by Ian Volner | Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Renzo Piano with the inaugural winners Iotti + Pavarini Architetti.
Northern Italian firm
Iotti + Pavarini Architetti have been named the winners of the first-ever
Renzo Piano Foundation
Prize, a yearly award to recognize promising firms and designers under
the age of 40. The prize was co-sponsored by Italy’s Association of
Architecture and Criticism—Luigi Puglisi, chairman—and the honorees were
selected from among some 70 applicants, each one vetted personally by
the Pulitzer Prize-winning designer
Renzo Piano.
Said the Genoese-born architect (whose current projects include
Columbia University’s new campus in Upper Manhattan), “For many years
[Luigi and I] have shared an admiration for young people, especially
those that are architects. Young and architects, a winning combination.
It was because of this that we thought about establishing a prize
intended for Italian architects under 40 that have realized a project.”
Iotti + Pavarini Architetti's Domus Technica
Iotti + Pavarini clinched the award with their project Domus Technica, in the town of
Brescello near the firm’s home base of
Reggio Emilia. The building is a training center for the
Immergas
corporation, a regional leader in the manufacture of commercial and
residential heating systems; it will facilitate research and development
in thermal solar, photovoltaic, and other innovative heat-distribution
systems, and is conceived as a serene, subtly modulated complex of
semi-translucent volumes stacked one atop the other Association of
Architecture and Criticismall of it set in a subdued landscape of
greenery and paved paths.
Images courtesy Iotti + Pavarini Architetti.
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