Award programme schedule and submission of entries

Deadline for entries: October 23^rd 2020.
Jury’s decision: the week of November 23^rd.
Prize giving ceremony: CEVISAMA 2021

Entry rules and submission of entries: https://www.tileofspainawards.com/

For year another year, the Tile of Spain Awards for Architecture, Interior Design and Final Degree Projects, organized by ASCER, will be judged by a top-ranking jury. At this edition, the jury will be presided over by prestigious Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and his right-hand man at KKAA studio in Tokyo, Javier Villar.

The other members of the jury are professionals with celebrated careers in Spain or abroad and an extensive knowledge of how ceramic materials can be used in architecture. They are Jonathan Arnabat, founder partner of Arquitectura-G; architect Izaskun Chinchilla; Daria de Seta, from architects’ studio Garcés-de Seta-Bonet; and well-known interior designer Lázaro Rosa-Violán.

The 19^th edition of the Tile of Spain Awards is now open and entries can be submitted through the website www.tileofspainawards.com up until October 23^rd in any of its three categories: Architecture, Interior Design and Final Degree Projects.

About the jury

Kengo Kuma / Javier Villar Ruiz (KKAA)

After graduating in architecture in Tokyo, Kengo Kuma (1954, Yokohama) completed a two-year postgraduate programme as a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York, before going on to finish off his PhD at Tokyo University.

In 1990, he founded his studio, Kengo Kuma & Associates, in Tokyo. This was followed, in 2008, by the inauguration of Kuma & Associates Europe, which is involved in projects in over twenty different countries. Kengo Kuma & Associates employs over 150 architects in Tokyo and Paris, who design projects of differing kinds on different scales worldwide. Kuma has been singled out to receive prestigious awards and distinctions, such as the Architectural Institute of Japan Award, the Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award (Finland), and the International Stone Architecture Award. Kengo Kuma was also made an Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2009.

A graduate in architecture from Barcelona School of Architecture, Javier Villar Ruiz has worked in Tokyo since 2004. As a partner and the head of design at Kengo Kuma & Associates (KKAA), he has taken part in international projects and tenders in Japan, China, Southeast Asia, Europe and America. The projects that he has headed include the creation of cultural pavilions at the École Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne’s Place Cosandey and, from 2012, he was in charge of the award-winning project Under One Roof through to its construction and completion in 2017. He is currently involved in projects like Muskkat Museum (the Philippines), Susa International Train Station (Italy), renovations to Shipyard 1862 in Shanghai (China), and the city of Busan’s Marina Complex (South Korea).

KKAA – Kengo Kuma & Associates aims to design architecture that blends naturally with culture and the surrounding environment, designing buildings on a human scale. The office is constantly looking for new materials to replace cement and steel, seeking a new approach to architecture in a post-industrial society

At the last edition of the Tile of Spain Awards, the Camper Paseo de Gracia project by Kengo Kuma & Associates (KKAA) was awarded a special mention in the Interior Design category.

Some of the studio’s flagship projects include Victoria & Albert Dundee Museum, Hiroshige Ando Museum, China Academy of Arts and Japan’s Olympic Stadium.

Jonathan Arnabat (Arquitectura-G) 

Arquitectura-G is an architects’ studio with head offices in Barcelona, founded in 2006 by Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Igor Urdampilleta and Aitor Fuentes. They met while they were studying at the Universitat Internacional de Catalonia’s School of Architecture, where they attended one of the first courses given by ASCER’s network of Ceramic Studies Departments. Now they are lecturers attached to construction and projects departments. Their work, which ranges from pop-up installations to urban planning projects, has been featured in the national and international media. The team has received different awards and distinctions, including the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award for Emerging Architecture in 2015, the 2014 AJAC Award in the Built Architecture category and the 2013 ASCER Tile of Spain Award for Interior Design.

In parallel with their teaching and professional activities, they direct the architectural section of Apartamento Magazine and, in 2012, they launched the design website Indoors.

Izaskun Chinchilla

Izaskun Chinchilla studied architecture at Madrid Polytechnic University’s School of Architecture. She graduated in 2001 and was awarded a prize for the best academic record of her year and a distinction for her final degree project. Since then, she has directed her own architect’s studio.

Special mention should be made of her teaching activities. At present, she is a lecturer at the Madrid School of Architecture and at the Instituto Empresa in the same city. In addition, in conjunction with Carlos Giménez, she runs the “Unit 22” study programme at Bartlett School of Architecture in London. She has taught at the École Especiale in Paris and the University of Art and Design in Geneva. She headed project research workshops at the University of Alicante’s School of Architecture from 2002 to 2007, and she was a lecturer on the M.A. run by the Catalonia Institute of Advanced Architecture, among other things.

Izaskun Chinchilla participates in numerous forums on architecture, in particular forums on the role of women in architecture. In them, she upholds the compatibility of family and professional life, the perspective of gender in architecture and urban planning, and female-related aesthetic values as new windows for opportunity in architecture.

She has been awarded numerous prizes for her work for projects like the Organic Growth Pavilion (New York, 2015),​ the Formica stand at the 2007 edition of the SICI  kitchen show or the VIP area for ARCOMadrid2016. Mention must also be made of exhibitions, such as “Casa: Árbol, Chocolate, Chimenea” at Espacio para Arquitectura Liga (Mexico Federal District, 2012)​ and “Unit 22 Zoetropes” at Roca Gallery (London, 2012). Her biggest architectural project so far is the renovation of Garcimuñoz Castle in Cuenca in order to incorporate a public media library.

Daria de Seta (Garcés – de Seta- Bonet)

A holder of a PhD in architecture with a thesis on museography and a career spanning over 20 years, she is the founder partner of Garcés-de Seta-Bonet architects’ studio, created in 2011. A guest lecturer at several European universities, from 2009 to 2014 she was a projects lecturer in Geneva (HEAD-Hepi). She is currently a lecturer and the academic coordinator of space design at Elisava in Barcelona. She has headed several projects over the last few years, such as extensions to the Picasso Museum or a studio for artist Arranz Bravo in Barcelona, ​​in addition to the Strasbourg Palace of Justice in France. Daria de Seta has always combined her work on architectural projects with theoretical and critical activities. Her work as a curator of architectural and photographic exhibitions, her collaboration with several architectural magazines and her publications in general bear witness to her teaching activities and practical research. She has also collaborated with Goppion Technical Museum Laboratory in Milan (Italy), a manufacturer of display cases for the protection of works of art.

Garcés- de Seta-Bonet, a studio founded in 2011 by Jordi Garcés, Daria de Seta and Anna Bonet, integrates and continues the work of de Jordi Garcés (the Picasso Museum, Vall d’Hebron Olympic Pavilion, Hotel Plaza in Barcelona, Navarre Art Museum, Tenerife Museum of Science and the Cosmos, among others), and it is currently embarking on a new stage of tenders and international projects.

The winners of the international tender for Le site du Prioré in Pully, Lausanne, the Strasbourg Palace of Justice, Siracusa Ferry Terminal and a residential complex in Tours, the studio has achieved critical acclaim in recent years. The project for three underground stations on line 9 in Barcelona was exhibited at the Venice Biennial in 2014 and later it was singled out for the 2016 FAD Award and the 2017 ASCER Tile of Spain Award for Interior Design. The project for the studio for artist Arranz Bravo received an honorary mention from the jury and the Opinion Award at the 2014 FAD Awards.

These more recent projects are the outcome of a new reciprocal professional approach, both in generational and cultural terms, so as to successively overcome the conceptual, technical and project management challenges of the present day.

Lázaro Rosa-Violán

Lázaro Rosa-Violán is the founder and creative director of Lázaro Rosa Violán Studio (Barcelona, 2002), one of the most highly acclaimed studios in Spain today. It features professionals of all disciplines and nationalities, including architects; interior, industrial and graphic designers; and even engineers.

In 2013, Rosa-Violán was singled out by Architectural Digest in Spain as the best interior designer in Europe for the 5^th consecutive year. He was named one of the world’s top 100 interior designers by France’s Architectural Digest.

His studio has grown spectacularly, carrying out projects of all kinds at a national and international level in over 40 countries including deluxe hotels, boutique hotels, big resorts, restaurants of all kinds, and even retail facilities.

The Tile of Spain Awards

The Tile of Spain Awards, which are divided into three categories, have a total prize of €39,000. The two main categories are Architecture and Interior Design, each with a prize of €17,000. The jury can also award special mentions in either of these categories. The third category is for Final Degree Projects, aimed at students of architecture, with a prize of €5,000. In all three categories, the entrants and their projects can be Spanish or foreign, and the only requirements is for the projects to include Spanish ceramic tiles in the formal part. Full information about this 19^th edition, the entry rules and the form for entrants to fill in can be found on https://www.tileofspainawards.com/

At previous editions, other leading professionals have presided over the jury, such as Jacob van Rijs, Jorge Silvetti, Iñaki Ábalos, Emilio Tuñón, Manuel Gallego, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Alberto Campo Baeza, Gonçalo Byrne, William J.R. Curtis, Terence Riley, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Carlos Ferrater, Luís Moreno Mansilla, Patxi Mangado, Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra, Mathías Klotz, Benedetta Tagliabue and Víctor López Cotelo.

This edition of the awards has been sponsored by ICEX España Exportación e Inversiones and Endesa.

Award programme schedule and submission of entries

Deadline for entries: October 23^rd 2020.
Jury’s decision: the week of November 23^rd.
Prize giving ceremony: CEVISAMA 2021

Entry rules and submission of entries: https://www.tileofspainawards.com/