Five finalist projects in Argentina, Canada,
Mexico, and the United States
CHICAGO, IL (February 7, 2025) – At an event at the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City, Mexico, Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) Director Dirk Denison and 2025 MCHAP Jury Chair Maurice Cox announced the five finalists for the 2025 Americas Prize:
Jury Statement:
The gran acuario Mazatlán is activating an underutilized park and lagoon of a seaside resort town. A massive series of walls conceptualized as a discovered “ruin” inhabited by birds, fishes, plants and water. This arrangement sets up a series of beautifully composed mise-en-scene one point perspective view corridors, replete with dramatic oculi allowing light to frame the water displays.
A non-prescriptive circulation pattern allows the visitor to wander and discover, easily moving between moody indoor spaces, glowing tanks of water holding the aquatic species, and outdoor gardens open to the sky. The mechanical complexity of such a program is deftly concealed to allow for a fluid and effortless experience of the exhibition space. A building that is driven by the spectacle of a captured nature, it amazes and delights the public as it connects to the surrounding park landscape and paves the way for an elevated public architecture for the city as a whole.
Jury Statement:
Despite the synthetic decisions and sharp material palette this subtraction within a preexisting house is in no way reductive. All the opposite, the generous volume of air adds to a wide range of readings of the new piece: a serene and ventilated waiting room, stimulating the interaction of all its users, a passage to the hidden plaza that draws the sidewalk into the backyard, a temple-like city lantern radiating at night.
It is the ultimate political project, making the city one small piece at a time, on a tight plot, recycling its structure, taking a normal program and elevating it to improve everyday life for humans and nonhumans alike.
Jury Statement:
A mangrove, a square and a promenade; a strong idea that transcends its materiality. Rarely does a line materialized into a pasarell do so many things at once. This linear topography, slightly tilted to give each of its corners a different height, and hence experience, manages to combine a healthy ecosystem with an open air museum, public space for swimming, and walking, jogging while offering the users a new opportunity and perspective on recreation and learning. Paradoxically, this protective perimeter preserves nature while also allowing thousands of people to enjoy a highly fragile yet mainly privatized shoreline, heightening consciousness of this unique endangered ecosystem and becoming part of the signature identity of Bacalar.
Jury Statement:
A plot that had no future, pushing zoning and regulatory envelope the project builds a contemporary new way of living within the memory of an industrial archaeology. A series of smart strategies allow to maximize the identity of the Pumphouse, the new residential use, views and private and shared spaces in this complex urban plot. The abandoned pump house seems to extend its precise and rigorous material language beyond its original enclosure.
The small domestic interiors expand into shared spaces and circulation that animate the block in all directions. These units are elevated making ways for the use of alleys and a series of pockets of communal activities.
Jury Statement:
The powerful interpretation of a new academic pedagogical mission of youth learning while doing is matched by an equally powerful campus.
Steeped in the rural culture of its place—the barn, the porch and the long and low farm buildings of Arkansas are assembled to creates new type of public space keeping in scale with the surrounding fabric. The design of five academic buildings loosely scattered within a garden with different characters, successfully creates an environment of constant indoor/outdoor porosity.
Students and the general public richly gather and co-mingle under outward-facing porches, covered passageways that shelter outdoor activities and framed views, encouraging the movement through spaces with a strong community orientation.
Within the comfort of containment this campus masterfully composed, allows for natural flows of people, wildlife and weather.
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The 2025 Americas Prize honors the best work of architecture completed in North, Central, or South America between June 2022 and December 2023. The February 7 event concludes a hemisphere-spanning jury tour of sites and conversations with finalist authors, project teams, and clients. The jury began its review of hundreds of anonymously nominated projects in the spring of 2024.
The MCHAP 2025 Jury includes Maurice Cox (Jury Chair), past planning director, City of Chicago; Giovanna Borasi, director and chief curator, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Gregg Pasquarelli, founding principal, SHoP Architects, New York; Mauricio Rocha, founder, Taller | Mauricio Rocha, Mexico City, and author of the 2023 Americas Prize winner, the renovation of the Museo Anahuacalli; and Sofia von Ellrichshausen, founding partner, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Concepción, Chile, and author of Poli House, the 2014 winner of the Prize for Emerging Practice.
Based in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology, in Chicago, MCHAP celebrates new examples of built architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism from throughout the Americas. These masterworks make outstanding contributions to their communities and set the highest standards for the profession. From this extensive survey of contemporary excellence, MCHAP distills and shares lessons that inspire and instruct the next generation of architectural leaders.
“The MCHAP jury trip is above all an opportunity for learning, for careful attention and conversation. This experience of exchange remains at the heart of the prize,” said Dirk Denison, MCHAP Director. “We cannot wait to share what we have found.”
“This cycle, we have been inspired by the striking presence of each of the finalists, and their inventive responses to distinctive social and environmental contexts. But these projects show us that it’s not only design leading the way,” Denison added. “We also recognize the individuals and organizations who have made a commitment to architecture’s contribution through the civic and cultural initiatives behind these works.”
The authors of the winning project, to be announced at a symposium on May 5, at IIT, will be recognized with the MCHAP Award, the MCHAP Chair in IIT’s College of Architecture, and $50,000 to fund research and a publication.
ABOUT MCHAP
The Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) is a biennial prize that acknowledges the best built works of architecture in the Americas. MCHAP was conceived by Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture in 2013.
Visit http://arch.iit.edu/prize/mchap/ for more information.
ABOUT ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Based in the global metropolis of Chicago, Illinois Tech was born to liberate the collective power of difference to advance technology and progress for all. It is the only tech-focused university in the city, and it stands at the crossroads of exploration and invention, advancing the future of Chicago and the world. It offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, computing, architecture, business, design, science and human sciences, and law. Illinois Tech students are guaranteed hands-on experiences, personalized mentorship, and job readiness through the university’s one-of-a-kind Elevate program. Its graduates lead the state and much of the nation in economic prosperity. Its faculty and alumni built the Chicago skyline. And every day in the living lab of the city, Illinois Tech fuels breakthroughs that change lives.
Visit iit.edu for information on all available academic programs.
COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE
The College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology builds on a legacy of disciplined experimentation in materials and technologies to educate and inspire the next generation of architects and landscape architects. From its landmark campus and home at S. R. Crown Hall, IIT Architecture champions an interdisciplinary approach to education and research that is simultaneously local and global in its impact. IIT Architecture students are educated to address complex, contemporary challenges of designing and constructing across all scales. Both faculty and students enjoy a longstanding relationship with professional practice in Chicago, a city with a vibrant history of innovation in architecture, design, landscape architecture, and urbanism. Visit arch.iit.edu.
SPONSORS
MCHAP is supported by Kohler Co., the Alphawood Foundation, the Mies van der Rohe Society at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and AIA Chicago.
Visit www.mchap.co/ for more information.
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