Portuguese architect, Inês Lobo, is the winner of the 2014 arcVision Prize – Women and Architecture, an international architecture award for female designers instituted by the Italcementi Group and now in its second year.

The jury unanimously selected Lobo as a versatile architect, recognized for her ability to work at different scales, integrating new buildings within existing urban fabric and creatively attacking complex architectural problems.

Twenty-one designers were short-listed for the prize, from 15 countries: Austria, Chile, Egypt, France, Germany, Japan, India, Ireland, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, USA.

The prize includes a two-week research workshop at i.lab, the Italcementi Group R&D Center in Bergamo, Italy, and a cash prize of €50,000.

Inês Lobo, a graduate of the Technical University of Lisbon (FAULT, 1989) established her own architecture office in 2002. She combines professional practice with teaching at the Autonoma University in Lisbon. In her architecture, building conversion plays an important role, giving her an opportunity to free herself from the pre-constituted models of classic Modernism. Among her outstanding projects, many of which are in the public realm and located in Portugal, is the Art and Architecture Faculty in Evora.

Ms. Lobo was enthusiastically chosen by the jury, whose members this year were Suhasini Maniratnam (an Indian actress, producer and writer deeply involved in community service), Samia Nkrumah (born in Ghana, president of the Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Center), Martha Thorne (born in the USA, director of the Pritzker Prize), Shaikha Al Maskari (an Abu Dhabibusinesswoman and member of the board of the Arab International Women’s Forum-AIWF), Odile Decq (owner of the Odile Decq firm in Paris), Vera Baboun (Mayor of Bethlehem), Louisa Hutton (English founding partner of the Sauerbruch Hutton architectural practice), Kazuyo Sejima (owner with Ryue Nishizawa of the SANAA architectural practice in Tokyo), Benedetta Tagliabue (founding partner with Enric Miralles of the EMBT architectural firm in Barcelona) and Elena Zambon (chairman of the Italian pharmaceuticals company Zambon S.p.A.).

The arcVision Prize – an initiative inspired by the Italcementi entrepreneurial vision – recognizes the innovation and sustainability of the projects and constructions presented, with a special focus on the standards of technological innovation, environmental quality, cost-effective use of resources, social responsibility, functional and aesthetic research.

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Source: Italcementi Group