IAI Design Award 2021/2022 Judging Committee announce: The architect duo-José Selgas & Lucía Cano from Spanish architecture studio SelgasCano won the IAI Most Creativity Award 2021/2022.

The IAI Most Creativity Award 2021/2022  has a total of eight candidates, from Asia, Europe, America and other regions, with works including architecture, interior, intelligent manufacturing design fields. From different backgrounds, based on the present social perspective and centered on human, they explore and create contact with nature, to solve practical problems and adapt to the new way of life. Finally, IAI jury counts the evaluation results and decided the winner- selgascano. As the IAI jury commented, they show perfect integration of art, technology and imagination, enhance the value of space. They are always able to use materials in new ways, characterized by solid research, experimentation and creative solutions,This becomes the biggest reason for winning the award.

selgascano was established in Madrid in 1998. It is a small atelier and intends to remain so. They have worked with a wide variety of projects keeping always nature at the core of the program. Its work is focused on research into the construction process, which is treated as an ongoing process of `listening′ to the largest possible number of elements involved, from manufacture to installation.

Selgascano avoid the use of games and mechanisms that lead to disciplinary issues, and strive to seek beauty that is comprehesible to any human being. They use techniques from other fields that have rarely been integrated with architectural design to focus on creating new possibilities of "nature" in artificial ways.

Works

Studio in the woods

Location：Madrid,Spain

What is being sought with this studio is quite simple: work under the trees. To do so, we need a roof that is as transparent as possible. Also, at the same time, we need to isolate the desk zone from direct sunlight.

Hence the transparent northern part. The part that is covered with a bent sheet of 20mm colourless plexiglass on the north side. The south side, where the desks are, has to be closed in much more, but not completely, so there is double sheet of fibreglass and polyester in its natural colour on the south side, with translucent insulation in the middle. All three form a 110 mm thick sandwich.

In between, we installed translucent white polyethylene insulation foam to preserve the translucence of the polyester. The transparent part was made from standard sheets of curved plexiglass, milled at the edges to enable a film of silicon sealant to be injected between the sheets，and made the two sides, which are in 10mm white opaline methacrylate on a steel frame, which can be fully opened to permit air circulation by using a system of pulleys and counterweights.

Half burying the whole thing, to provide hori zontal views of the allotment where the arm is installed, comes before all of that, but it's OK to do it afterwards as well. Everything placed below ground level is in concrete with wood formwork, wooden planks that are also used for paving, firmly bolted, painted in two colours with two- component paint with an epoxy base.

And to finish off, we have given it a sightly less….. slightly more… wet touch: on rainy days, that rain, when it rains, the raindrops on the plastic, when they hit, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes a lot,… sometimes a sound,…

Plan

Plan

Plan

Plan

Auditorium in Cartagena

Location：Cartagena,Spain

El "B" is this long construction, a body, that feeds on the heritage -the continuity- of a site's treatment: The Cartagena harbour, which is nothing but a harbour in Cartagena, borderline of the city from the sea.

Skatepark, Climbing Walls, broadband Internet, Modding, Tuning, Modeling, Graffiti, Urban Artists, Theatre Street, Tightrope Walkers, Circus activities, Video Art, Electronic Music, Acrobatics, Performing Arts, Manga, Parkour, Audiovisual Arts, Contemporary Dance, Dance Funk and Hip Hop, Dance Hall and MACC (contemporary body art performances) are the recogni zed activities composing the collective Factory and will join at the consequently so called Factory of Mérida.

HoILA

Location：Los Angeles,America

The new Second Home in Hollywood,holLA,is a collection of several recipes and ingredients of a California Cocktail.HolLA lays in East Hollywood on a 90,800 square feet site with two existing buildings ,of which we have to maintain one with two floors,designed in 1964 by Paul Williams,the first recognized African - American architect working in Los Angeles.This building has aclassical Neocolonialism LosAngeles look and is use dasacore and main entrance for the whole Campus.In this existing building 320 roaming places are located in the ground floor and additional offices with 200 works paces are in the first floor, with common facilities such as café,bar, restaurant, events and conference hall , resting areas and open terraces, all  around the building.

Jury Comments

Selgascano is a architecture company that always uses materials in new ways, characterized by solid research, experimentation and creative solutions. The creative process exists in every process of every project.

Selgascano's office design reflects a strong sensibility, they show perfect integration of art, technology and imagination, enhance the value of space. It shows an architecture that respects nature and the environment. Their unique architecture, sometimes austere, sometimes bold, reflects a very interesting exploration of movement and living space, creating new possibilities for 'nature' and living in harmony with it.

holLA@Selgascano

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