The Segovia campus of IE University hosted in June the award ceremony for the 2025 Building Arts Awards and the Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition. These awards recognize, respectively, the leading master artisans in the building trades in Spain and the architectural teams whose proposals were selected for each of the three municipalities chosen in the competition.
Both initiatives are promoted by the Traditional Building Cultures Foundation, with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Culture and the collaboration of INTBAU Spain and the Spanish Council of Architects (CSCAE). The event was organized in partnership with the IE School of Architecture and Design, which hosted the ceremony under the leadership of its Dean, David Goodman.
The ceremony was presided over by Susana Alcalde Amieva, Deputy Director General of the Institute of Cultural Heritage of Spain, alongside representatives of the organizing institutions: Miguel Larrañaga Zulueta, Vice-Rector for Students at IE University; David Goodman, Dean of the IE School of Architecture & Design; José Franqueira Baganha, Vice President of the Traditional Building Cultures Foundation; Susana Moreno Falero, Dean of COACYLE, representing the Spanish Council of Architects (CSCAE); and Alejandro García Hermida, Executive Director of the for Traditional Building Cultures Foundation.
Learn more about the Building Arts Awards
Learn more about the Architecture Competition
As part of the award ceremony, the exhibition “Matter. Know-how. Place.” was also inaugurated. It will be open to the public until October 11 at the IE Creativity Center, located in the Real Casa de la Moneda in Segovia. The exhibition explores the active role and potential of traditional building crafts in both architectural education and contemporary practice.
Among the works featured are those of the winners of the Building Arts Awards, the award-winning design proposals from the sixth edition of the Richard H. Driehaus Architecture Competition, and a selection of work carried out by the master craftsmen and apprentices who received the most recent Donald Gray Grants for the Building Arts.
The exhibition also includes a section dedicated to the work led by Wesam Al Asali, teacher and coordinator at IE School of Architecture and Design, who oversees the collaboration with the Traditional Building Cultures Foundation. Al Asali has developed initiatives that integrate artisanal knowledge into architectural education and practice, bridging contemporary design with traditional building techniques. His educational work includes workshops with local craftspeople and the use of technologies such as augmented reality to explore new methods of learning and creation.
Text and imagery: Traditional Building Cultures Foundation