Established in 1981 to recognize visionary work by young practitioners, The Architectural League Prize is an annual competition, lecture series, and exhibition led by the League and its Young Architects + Designers Committee.
This year’s League Prize asked entrants to consider the notion of city limits. Cities provoke a multiplicity of readings that correspond to different points of view and locations. Architects continue to be faced with the task of reading and projecting and building cities. Practices may be simultaneously local and/or global, tactical and/or strategic.
In contrast to the Industrial Revolution, the immense scope of recent technological advances in DNA mapping and data flows originates at the compressed scale of particles and elements. How is the relevance of such minutiae affecting the conception of urban forms?
If urban conditions of proximity and density are no longer necessary to exchange information, products, ideas, and beliefs, what is the relevance of the city as a center of exchange? And if historic conceptions of cities have in part been a definition of limits, how does a reconception of boundaries due to contemporary modes of exchange alter the limits of cities?
Winners included:
- Thaddeus Briner
- Eric Bunge & Mimi Hoang of nARCHITECTS
- Teddy Cruz
- Petra Kempf
- Chris Perry, David Erdman, Marcelyn Gow, & Ulrika Karlsson of SERVO
- Eric Worcester
The City Limits theme was developed by the 2001 Young Architects + Designers Committee, which comprised past League Prize winners James Slade, Yolande Daniels, and Jeremy Edmiston.
The competition jurors included Wolf Prix, Nanako Umemoto, and Mark Wigley.
The competition is organized by The Architectural League’s program director, Anne Rieselbach.
