Mexican architects Gabriela Carrillo and Rozana Montiel took home the top honours at The Architectural Review and the Architects’ Journal 2017 Women in Architecture Awards, while Denise Scott Brown recieved the 2017 Jane Drew Prize.
Carrillo, of Taller Mauricio Rocha + Gabriela Carrillo, was named the Architect of the Year. The jury commended her for the Criminal Courts for Oral Trials building in Pátzcuaro, Mexico, built in response to an urgent need to construct courtrooms that could function traditionally before adapting to new, Mexico-wide laws requiring trials to be conducted orally.
Montiel, who leads Rozana Montiel Estudio de Arquitectura, won the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture. The prize is named for the late design director of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
Montiel was commended by the jury for her work on a sports court built as part of an overhaul of a public housing scheme. She told The Architectural Review: “All architecture is political. We can read in daily spaces the political priorities of our society. Architecture has the power to shape civic behaviour because, more than laying bricks, it lays the founding principles of public and social exchanges.”
Announced in February, Denise Scott Brown was honoured for the 2017 Jane Drew Prize, which recognizes an architect who has “raised the profile of women in architecture” through their own work. The award follows the Women in Architecture campaign started in 2013 that attempted to see Brown’s work appropriately recognized by professional bodies, decades after her partner Robert Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1991.
Women in Architecture founder Christine Murray said of Brown’s win: “Scott Brown’s wonderful architectural writing and thinking, her work and her wit have been an inspiring force for change. This honour squares the circle.”
Artist Rachel Whitehead, who won the Turner Prize in 1993, was awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable prize, which is given for a significant contribution to architecture by someone who works in the wider architectural industry.
