MoMA Launches US$200,000 Prize for Architecture That Works With Nature

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has created a new award worth US$200,000 for one architecture project that works with its natural surroundings. The first winner is Kashef Chowdhury, working through the Dhaka-based practice URBANA, for a building in Bangladesh.

The award is called the Ambasz-MoMA prize. It takes its name from a major gift by the Legacy Emilio Ambasz Foundation, according to ArtNews, which reported the launch.

The total is split in two. The winning architects receive a US$100,000 cash prize. Another US$100,000 goes to a nonprofit organisation, which will plant trees in the name of the project's client, the person or group who commissioned the building.

The prize recognises projects built anywhere in the world over the last three decades. MoMA describes the kind of work it is looking for as "nature-reconciled." The museum also bills the award as the largest prize for a single architecture project.

Chowdhury's winning project is the Friendship Centre in Gaibandha, Bangladesh. It was designed between 2008 and 2010 and completed in 2011. The building is a training facility and meeting space for poorer communities in the flood-prone delta of the Jamuna River, one of the major rivers of the country.

Chowdhury had already won a prize for the building. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, an international prize for buildings, recognised the Friendship Centre in its 2014-16 cycle.

The prize's namesake has his own link to the museum. Emilio Ambasz worked as a curator in MoMA's architecture and design department from 1968 to 1976.

For the people who will use the centre, the award is a reminder of what a building can do beyond its walls. Training rooms and meeting spaces are often the first things to suffer when floods arrive. The new prize puts a spotlight on that kind of project, and on the clients who commission them.