Architect Iwona Buczkowska has been awarded the Jane Drew Prize for Architecture 2024, an award recognising an architectural designer who, through their work and commitment to design excellence, has raised the profile of women in architecture. The Polish-French architect designed the largest timber housing complex in France, the Cité Pierre Sémard – a social housing project of 225 units completed in 1992 in Seine-Saint-Denis. Founding her practice Atelier Iwona Buczkowska in 1980, Buczkowska has completed several radical social housing projects and public buildings in France.
"Iwona Buczkowska is both a pioneer of timber construction and a fierce defender of the right to good housing. Rejecting standardisation, she prefers arcs and oblique planes to create intimate and brightly lit homes, and encourages us to think of architecture’s contribution to social ecology. Buczkowska’s buildings need to be preserved, and her ideas celebrated".
Manon Mollard, Editor of The Architectural Review.
The previous winners of the Jane Drew award include: Kazuyo Sejima (2023), Farshid Moussavi (2022), Kate Macintosh (2021), Yasmeen Lari (2020), Elizabeth (Diller 2019), Amanda Levete (2018), Denise Scott Brown, Odile Decq, Grafton Architects’ founders Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, Zaha Hadid, Kathryn Findlay of Ushida Findlay and Eva Jiřičná.
Angela Davis. Photograph by Oregon State University.
Political activist, philosopher and writer Angela Daviss is the winner of the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecture 2024, which recognises individuals, from fields adjacent to and that intersect with architecture, who have made a significant contribution to architecture and the built environment. Davis is a leader of the movement for abolition of the prison system as well as an important voice in other fields of civil rights activism. Davis’s latest book Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Volume 1 is due to be published by Penguin in March.
"Angela Davis’s activism and leadership is as relevant and pertinent to architecture as it has ever been. Her work highlights the complicity of architecture as a tool of violence and encourages architects to advocate for spatial justice. Davis continues to speak truth to power, setting an example for architects around the world."
Eleanor Beaumont, Deputy Editor of The Architectural Review.
Previous winners include: founder of the CCA Phyllis Lambert (2023), British-Palestinian sculptor and artist Mona Hatoum (2022), educator and writer Lesley Lokko (2021), academic and writer Beatriz Colomina (2020), photographer Hélène Binet (2019), Dutch artist Madelon Vriesendorp (2018), British sculptor Rachel Whiteread (2017), former director of the Serpentine Galleries Julia Peyton-Jones (2016), and architecture patron Jane Priestman (2015).
