With its Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture seeks to recognize the most distinguished works of architecture in the Americas. Every two years, the Prize is awarded at an event that takes place in the masterpiece of Mies van der Rohe, the S.R. Crown Hall, the home of the Chicago-based school.

The jury, comprising Ricky Burdett, Jose Castillo, Ron Henderson, Rodrigo Pérez de Arce, and Claire Weisz, has announced four finalists in the prize's latest version of the MCHAP.emerge award, which covers architecture built in 2016 and 2017. MCHAP.emerge award aims to recognize outstanding built work by emerging practices, offering a prize of $25,000 to the winner.

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Mexico City is a sprawling metropolis of layered temporalities, where architecture operates as a continuous negotiation between deep-seated history and intense urban mutation. Built over the aquatic traces of Tenochtitlan, the city's fabric is an ongoing dialogue between eras: the monumental scale of the Pre-Hispanic Templo Mayor and the Viceroyalty architecture of the Catedral Metropolitana coexist with the modern and contemporary impulses that define its skyline. This dense juxtaposition creates a unique urban canvas where sacred geography, colonial imposition, and 20th-century ambition intersect.

The mid-century marked a definitive era of experimentation, forging a Mexican Modernism that masterfully synthesized international structural rationalism with local identity and materiality. This synthesis is epitomized by the sweeping, plastic integration of art and architecture at the Ciudad Universitaria, the structural poetry of Félix Candela's hyper-parabolic shells, and the raw, monumental brutalism of Teodoro González de León and Abraham Zabludovsky. Parallel to this, the intimate, introspective mastery of Luis Barragán and Juan O'Gorman redefined domestic space, experimenting with light, vernacular color, and tectonic honesty to create spaces of profound spatial stillness.

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One of the hallmarks of architectural sensibility is a clean, clutter-free space – "a place for everything and everything in its place." Every project requires some element where things can be neatly stored away, whether it be books, kitchen appliances, or entire furniture pieces. Solutions for these storage needs can range from invisible and out of the way, to stunning, textural centerpieces – either way adding necessary functionality to our most-used spaces.

Check out this selection of ten brilliant storage spaces.

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