Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) has announced the five finalist projects for the 2025 Americas Prize, highlighting projects from Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The announcement was made by MCHAP Director Dirk Denison and this year's Jury Chair Maurice Cox. The biennial award established in 2013 by the Illinois Institute of Technology's College of Architecture, recognizes exceptional architectural achievements across North, Central, and South America. Considering projects completed between June 2022 and December 2023, it aims to highlight those projects that significantly contribute to their communities and elevate professional standards.
The winning project will be announced on May 5 during a symposium at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The winning authors will receive the MCHAP Award, a chair at IIT's College of Architecture, and a $50,000 research and publication grant.
This year's jury is comprised of Maurice Cox, former Chicago Planning Director, serving as Jury Chair; Sofia von Ellrichshausen, whose Poli House won the 2014 Emerging Practice Prize; Mauricio Rocha, winner of the 2023 Americas Prize; Giovanna Borasi, Director and Chief Curator of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; and Gregg Pasquarelli, founding principal of SHoP Architects. The jury's travels and discussions with project teams form a core component of the prize, emphasizing both the built work and the collaborative processes behind it.
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Read on to discover the five finalist projects selected for the 2025 Americas Prize, along with descriptive texts provided by the MCHAP jury to underline the merits of each project.
Thaden School / Eskew Dumez Ripple, Marlon Blackwell Architects, and Andropogon Associates
Bentonville, Arkansas, United States
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 create a 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.
Pumphouse / 5468796 Architecture
Winnipeg, Canada
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 it 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 way for the use of alleys and a series of pockets of communal activities.
Clínica Veterinaria Guayaquil / adamo-faiden
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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.
Ecoparque Bacalar / Colectivo C733
Bacalar, Mexico
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.
Centro de Investigación Mar de Cortés / Tatiana Bilbao ESTUDIO
Mazatlan, Mexico
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 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.
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