Instituto de Secundaria en Rafal, Alicante

In the 52nd edition of the FAD Awards, four winning works were chosen among the 541 presented to the different categories. The High School in Rafal, Alicante, by Grupo Aranea – directed by Francisco Leyva – has been awarded in the category of Architecture. The jury found that the work is “an exception in a territory ravaged by excessive development”. In a context filled mainly with row housing, the building closes up to the exterior and flows out onto its interior in a comb-shaped layout that generates courtyards between the classrooms. The jury tagged this introverted landscape as an ‘intramural oasis’. The prize in the City and Landscape category went to the Playa de Poniente Promenade in Benidorm, by the architects Carlos Ferrater and Xavier Martí (OAB). In the category of Interior Design, the prize went to the I+Drink bar in Oviedo, by Merche Alcalá and Marion Dönneweg; and as for the Ephemeral Interventions category, the award was presented to the Portuguese Francisco and Manuel Aires Mateus for the set up of the exhibition ‘Weltliteratur’ in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.