YTAA Among Biennale's Collateral Events

15. May 2020

Image: YTAA/World-Architects

The Young Talent Architecture Award 2020 is among the fifteen collateral events approved by curator Hashim Sarkis to be part of the Venice Architecture Biennale opening in August.

Update: Soon after posting this story, La Biennale di Venezia announced the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale would be postponed until 2021. We will update the dates and venue of the YTAA exhibition once that information becomes available.

Since 2016 the YTAA – Young Talent Architecture Award has been recognizing the most exceptional projects of recent graduates from European schools in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning degrees. Organized by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe with Creative Europe, the Architects’ Council of Europe, and the European Association for Architectural Education, the biennial award is an extension of the EU Mies Prize, one that aims to foster, as the name makes clear, young talent.

The third edition of the YTAA has been underway since November, with the submission deadline having recently passed at the end of April. Per a statement from the Mies Foundation, 383 graduation projects were submitted by 478 students of 138 architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture schools, from 114 different cities and 33 European countries plus Brazil, Chile and Mexico participating as guest countries in this iteration.

The next milestone for the YTAA is the announcement of the shortlist and finalists in July, followed by the opening of the exhibition at Palazzo Mora in Venice on August 29, 2020. The exhibition will present the designs of the YTAA 2020 works including the twelve finalists and four winners. It will also display the nine finalists and three winners of the Asian edition of YTAA, being held for the first time in 2020 and consisting of schools from China, India, Japan, and South Korea.

The winners will be announced during a ceremony at Palazzo Mora on September 22, complemented by a debate that will address the winning projects in relationship to the question posed by Hashim Sarkis as the theme of the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale, "How will we live together?"

Between now and July, the five-member juries for YTAA 2020 and Asian Edition of YTAA 2020 will be deliberating the many submitted projects. The YTAA 2020 jury is chaired by Martine de Maeseneer (KU Leuven, Brussels) and consists of Oleg Drozdov (Kharkiv School of Architecture, Ukraine), Juliet Leach (RIBA, London), Rosario Talevi (Universität der Künste, Berlin), and Bet Capdeferro (bosch.capdeferro architecture, Girona, Spain). The jury of the Asian Edition of YTAA 2020 is chaired by Momoyo Kaijima (Atelier Bow-Wow, Tokyo), Minsuk Cho (Mass Studies, Seoul), Chitra Vishwanath (BIOME, Bengaluru, India), Li Xiangning (Tongji University, Shanghai, China), and Eduard Kögel (Berlin-based architect and curator Chinese-Architects).

Winners of the previous editions are on our website: 2016 and 2018.

YTAA is organised by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe with the support of the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, in collaboration with the European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE) and the Architects' Council of Europe (ACE-CAE); World-Architects as founding partner; the European Cultural Centre as a partner in Venice; the sponsorship of Jung, Jansen and Regent; and the support of USM.