YTAA 2020 by the Numbers

John Hill, Miriam Giordano
2. June 2020
(Photo © Carmen Mandado Espiñeira)

Organized by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe with Creative Europe, the Architects’ Council of Europe, and the European Association for Architectural Education, the biennial award recognizes the talent of recently graduated architects, urbanists and landscape architects who will be responsible for transforming our environment in the future.

The YTAA 2020 edition consists of 383 graduation projects submitted by 478 students from 138 schools of architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture, from 114 different cities and 33 European countries plus Brazil, Chile and Mexico participating as guest countries in this iteration.

For the first time, the YTAA is holding an independent edition organized with four strategic partners of the European Union in Asia: China, India, Japan and South Korea. The YTAA 2020 Asia Edition includes 135 graduation projects by 190 students from 64 schools in 43 cities.

YTAA 2020 Asia Edition

In Europe, of the 33 countries with submissions, Spain has the most submissions, with 52 projects from 16 schools. Next are:

  • Italy: 40 projects from 11 schools
  • Germany: 24 projects from 10 schools
  • Poland: 21 projects from 8 schools
  • France: 20 projects from 9 schools

Spain, specifically the ETSAM in Madrid, also stands out for having two winners from the first two editions of the YTAA: Policarpo del Canto Baquera in 2016 and Julio Gotor Valcárcel in 2018.

In Latin and South America, 22 projects were submitted from 8 schools in Brazil, 14 projects were submitted from 4 schools in Chile, and 18 projects were submitted from 5 schools in Mexico.

YTAA 2018 awards ceremony in Venice (Photo © European Cultural Centre)

The YTAA works by a nomination process: registered universities are invited to choose, through an internal debate, their best projects; for this reason the schools are a fundamental actor in the award. Along with the talent of the new young architects, the YTAA submissions reveals the main topics being addressed by European universities and those that are of most concern to the architects of tomorrow.

Beyond ETSAM in Madrid, other universities that submitted winning projects in the previous editions were: Delft University of Technology (Loed Stolte, 2018), London Metropolitan University (Matthew Gregorowski, 2018), Berlin University of the Arts (Hendrik Brinkmann, 2018), KU Leuven (Iwo Borkowicz, 2016) and Wroclaw University of Technology (Tomasz Broma, 2016).

All the 2020 projects, as well as the nominees and winners in the previous editions, can be found in the online archive: http://ytaa.miesbcn.com/archive

YTAA 2018 exhibition at Palazzo Mora in Venice (Photo © European Cultural Centre)

Each jury for the YTAA 2020 is composed of five renowned specialists representing diverse schools and trends in the fields of architecture and architectural critique.

The YTAA 2020 jury:

  • Martine De Maeseneer (Chair), Vice dean for International Affairs at KU Leuven
  • Oleg Drozdov, drozdov&partners and co-founder of the Kharkiv School of Architecture, Kharkiv
  • Juliet Leach, Head of Marketing, Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), London
  • Rosario Talevi, Curator Making Futures Bauhaus+ and Associate Researcher Universität der Künste, Berlin
  • Bet Capdeferro, bosch.capdeferro architecture, Girona
YTAA 2020 jury, L-R: Martine de Maeseneer, Oleg Drozdov, Juliet Leach, Rosario Talevi, Bet Capdeferro

The YTAA 2020 Asia Edition Jury:

  • Momoyo Kaijima (Chair), Principal of Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo, Japan
  • Minsuk Cho, Architect, founder of Mass Studies, Seoul
  • Chitra Vishwanath, Principal Architect and Managing Director of BIOME, Bengaluru
  • Li Xiangning, Deputy Dean, College of Architecture & Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai
  • Eduard Kögel, Berlin based architect member of the Scientific Committee of ABE Journal and member of Advisory Board of the Journal of Chinese Architectural History at Qinghua University in Beijing
YTAA 2020 Asia Edition jury, L-R: Momoyo Kaijima, Minsuk Cho, Chitra Vishwanath, Li Xiangning, Eduard Kögel

Together the YTAA exhibition and award ceremony are one of the Collateral Events of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia How will we live together?, curated by Hashim Sarkis. Since the Biennale recently postponed its exhibition until 2021, the organization of the exhibition and award ceremony for YTAA will soon unveil new venues and events for 2020.

YTAA 2018 awards ceremony in Venice (Photo © European Cultural Centre)

YTAA is organised by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe with the support of the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, in collaboration with the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE) and the Architects' Council of Europe (ACE-CAE); World-Architects as founding partner; the European Cultural Centre as a partner in Venice; the sponsorship of Jung, Jansen and Regent; and the support of USM.

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