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Five leading Italian and international designers received the International Stone Architecture Award, now at its ninth edition. A prestigious award for the most significant construction experiences in recent years and technical-expressive quality in the use of stone material
From Boston University Library to Armani boutiques all over the world, from the new offices of the Health Department in Almeria, Spain, to the Museum of Light in Mourão, Portugal, and Centre for Music Studies in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. These are the works taking awards in the ninth edition of the Biennial International Stone Architecture Awards, held in high regard throughout the design world and the prestigious cultural occasion of the 40th edition of Marmomacc, the International Natural Stone and Technology Exhibition (www.marmomacc.com), scheduled at VeronaFiere 29 September - 2 October 2005.
Set up in 1987, the Awards are held every two years and are today one of the most important international appointments in assessing architectural value and technical-expressive qualities in the use of stone materials in projects completed all over the world. The Awards are also the most significant feature in the dialogue that VeronaFiere has developed over the years with architects and the natural stone entrepreneurial system, which helps companies find new outlets for their products.
Stone, in short, becomes much more than just culture or art. It equally becomes economic opportunity thanks to high level town planning that leaves its mark on society. The jury - comprising such well-known figures on an international scale as Alfonso Acocella (University of Ferrara), Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, (ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich), Werner Oechslin (ETH, Zurich), Vincenzo Pavan (co-director USA Institute Italy), Antonio Pizza (Escuela T猫cnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona) - made awards to the five best applications involving stone materials in recent years on an international scale. As for previous editions, the Awards - the key event of the "Marble Art Culture" programme, the section of Marmomacc dedicated to cultural initiatives supporting the use of stone - will focus on the publication of a prestigious volume including extensive documentation of prize-winning works and critical and historic essays by eminent figures in the world of architecture.
The Awards will be presented on Saturday 1 October 2005 at VeronaFiere, within the scope of a ceremony during which the authors will illustrate the prize-winning works to a large audience of architects, engineers, universities and trade operators; while 15 September - 4 October will see an Exhibition of these projects, with drawings, photos and models in a complete event together with samples of the stone materials used.
Award-winning projects and their description
Rodolfo Machado & Jorge Silvetti Architects, Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1998-2001. The "Allston Branch" of the famous Boston Public Library takes up the concept of "distributing" culture 鈥� beyond its normal central place 鈥� to the suburbs of the large city. The library therefore focuses on the topic of "public" works. The task of the architects was therefore to match this situation - definable as "public-peripheral" - in architectural terms This is what Machado/Silvetti have perfectly understood. This public character emerges in the "alternative" design (volumes, inverse slope of the roofs) and materials: stone clearly indicates the public character. This is symbolically announced to passers-by who 鈥� once opposite the building 鈥� are welcomed to enter without having to "transgress" any obstacle. Machado/Silvetti thus coherently combined the public character of the library with its symbolic nature through the appearance of the building and the use of natural stone. Alberto Campo Baeza, Offices of Provincial Health Delegation, Almer铆a, Andaluc铆a, Spain, 1999-2002. The work is a metaphor of stereo-metric blocks of stone in a rigorous and absolute interpretation of thin cladding. Continuity, co-planarity, homogeneity and monographic stone are the main material values and, ultimately, the linguistic approach to architecture itself.
Pedro Pacheco and Marie Cl茅ment, Cemetery, Church of Our Lady of Light and Museum of Light, Aldeia da Luz, Mourão, Portugal, 1998-2003. This project aims to create a micro-setting for a new foundation where the museum plays a central role, emerging as the essential link with the existing Church and cemetery area that are in turn put forward in a different environmental context. The museum building was therefore especially interpreted as a landscaping element; the schist-like material used in the cladding and the construction of certain walls blends delightfully with the profiles of the landscape in a studied contribution through the brightness of the reconstructions and the strong variations in light, captured and filtered towards the interior by "light chimneys" that can be seen from a distance.
Ant贸n Garc铆a Abril / Ensamble Studio, Centre for musical studies, Finca Vista Alegre, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 1999-2003. This work combines and bonds in a single element two opposing aspects: the essential, absolute precision of the design with the rough irregularity of the "as quarried" stone material. The imposing effect of the mass is the result of constructional rationality attained through the juxtaposition of large slabs mounted like blocks initially placed in some kind of order in the quarry depot. The compactness of the external volume is matched by the elegant layout of the interior spaces and volumes, designed to ensure superb natural lighting. Claudio Silvestrin, Giorgio Armani Stores Paris, Milan, D眉sseldorf, Florence, Moscow, Naples, Boston, Chicago, Edge Mesa, Tokyo, Atlanta, Athens, Vienna, Zurich, Jeddah, Beijing, Dubai, Busan, Barcelona, Rome and London; Sao Paulo, Hong Kong, Seoul and Shanghai, as of 1999. In the globalised world of fashion and retail, the Giorgio Armani boutiques designed by Claudio Silvestrin stand out through the harmony between image, content and style. Brand recognition is not achieved, as is often the case, through heretical gestures repeated with arrogant indifference but thanks to ductile repetition of quiet and elegant architecture where spaces are unified by sophisticated cladding in light-coloured natural stone.
The "ad memoriam" award dedicated to past authors renowned for major contributions in stone architecture was made to Franco Albini (1905-1977) for the Treasury Museum, San Lorenzo, Genoa, 1952-1956, a project that became very famous in its own times (1952-1956). The Treasury crypt of the church of San Lorenzo can today be reviewed in the light of new sensitivity towards the constructional and perceptive aspects of the stone material. This work, one of the most successful by Franco Albini, also embraces in its formal modernity precious and highly skilled expressions of an ancient building culture that has long since been forgotten.
(www.marbleandmore.com)[face=Arial]鏂囧瓧[/face]
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