The £10,000 RA Dorfman prize, given each year by the Royal Academy of Arts in London, is broad in its aims and global in its ambition. It “champions new talent”, from anywhere in the world, found with the help of 150 nominators and judged by a panel of academicians. The prize takes into consideration “geographical and sociopolitical challenges”. Its winners don’t have to be especially young. Rather, says the RA’s head of architecture, Vicky Richardson, it is “really good at finding people who have been building away, working like mad, without promoting themselves internationally”.
The prize risks being too general for its own good, but it has a knack for spotting individuals and groups who expand what architecture can do. Past winners include Boonserm Premthada in 2019, whose Bangkok Project Studio combines crafts and modern materials to produce arresting, original, never-seen-before structures that nonetheless make an unexpected kind of sense. The works of this year’s shortlist of four include restored Berber granaries, a proposed concrete-and-timber tower intended to last 500 years, a communist underwear factory converted into a home, and war-hit houses reroofed at speed. Their common themes include the desire to work collaboratively, a belief in reusing existing structures wherever possible, and a tendency to push conventional definitions of architectural practice so far that it’s hard to say exactly what they are.
