Multi-use Building, Mexico City

The most prestigious European award has extended its radius, creating a new Latin American version of the prize endowed with 50,000 euros which, like its counterpart from the Old World, will reward a built work every two years. Although every edition will only consider works from the two previous years, on this inaugural occasion 77 projects finished between 1990 and 1997 (proposed by a committee of experts) were judged. From those the jury chose 23 finalists and proclaimed a winner in a service building for the Mexican TV channel, Televisa, in the country’s capital, by the young studio of Enrique Norten (1954) and Bernardo Gómez- Pimienta (1961). The company’s brief demanded a project with media visibility and that would express their commitment to the future. The whole program is housed under a powerful metal roof, with an elliptical section, resting on a plinth of black stone which solves the continuity of the urban fabric. The prize was announced in Rio de Janeiro on 11 September, and awarded a month later in Oporto on 16 October on the occasion of the VIII Inter-American Summit of Heads of State.