Monday, 26 November 2018 at 5:30 p.m.
Rome, Palazzo Taverna
The jury of romArchitettura unanimously voted to grant this year’s Career Award to Massimiliano Fuksas for his great contribution of ideas, works and the realization of innovative principles of contemporary architecture in almost fifty years of activity in Rome, Lazio and throughout the world.
The site chosen for this important occasion is Rome, Palazzo Taverna at the Arkansas University in Rome. As the President of the IN / ARCHLazio Amedeo Schiattarella explains: “From the 1960s to the 1990s, Palazzo Taverna has represented a site in which the entire community of Architects, inextricably linked to the figure of Bruno Zevi, identified itself.”
For IN/ARCHLazio, returning to Palazzo Taverna for this special occasion, represents the desire to reaffirm a strong connection with its roots and at the same time the desire create a vivid emotion in the community of Roman architects.
Decisive has been the new relationship with the University of Arkansas Rome Center which has expressed its complete willingness to open its doors to other Roman cultural realities. Palazzo Taverna has thus become a precious instrument to enhance the network system that IN/ ARCHLazio has placed at the center of its strategic objectives for the coming years “.
Massimiliano Fuksas, who will hold a lectio magistralis introduced with a laudatio by Architect Franco Zagari, winner of last year’s Career Award affirms:
“I have always believed that architecture has an enormous capacity for communication even though it does not possess a proper idiom: architecture is able to communicate because it essentially creates emotions that architects perceive and desire to transfer to others. The role of architects is to live amid people while being fully aware that they are working for them: their objective is to improve people’s lives. “
Biographical Notes
Studio Fuksas, led by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, is one of the most outstanding international architectural firm in the world.
Over the past 40 years the company has developed an innovative approach through a strikingly wide variety of projects, ranging from urban interventions to airports, from museums to cultural centers and spaces for music, from convention centers to offices, from interiors to design collections.
With headquarters in Rome, Paris and Shenzhen, and a staff of 170 professionals, the practice has completed more than 600 projects and has worked in Europe, Africa, America, Asia and Australia, receiving numerous international awards.
Massimiliano Fuksas of Lithuanian descent, was born in Rome in 1944. He graduated in Architecture from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1969. Since the Eighties he has been one of the main protagonists of the contemporary architectural scene.
From 1994 to 1997 he was a member of the Planning Commissions in Berlin and Salzburg.In 1998 he was awarded for his professional career with “Vitruvio International a la Trayectoria” in Buenos Aires. From 1998 to 2000 he directed the “VII Mostra Internazionale di Architettura di Venezia”, Less Aesthetics, More Ethics. In 1999 he received the Grand Prix National d’ArchitectureFrançaise, the following year he was named National Academic of San Luca and was decorated Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Française. In 2002 the Honorary Fellowship of the AIA – American Institute of Architects , Washington D.C. Three years later member of the Académie d’Architecture in Paris.In 2006 the Honorary Fellowship of the RIBA – Royal Institute of British Architects, London UK and was named Cavaliere di Gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana. In 2010 he was decorated with Légion d’Honneur by the French President. In 2012 the Medal of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in Italy, and the Global Lithuanian Award, Art and Culture category in Vilnius, Lithuania. The following year the Idea-Tops Awards, Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport-T3, awarded Best Transportation Space in Shenzhen, China. In 2014 Architizer A + Award and Architizer A + Popular Choice Award, Transportation-Airports category in New York. From 2000 to 2015 he was author of the architecture column – founded by Bruno Zevi – in the Italian news magazine “L’Espresso” and from 2014 to 2015 he was, with his wife, the author of the Design column in the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”.
He has been Visiting Professor at a number of Universities such as Columbia University in New York, the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, the Akademie der BildendenKünste in Wien, the Staatliche Akademie der BildendenKünste in Stuttgart.
Long since he is dedicating special attention to the study of urban problems in large metropolitan areas.