2023 RA Dorfman Award to Taller Gabriela Carrillo

John Hill

3. November 2023

Casa de Piedra in Brisas el Marqués Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico, by Taller Gabriela Carrillo, 2020 (Photo: Rafael Gamo; all photographs are courtesy of the RA)

During a special event held at the Royal Academy of Arts on the evening of November 2, Mexican architect Gabriela Carrillo was awarded the RA Dorfman Award, which “champions architecture from around the world that looks forward to the future of architecture and architectural practice.”

Last night's announcement came four months after Shane de Blacam was named the winner of the RA Architecture Prize and the four finalists for the RA Dorfman Award were revealed: Taller Gabriela Carrillo, alongside COMUNAL also from Mexico, H Arquitectes from Spain, and Tropical Space from Vietnam. The four finalists gave short lectures about their work in last night's event at Burlington Gardens, with the winner crowned at the end of the evening, when they were given the £10,000 prize and celebrated with the RA Architecture winner.

Carrillo founded her eponymous studio in 2019, before which she was a partner at Taller Rocha Carrillo for nearly a decade. She is also a co-founder of Colectivo C733, a studio that is dedicated to public projects in Mexico. In fact, the majority of the projects in Carrillo's submission for the RA Dorfman Award are C733 projects, among them Muelle de San Blas, a park and pier in Nayarit, and Ecoparque Bacalar in Quintana Roo, which features a walkway, square in plan, traversing the famous “Laguna de los 7 Colores” (Lagoon of the Seven Colors).

Muelle de San Blas in Nayarit, Mexico, by Colectivo C733, 2022 (Photo: Albers Studio)

“I believe architecture should not only be intelligent and sensitive in relation to where it is built and also reactive to the environmental disaster we have incurred as humanity; it should also be thought-provoking, having the ability to move and excite us, allowing us to detach ourselves from the time we are living in, to generate new questions... To achieve a democratic architecture, whichiscapableoftakingactionwithlimited resources; to turn it into a universal right that not only promotes safe, intelligent, rebellious, and political habitability, but that is capable of offering us well-being and fulfillment in crisis scenarios — an immaterial, intangible, powerful, and silent wellbeing.”
Gabriela Carrillo, excerpted statement in RA Dorfman Award submission

Ecoparque Bacalar in Quintana Roo, Mexico, by Colectivo C733, 2023 (Photo: Rafael Gamo)

“Taller Gabriela Carrillo impressed the judges with their conviction to create an architecture that is to be both seen and felt — to engage all of the senses with joyful structures that derive from a very distinctive and architectural attitude to form-making. We were delighted by Gabriela’s drawings, which were expressive of a sense of constant creativity and restless exploration, and impressed by the huge diversity of projects she has contributed to. In the final balance, the judges felt that her work best represented the sense of innovation in architectural practice that the Dorfman Award was established to celebrate.”
Níall McLaughlin, chair of the RA Dorfman Award jury*