celebration of architectural and urban culture with an effort to minimize internal competition among professionals.

The proposed model was to celebrate benchmark works (both built and unbuilt projects) in each category, highlighting proposals that stood out to the jury for their technical quality, political, ethical, and poetic reflection, transformative capacity, and the arguments, theses, values, and principles they put forward. In doing so, the initiative hopes to value projects and productions that deserve recognition within Brazil's current social, economic, environmental, urban, and political context, fostering a solid repertoire of benchmark works that reaffirm architecture and urbanism as cultural expressions.

While preserving the jury's autonomy and independence, the IABsp also recommended prioritizing proposals with decolonial and counter-hegemonic qualities; those that explore new languages and forms of use and occupation; those that critically value the memory of the built environment and its relationship with society; and those that promote deep conceptual and contextual reflections on different aspects of the production chain of material and immaterial space.

See all the winners on the IABsp website.