Praça das Artes, designed by Marcelo Ferraz and Francisco Fanucci (Brasil Arquitetura) and Marcos Cartum, has won Building of the Year at the Icon Awards in London. The project competed with works by great names in international architecture: Herzog & de Meuron (with their Parrish Art Museum in Long Island, New York), Renzo Piano (The Shard in London), SANAA (the Louvre-Lens, in the north of France) and Hugh Broughton Architects (the Halley VI Research Station, the world’s first relocatable research facility, located in Antartica).
Work on the Praça das Artes, a cultural arts center that houses the Schools of Dance and Music, began in May 2009, in downtown Sao Paulo, and was completed last year, costing a total of R$ 136 million (about $60 million USD).
The jury of the Icon Awards, which judge on 11 categories, included: Rowan Moore, architecture critic of The Observer; Kate Goodwin, curator of the Royal Academy of Arts; Sam Jacob, professor of architecture at the University of Illinois, Chicago and critic of Art Review; and Tom Dyckhoff, architecture and design critic for the BBC and columnist for The Guardian and The Times.
Revisit Praça das Artes here on ArchDaily.
