Barcelona has been awarded the BIENALBA Prize for a new town planning vision of cities as part of the International Architecture Biennial in Buenos Aires. The recognition was made public on Friday at the Usina del Arte, where the event is held from 9 to 20 October.

With the international prestige of this prize, the Argentine biennial has distinguished Barcelona for its town planning and architectural model and for innovation when it comes to developing it and publicising it. The BIENALBA 2017 Prizes are awarded, in different categories, to the outstanding works of architecture in the last two years. The jury is made up by the Main Biennial Committee.

During the prize-giving ceremony on Friday evening, the councillor for Architecture, Landscape and Heritage, Daniel Mòdol, said that winning the award was “an honour and one more incentive to continue to consolidate a way of doing architecture which has made Barcelona a world reference… As a city, we are working to make the citizens aware of the value of urban architecture and the role it plays in their everyday lives. This prize confirms us in that goal and shows that internationally our architecture is perceived as one that makes city, identity and heritage”.

The prize coincides with the participation of Barcelona as guest of honour at the biennial, which has been held since 1985 and has become one of the most important events of the region, a pioneer in biennials in Latin America and recognised as one of the great trio, together with Venice and São Paulo. Within that framework, Buenos Aires has become a space for cultural exchanges, lectures by world-renowned architects and exhibitions that place architecture in the foreground of the debate.

Barcelona, guest of honour

On the occasion of the presence of Barcelona as guest of honour at the International Architecture Biennial in Buenos Aires, Barcelona Council and the Institut Ramon Llull have organized a programme of lectures and an exhibition, which includes an academic programme. They will take place at the Usina del Arte. As well as that official representation, Barcelona is present at other cultural venues in the city through a busy programme of performing arts and workshops.

The guiding thread of the exhibition and the lectures given by the Catalan capital in Buenos Aires, as well as the academic programme that will accompany those actions, is “Barcelona, architectures of a city”, in harmony with the project Barcelona Architecture, City Heritage, which is being implemented by the city council to highlight its architecture and heritage.

The Catalan participants present a concept of heritage that goes beyond historical protection and whose aim is to highlight the undoubted value which architecture, the public space and the urban landscape have for society. In that way the council wants to make its goals in this sphere known, from the points of view of both preservation and knowledge and of intervention and the new actions.

More information here.