The Prize is the Beginning

The Exhibition

Presented in collaboration with the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), an affiliate of IIT, this exhibition highlights leading-edge contemporary architecture from across the Americas as recognized by the juried biennial Americas Prize and Emerge awards. The selected work reveals a wide range of functions and cultural contexts and underscores that there is more than a single accepted definition of design excellence.

Presented in collaboration with the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), an affiliate of IIT, this exhibition highlights leading-edge contemporary architecture from across the Americas as recognized by the juried biennial Americas Prize and Emerge awards. The exhibition explores how MCHAP straddles borders to help foster greater appreciation for the diversity and dynamism of North, Central, and South American architecture, while underwriting research and publication and supporting emerging practices. The selected work reveals a wide range of typologies and cultural contexts and underscores that there is more than a single accepted definition of design excellence. Through interviews, testimonials, and local narratives, the exhibition goes beyond a simple survey of nominees and award-winners to tell a richer story of impact over time—of buildings within their communities, and of MCHAP on academia and the international design profession.

Project Categories

Doing More with Less

• Finding Abundance in Scarcity
• Whether driven by tight budgets, a limited material palette, confined space, or self-restraint these projects and their designers excel in creative solutions to constraints.

Working with What We Have

• Adaptation & Reinvention
• Cities and the needs of urban communities are constantly changing. In this age of rapid urbanization and stifling inequality, urban planners, architects, and developers must creatively meet the moment. These notable new works, big and small, represent inspired and sustainable adaptations of our built environment.

Generosity

• Going Beyond the Brief
• Generosity, in the sense of a built work enriching place and community, is practically a given for MCHAP nominees. However, some buildings and landscapes go the extra mile for their users and for the public good, far “beyond the brief.”

Agents of Change

• Individuals & Institutions Making a Difference
• Sometimes meaningful impact arrives because an architect or client—or both—wills it into existence. In the case of these outstanding project examples, each with strong champions, the local community emerged as the winner.

Learning from Each Other

• Embracing our differences
• What does it mean to learn from one another through a design or development process, or from the experience that a building provides? These exemplary case studies show how authentic partnership, co-creation, and cultural immersion can foster deeper understanding and a sense of shared ownership.