The Royal Academy’s 2019 Dorfman Award for Architecture was announced last night, with Thai architect Boonserm Premthada – founder of Bangkok Project Studio – scooping the gong. The prize also marks the start of the RA’s Architecture Week – the institution’s summer celebration of inspirational building design.
‘I am very happy to have been chosen as the winner of the Royal Academy Dorfman Award’, says Premthada. ‘It gives me the opportunity to share my love of architecture and what I believe in with the world’. Premthada beat stiff competition from Mexican architect Fernanda Canales, Ireland’s office TAKA, headed by Alice Casey and Cian Deegan, and Mariam Kamara of Atelier Masomi from Niger.
The coveted honour is an annual prize, which highlights the work of a practice or individual from anywhere in the world, who represents the ‘future of architecture’. Emerging architects with plenty of promise, young talents who make a difference in their local community and would otherwise remain largely unknown; this award was design to honour just those people, the ones who are starting to make waves and deserve wider recognition for worthy work in their respective countries. The ones that you know you will be hearing more about in the near future.
The jury was impressed by the ’extraordinary empathy, originality and poetic qualities’ in Premthada’s work
‘All of the four Royal Academy Dorfman Award finalists have shared immensely impressive projects that demonstrate how inspiring architecture can make a difference to people’s every-day experience’, Kate Goodwin, Head of Architecture and Drue Heinz Curator, Royal Academy of Arts. ‘They have highlighted why the Royal Academy Architecture Awards, now in their second year, are one of the most important aspects of the Royal Academy’s architectural activities. We believe in fostering architectural talent, enhancing discourse across the world and building greater awareness and knowledge of the role architects are playing in shaping our environments.’
Architecture Week continues today with a lecture by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, the winner of the annual Royal Academy Architecture Prize – the institution’s highest architectural accolade. §
