Alejandro Aravena, Chilean architect which last year won the Pritzker Prize, has been awarded with 2017 Gothenburg Award for Sustainable Development of 1 million Swedish crowns. This is the first time the winner is an architect.
The Gothenburg Award is an international prize that since 2000 recognizes and supports work towards sustainable development. According to the jury statement, Aravena has been awarded because
together with his colleagues in the “Do-Tank” Elemental applies a design philosophy including citizens as part of the solution and not part of the problem, creating bridges of trust between people, government and business. All three dimensions of sustainability are balanced in a participatory process; socially, environmentally and economically.
Elemental (whose members are Alejandro Aravena, Víctor Oddó, Juan Ignacio Cerda, Diego Torres and Gonzalo Arteaga) is a think tank that claims that sustainability is the use of common sense. With that idea in mind and an innovative design concepts, they produce good-value housing for economically disadvantaged groups, in order combat segregation and spread an architectural culture and education that allows people to build their own sustainable houses.
Below, the TED talk where Aravena explains his architectural philosophy:
