The RIBA Charles Jencks Award is given to an individual or practice that has recently made a major contribution internationally to both the theory and practice of architecture. This year's winner, Ensamble Studio, will deliver the 2019 RIBA Charles Jencks Award lecture at the RIBA on Monday 4 November. The event will include the award presentation as well as a Q&A with Débora Mesa and Antón Garcia-Abril following the lecture.
Chair of the RIBA Charles Jencks Award judging panel and RIBA Director of Education, David Gloster, said:
“Awareness of the many contexts with which creative thinking must engage, and how multiple intelligences successfully negotiate architectural challenges should be fundamental to the work of all progressive practitioners. However, with the dearth of genuine narrative in architectural production, it is rare to see this exhibited. Débora Mesa and Antón Garcia-Abril are unafraid to work in punishing urban, peri-urban, and rural terrains, relishing briefs which require reappraisal of the tropes of placemaking, functionality, refinement, beauty, and finish. It should also be noted that this is a collaborative practice of equals built around personal, professional, and academic relationships, all too infrequently acknowledged in awards programmes.”
Charles Jencks
Charles Jencks, the patron of the award, sadly passed away on 13 October 2019.
Find out more about Charles, his work and his legacy in RIBAJ's obituary by Hugh Pearman.
About the winner
Ensamble Studio was founded in 2000 and now has offices in both Madrid and Boston. Works include Hemeroscopium House and Reader’s House in Madrid, The Truffle in Costa da Morte, Telcel Theater in Mexico City, Structures of Landscape in Montana (USA) and, more recently, Ca’n Terra in Menorca and Ensamble Fabrica in Madrid.
Débora joined Ensamble Studio in 2003 and is Ventulett Chair in Architectural Design at Georgia Tech College of Architecture. Antón received the Spanish Academy Research Prize in Rome in 1996 and has been a professor at the School of Architecture and Planning of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) since 2012.
