Mexican studio Taller Gabriela Carrillo wins the 2023 Royal Academy Dorfman Award

'An architecture that is to be seen and felt.' 'Joyful structures that derive from a very distinctive architectural attitude to form-making’. The building that is ‘confident, warm and human’. These were remarks the jury of the 2023 Royal Academy Dorfman Awards stated about the oeuvre of the winning Mexican architecture practice Taller Gabriela Carrillo. The Royal Academy of Arts' annual awards celebrate new ideas and practices that highlight the future potential of architecture. As one of the four finalists for the awards constituting Vietnamese practice Tropical Space, Spanish firm Harquitectes and Mexican studio COMUNAL, Taller Gabriela Carrillo is acknowledged for her “approach that emphasises the creation of space for people to find their own ways of coming together and engages of all the senses through architecture”. At the prize ceremony held recently, Carrillo received the award and £10,000 prize, while the event also saw the felicitation of Irish architect Shane de Blacam—recipient of the 2023 Royal Academy Architecture Prize.

Inaugurated in 2018, The Royal Academy Dorfman Awards champions new talent in architecture, and is awarded to an architect, practice or collective who are reimagining the future of architecture and taking into consideration geographical and socio-political challenges. Previous winners have been architect Vinu Daniel-led Indian architecture studio Wallmakers (2022), Beijing-based BCKJ Architects (2020), Boonserm Premthada from Bangkok (2019), and Iranian architect Alireza Taghaboni (2018).

“Taller Gabriela Carrillo is a hugely exciting architecture practice that the judges unanimously felt deserves the international recognition that comes with this award,” said Vicky Richardson, Head of Architecture and Drue Heinz Curator at the Royal Academy, and one of the jurors of the architecture award. “This year two Dorfman nominees came from Mexico, and Gabriela Carrillo’s win can also be seen as a celebration of the architectural culture of Mexico, which the judges noted has given the world an unprecedented group of successful architecture practices led by women in recent years.”

Gabriela Carrillo established her collaborative and interdisciplinary studio in 2019 after having served as a partner at the distinguished Mexican firm Taller Rocha Carrillo for over nine years. The 45-year-old architect is also a co-founder of Colectivo c733, a collective that develops public space projects in Mexico and is the Head of the Research and Degree Seminar Estudio RX at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Carrillo’s practice seeks an interest in observing places over time and from a distance, the reason why she finds immediacy uncomfortable. Her architecture involves the use of local resources and sensitivity and reactivity in relation to where it is built. She says, “The most powerful tools in architecture are priceless: empty spaces, light, penumbra, time, and our senses.” Carrillo’s repertoire reveals a majority of residential projects from across Mexico and humble public spaces which include spas, markets, sports centre, and train stations. Among her key projects are Casa Piedra in Guerrero, the Oral-Criminal Court in Pátzcuaro in Michoacan, the Matamoros Market in Tamaulipas, and landscape intervention Ecoparque Bacalar in Quitana Roo.

We were delighted by Gabriela’s drawings, which were expressive of a sense of constant creativity and restless exploration, and impressed by the huge diversity of projects she has contributed to,” says Níall McLaughlin RA, chair of the 2023 Royal Academy Architecture Awards Jury. “In the final balance, the judges felt that her work best represented the sense of innovation in architectural practice that the Dorfman Award was established to celebrate.”

The jury for the Dorfman Awards comprises Iranian-born British architect Farshid Moussavi RA, Serbian fashion designer Roksanda Ilinčić, Irish sculptor Eva Rothschild RA, South African architect and founder of Johannesburg-based firm Counterspace, Sumayya Vally, and Head of Architecture and Drue Heinz Curator at the Royal Academy, Vicky Richardson.