The remodeling and expansion of the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City by Taller | Mauricio Rocha is the 2023 recipient of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), the biennial prize that recognizes a built work in the Americas that best embodies architectural excellence. The winner announcement was made by MCHAP Director Dirk Denison and Jury Chair Sandra Barclay at the MCHAP Symposium and Gala Awards Benefit Dinner that took place in Chicago at S. R. Crown Hall on the Illinois Institute of Technology’s historic Mies campus this Friday, March 24, 2023.
Awarded by the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) College of Architecture, the 2023 edition selected the Anahuacalli expansion, from six finalist works chosen by the jury from among nearly 300 nominations submitted by MCHAP’s global network. The MCHAP 2023 jury comprising Sandra Barclay, Mónica Bertolino, Dirk Denison (ex officio), Alejandro Echeverri, Julie Eizenberg, and Philip Kafka, praised the winning scheme for creating a “sensitive, open dialogue with the existing Anahuacalli Museum, conceived by the artist Diego Rivera in the 1940s and realized over the following decades in collaboration with the architect Juan O’Gorman”.
The Anahuacalli Museum articulates ancestral culture, nature, and the community in an exceptional way. [..] It does so through an architectural intervention that reinterprets and accompanies in a contemporary key the strong presence of the pre-existence of this site.
—Mónica Bertolino, MCHAP 2023 jury member.
The Anahuacalli Museum remodeling and expansion, completed in June 2021, by Taller | Mauricio Rocha introduces three new buildings: storage, a workshop, and offices, along with a walkway that integrates these additions with the original museum. In addition, the project converts several existing structures to new uses and redesigns elements of the museum’s exhibitions. Addressing the unique heritage of the site, the intervention offers new public spaces and opportunities to encounter Rivera’s collection of pre-Hispanic art. Mauricio Rocha, the designer of the Anahuacalli expansion, will receive $50,000 in funding toward research and the development of a publication as well as the MCHAP Chair of Architecture at IIT.
The way the museum extension mingles with the landscape speaks volumes about where architecture is headed, and the way it honors the past is fearless, heartfelt, and original.
—Julie Eizenberg, MCHAP 2023 jury member.
The 2023 Americas Prize recognizes the best-built work in the Americas completed between December 2018 and June 2021. MCHAP launched its fourth prize cycle in Venice, Italy, in August 2021. The network of nominators submitted projects for consideration beginning in November of that year. MCHAP announced a jury selection of 39 outstanding projects in June 2022. In February of this year, it announced its six finalists in Medellín, Colombia. The other five finalists for the 2023 Americas Prize are:
- Guadalupe Market / Colectivo C733 (Tapachula, Mexico)
- The Menil Drawing Institute / Johnston Marklee (Houston, United States)
- Park in the Prado neighborhood Mayor’s Office of Medellín / Connatural (Medellin, Colombia)
- The Polygon Gallery / Patkau Architects (North Vancouver, Canada)
- Valois Building / José Cubilla (Asuncion, Paraguay)
The evening’s program also recognized two special honorees for their longstanding contributions to architectural excellence: Lynn Osmond, CEO of Choose Chicago, and Sharon Prince, founder of Design for Freedom and CEO and founder of the Grace Farms Foundation.
