The Paris-based office founded by Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot –upcoming member of the jury panel of the ‘21 BigMat Architecture Award- will receive the award in April 2021 in the Teatro dell’Architettura auditorium at Università della Svizzera italiana in Mendrisio.

The seventh edition of the Swiss Architectural Award has been granted to Bruther, the French architecture office founded by Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot.

The prize aims to promote a kind of architecture that is sensitive to contemporary ethical, aesthetic and ecological issues and can facilitate public debate. The prize is awarded to architects under 50 years-old who have completed at least three significant works, without distinction of nationality.

Bruther was selected for their projects Cultural and Sports Centre Saint-Blaise, Paris (2010-2014), the New Generation Research Centre, Caen (2013-2015) and the Residence for researchers “Maison Julie-Victoire Daubié”, Paris (2014-2018) among 33 candidates from 19 countries, thus winning the edition with the largest number of participants since the award was established in 2007.

The candidates for the 2020 edition of the Swiss Architectural Award were nominated by a committee of advisor comprising of Manuel Aires Mateus, Lisboa (Portugal); Solano Benitez, Asunción (Paraguay); Angelo Bucci, São Paulo (Brazil); Marianne Burkhalter, Zurich (Switzerland); Sean Godsell, Melbourne (Australia); Steven Holl, New York (USA); Junya Ishigami, Tokyo (Japan); Bijoy Jain, Mumbai (India); Shelley McNamara, Dublin (Ireland); Valerio Olgiati, Flims (Switzerland); Adolph Stiller, Vienna (Austria); Elisa Valero, Granada (Spain); Paolo Zermani, Parma (Italy).

The jury, chaired by Mario Botta and composed by Riccardo Blumer (Director of the Accademia di architettura, USI), João Luís Carrilho da Graça (Lisboa), Dieter Dietz (director of the Section d’Architecture, EPFL-ENAC) and Christophe Girot (dean of the Departement Architektur, ETHZ), recognised Bruther’s work as fully in line with the objectives of the Swiss Architectural Award, which aims to encourage public debate on the role of architecture in contemporary society through the involvement of the three Swiss schools of architecture, and more urgently in this period of crisis.

In the jury’s own words, “The three works presented by Bruther (Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot) deal, with great coherence and quality, with the theme of the periphery (and specifically, the periphery of French cities), recognised as the nerve centre where the contradictions of our society manifest themselves with disruptive force. In difficult contexts, marked by social tensions and characterised by anonymous if not degraded spaces, Bruther intervenes with an architecture characterised by a profound civic demand, which aims to restore dignity to these places and their inhabitants”.

BRUTHER

Founded in 2007 in Paris by Stéphanie Bru (1973) and Alexandre Theriot (1972), Bruther works in the fields of architecture, research, education, urbanism and landscape. Bruther aims “to understand and to accept conceptual and constructive needs but also to be able to back down and unexpectedly encounter new experimentation and research areas. Our projects suggest a delicate balance between strategy and form, rigor and freedom, specific and generic, immediacy and evolutivity. Considering the program in its future, our projects stand for open infrastructures that fit an abundance of context possibilities and a wide malleability of uses”.

Bruther has been awarded the Prix de l’Équerre d’argent 2016 (for the New Generation Research Center, Caen), the Gold Award, Best Architects Awards 2016 (for the Cultural and Sports Center Saint-Blaise, Paris), and nominated in 2015 for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award (for the Cultural and Sports Center Saint-Blaise, Paris).

Stéphanie Bru and Alexandre Theriot lectured at various architecture schools worldwide, as Associate Professor of Architecture & Design. Alexandre Theriot currently teaches in the Department of Architecture, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Switzerland.

Alexandre Theriot will also be taking part in the 2021 BigMat International Architecture Award as a member of this edition’s jury, alongside the Award’s Chairman Jesús Aparicio and Award’s Secretary Jesús Donaire, and this year’s addition’s Adrien Verschuere, Pavol Paňák, Nicola di Battista and Inês Lobo.

THE SWISS ARCHITECTURAL AWARD

The Swiss Architectural Award, launched for the first time in 2007, aims to promote contemporary architecture that can lead to the public debate of ethical, aesthetic and ecological issues. In this year’s edition the Award has collaborated with three prestigious Swiss Schools of Architecture – Università della Svizzera italiana, EPF Lausanne and ETH Zurich – represented by the Jury chairman Mario Botta.

The prize, which amounts to CHF 100,000, will be presented to the winners on 22nd April 2021 at the Auditorium of the Teatro dell’architettura, Mendrisio, during a ceremony which will also mark the opening of the exhibition of the works submitted by the candidates and the presentation of the volume Swiss Architectural Award 2019-2020 (Mendrisio Academy Press-Silvana editorial).