Peter Rich wins World Building of the
Year award for Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre in South Africa
South African architect Peter Rich
is the second winner of the World Building of the Year award
for his Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre in South Africa,
a building on the site of an ancient civilsation which is
also designed to highlight the fragility of the enviornment.
Chaired by
Rafael Viñoly, this year´s international super
jury (which included Kengo Kuma, Farshid Moussavi, Suha Ozkan
and structural engineer Tim Macfarlane) had an especially
tough task in deciding on an overall winner for World Building
of the Year.
How do you compare an elegant little shop
with a piece of landscape design or a winery with an aviary?
Jurors were impressed with a number of schemes – such
as the redevelopment of Father Duffy Square in New York by
Choi Ropiha, Perkins Eastman, PSKB Architects and WOHA´s
Bras Basah Mass Rapid Transit Station in Singapore. Both schemes,
they felt, responded to complex urban problems in highly sophisticated
ways.
They also admired the winner of the Landscape
category, by Chinese architects Turenscape for its imaginative
qualities and strength of execution.
But after a lively debate, the jury conceded
that the Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre by Peter Rich was
clearly the most architecturally and psychologically powerful
project in the final, very tough, analysis. 'It carries both
weight and a message of complexity to the outside world, '
commented Suha Ozkan. The jury agreed that the way in which
it related to the land and made graceful virtues of the challenging
issues of sustainability, politics and social improvement
made it a highly deserving winner.
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