Anne Lacaton and Suad Amiry winners of the W Awards 2025

The winners of the W Awards, honouring lifetime achievements and contributions to architectural culture and the work of those with bright futures ahead of them, have been announced in the UK.

Architect Anne Lacaton has been awarded the Jane Drew Prize for Architecture 2025, an award recognising an architectural designer who, through their work and commitment to design excellence, has raised the profile of women in architecture.

The W Awards, which were launched in 2012 and formerly known as the Women in Architecture Awards, celebrate the exceptional work of people who are systematically undervalued by the society in which we live.

Anne Lacaton y Suad Amiry winners of the W Awards 2025.

Co-founder, with Jean-Philippe Vassal, of French firm Lacaton & Vassal, Anne Lacaton has been instrumental in defining what it means to build responsibly in the 21st century. Often upending convention, Lacaton and Vassal are famed for their bare-bones renovation of Paris’s Palais de Tokyo, and for wrapping existing housing stock in winter gardens – a move which improves the thermal performance of homes while subtly extending them.

Anne Lacaton. Photograph courtesy by Holcim Foundation.

"Far from pretensions to stardom, Anne Lacaton’s practice is considered and audacious, with a clarity of purpose that must be celebrated. With Jean-Philippe Vassal, she places residents and users at the centre, and designs buildings that are both frugal and generous. Their denunciation of demolition as madness, and advocacy for reuse and transformation is an urgent message for all architects, clients and politicians."

Manon Mollard, Editor of The Architectural Review.

Suad Amiry. Credit of the photograph by Columbia GSAPP / Wikimedia Commons.

Suad Amiry is the winner of the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecture 2025, which recognises individuals from fields adjacent to and that intersect with architecture, who have made a significant contribution to architecture and the built environment.

Amiry is the founder of Riwaq, an organisation specialising in preserving and reusing historical buildings in Palestine. In addition to leading Riwaq’s conservation work, Amiry is a prolific writer, having authored award-winning books such as Sharon and My Mother-in-Law (2003) and, most recently, Mother of Strangers (2022).

‘"In light of continuing and increasing violence and destruction in Palestine, Suad Amiry’s commitment to the restoration and reuse of historical Palestinian structures is vital. Amiry’s varied practice, combining both advocacy and writing, teaches spatial practitioners to imagine a world beyond the rubble."

Eleanor Beaumont, Deputy Editor at The Architectural Review.

The architects shortlisted for this year’s Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture feature architects based in South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Ecuador, seeking original and tactical ways to navigate the contexts they work in to create spaces for the local community. This award recognises a bright future for designers under the age of 45 who are leading their own practices.

The Moira Gemmill Prize shortlist comprises:

- Marialuisa Borja of Al Borde based in Ecuador.
- Ana Maria Gutiérrez of Organizmo based in Colombia.
- Ashleigh Killa of The MAAK based in South Africa.
- Sara Alissa and Nojoud Alsudairi of Syn Architects based in Saudi Arabia.

FRAC. The ICO Museum presents "Lacaton & Vassal". Photograph by Philippe Ruault.

Mother of Strangers: A Novel. Book by Suad Amiry.

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More information

Anne Lacaton - Jean-Philippe Vassal. Lacaton and Vassal

Lacaton & Vassal. Anne Lacaton and Jean Phillippe Vassal created the office in 1989, based in Paris. The office has a practice in France, as well as abroad, working on various buildings and urban planning programs.

Anne LACATON was born in France in 1955. She graduated from the School of architecture of Bordeaux in 1980, and got a diploma in Urban Planning at the university of Bordeaux in 1984. She is teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Madrid since 2007, and was invited in 2011 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, as well as in Harvard GSD Studio in Paris in 2011.

Jean Philippe VASSAL was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1954. He graduated from the School of Architecture of Bordeaux in 1980. He worked as an urban planner in Niger from 1980 to 1985. He is professor at UdK Berlin since 2012, and has been a visiting professor at the TU in Berlin in 2007-2010, and at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne in 2010-11.

Main Awards, the Grand Prix National d’Architecture, France, 2008, the Rolf Schock Prize, visual arts category, Sweden 2014, the Daylight & Building Components Award, Velum Fonden, Denmark, 2011, and the International Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2009, the Equerre d'Argent award 2011, with Frédéric Druot, France. Their work has been shortlisted several times and twice finalist for the Mies Van der Rohe Award, European Prize for Contemporary Architecture.

The main works completed by the office are: the FRAC, Public Contemporary Art Collection, in Dunkerque, France; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Site for contemporary creation ; social housing and student housing in Paris ; a music and polyvalent hall in Lille ; the Café for the Architektur Zentrum in Vienna ; a School for Business and Management in Bordeaux ; the Architecture school in Nantes, and significant housing projects in France such as the House Latapie, Bordeaux ; the House in the trees, facing Arcachon Bay, the "Cité Manifeste" in Mulhouse. They are now working on the transformation of modernist social housing : the Transformation of Tour Bois le Prêtre in Paris (with Frédéric Druot, architect), in St Nazaire la Chesnaie and in Bordeaux Grand Parc (with F Druot and Ch. Hutin, architects). All these projects are based on a principle of generosity and economy, serving the life, the uses and the appropriation, with the aim of changing the standard.

Suad Amiry

Suad Amiry, born in Damascus in 1951, is a writer, architect and founder of the Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation, an organisation created in 1991 to preserve Palestinian architecture and collective memory through documentation and restoration projects.

Suad Amiry studied architecture at the American University of Beirut, the University of Michigan and also at the University of Edinburgh, where she received her PhD. Later, in 1981, she returned to Ramallah to teach at Birzeit University.

Her literary vocation arose in 2001 by chance, as the author states. Some of her notable titles are: Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: War Diaries from Ramallah, Palestine, 2003; Earthquake in April, 2003; Menopausal Palestine: Women At The Edge, 2010; Nothing to Lose But Your Life: An 18-Hour Journey With Murad, 2010.

The architect was a member of the Palestinian delegation to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in Washington D.C. from 1991 to 1993. She then held several senior positions within the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, and in 2006, she was appointed vice-chair of the Board of Trustees of Birzeit University.

Published on: March 8, 2025

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