The ‘Viña Elena’ winery complex in Jumilla has been recognized with the Regional Architecture Award within the XXII edition of these awards, convened biennially by the Autonomous Community, the Official College of Architects of the Region of Murcia, the Cajamurcia Foundation and Caixabank.
The architects Beatriz Lorente, Carmen Santa-Cruz, Javier Esquiva, Juan Antonio Carlos Santa-Cruz and Juan Antonio Santa-Cruz, from the studio Santa Cruz Architectssign the rehabilitation work of an old manor house converted into a gastronomic space and family winery.
The general director of Territory and Architecture, Jaime Pérez Zulueta, and the dean of the College of Architects, María José Peñalver, accompanied by the general director of the Cajamurcia Foundation, Pascual Martínez, and the directors of Institutional Banking and the Caixabank Center for Institutions Región de Murcia, Federico Ros and Antonio Francisco García, respectively, announced today the jury’s decision after evaluating the 81 admitted works.
The special mention for Young Architecture has been awarded to the work ‘Búnker’ in Cartagena, by the architects Elvira Carrión and José María Mateo from ‘MEII Estudio’
The jury highlighted that the highest award is committed to the rehabilitation, regeneration and renovation of existing buildings, preserving and promoting heritage, environmental and ethnographic values compared to other renovation alternatives, without forgetting their origins and memory.
Pérez Zulueta praised “the high level that architecture reaches in the Region of Murcia, to the point of merging the traditional with the most avant-garde, without losing an iota of functionality or landscape integration.”
Along with the regional award, the picturesque Casa MYM, located in the Murcia orchard, by the architects Juan José Pastor, Catherine Genet and Manuela González, recognized with the New Building award, also stands out. Within this category, the works ‘Climate House’, in Molina de Segura, by the architects Andrés Jaque and Miguel Mesa del Castillo, as well as ‘La Casa de Pescadores’, located in Mazarrón under the stamp of the architect, also obtain mention. Pepa Diaz.
The Rehabilitation and Restoration prize went to the work carried out by the professionals Pablo Carbonell and Juan Miguel Galera, with the restoration of the Snow Wells number 11 and 13 of Sierra Espuña, promoted by the regional government.
Pérez Zulueta praised “the high level that architecture reaches in the Region of Murcia, to the point of merging the traditional with the most avant-garde, without losing an iota of functionality or landscape integration”
For its part, the waterwheel and the medieval aqueduct of Alcantarilla, with the corresponding adaptation of its environment (first phase), has obtained recognition under the category Public space and landscape architecture, with the architect José Montoro as the author of the restoration.
In the category of Interior Architecture and ephemeral actions, the museographic project of the new mining museum of La Unión, by the architect Ángel Luis Rocamora, stands out and, together with him, the mention received in this section for the reform carried out in a house in Mazarrón by Part of Alberto Gil and María José Guillén.
Recognition of THE TRUTH
The prize for Innovation and dissemination ex aequo went to the architecture section of the summer supplement of LA VERDAD Multimedia, and to the cycle of architecture, cinema and comics ‘Cinemarq 2’, by the author Helia De San Nicolás. Also noteworthy are the two mentions awarded by the jury to the exhibition and book ‘La colonización de las dunas. Bonet Castellana in La Manga del Mar Menor’, by Ricardo Carcelén, Edith Aroca and José María López; and the regional Onda program ‘Plaza Pública’ with its section on ‘Naturalist Architecture’, under the direction of Alberto Soler.
The special mention for Young Architecture has been awarded to the work ‘Búnker’ in Cartagena, by the architects Elvira Carrión and José María Mateo of ‘MEII Estudio’.
Career of three outstanding architects
For the first time, three women architects have been unanimously recognized for their meritorious personal and professional careers. The jury highlighted that Marisa Gil, Rufina Campuzano and Esther Monasterio have contributed significantly to architecture, despite the obstacles they have faced, achieving recognition and visibility and promoting equality in the profession.
In the case of Marisa Gil, she began her professional career collaborating with great architects of the time to later form her own studio, carrying out numerous works. She received the ‘Cultura y Mujer’ award in 2008, for her example of work-life balance, and she worked as a businesswoman in the Juan Gil family wineries.
Rufina Campuzano, for her part, has accumulated more than thirty years of career, carrying out her greatest professional work in the Ministry of Education and her work at the head of the Artistic Heritage Service. Her goal has always been to improve the lives of users through architecture.
Esther Monasterio’s work as an architect resides, mainly, in the Institute of Social Services of the Region of Murcia (ISSORM) and in her work as president of the group of urban planners. In the 90s she wrote her thesis on the Mar Menor spas and her dedication to the group of urban planner architects led them to be pioneers in proposing military buildings for use by the university.
LA VERDAD’s commitment to architecture and sustainable construction
The newspaper LA VERDAD offers since 2019 a daily section dedicated to architecture in the special pages of the Summer Supplement. An example of this are the series ‘The house of your life’, 2019; ‘The reform of your life’, 2020, and ‘The post-pandemic house’, 2021. All these works were collected in a catalog of publications edited by the Official College of Architects of the Region of Murcia, where, in addition, the originals were exhibited in the COAMU exhibition hall in Murcia. These works, according to the director of LA VERDAD, Alberto Aguirre de Cárcer, are “the most palpable testimony of the quality and innovation of the architects who work in the Region of Murcia.” «Our history is our architectural heritage. We display it with pride or shame, depending on the case. A city is its people, but also its buildings. Those that we see, and those that give us shelter. There is no place like home. The house as a den, as microchromosms, as an intimate space, as a constitutional right. Living with dignity is only possible indoors. The architecture is there to make it possible. We need it. And, besides, most of us like it and are interested in it. Therefore, for the part that concerns me, I wonder: Can there be a good Culture section in a newspaper without architecture content? The answer is definitely no,” Aguirre de Cárcer wrote on that occasion.
In this same line of dissemination of contemporary architecture carried out from the Region of Murcia, LA VERDAD published for the fourth consecutive summer, between July 17 and August 28, 2022, the series ‘Exquisite Corner’, where small spaces were shown Unique examples of domestic architecture projects carried out by architecture studios in the Region of Murcia, especially those related to the summer season or the aquatic environment such as swimming pools, gardens, terraces, etc. The newspaper proposed to the participating professionals to reflect on the relationship between desires, architectural reality and the creative process. For this, in addition to the graphic information, the elaboration of a brief text, of 200 words maximum, was requested, which as a memory would describe that relationship, ‘A DESIRE-A REALITY’, that is, how the client’s need can translate into a real architectural proposal. All the projects included were of recent execution. In these four summers of Architecture at LA VERDAD, the Official College of Architects of the Region of Murcia collaborated in the initiative by making a prior selection of works (almost 200 in total) that later appeared published in the newspaper with special pages designed by the Head of Art at LA VERDAD, Mar Saura Rosique. In all cases, they were accompanied by a selection of photographs taken, on most occasions, by professionals in the photography of architectural spaces, such as David Frutos or Joaquín Zamora, also giving visibility and projection to their work. The four series undoubtedly show another way of living homes, of relating them to the outside, and in all of them the importance of the architect in responding to the concerns of citizens and their clients is demonstrated.
The journalist Manuel Madrid, head of the Culture and Society area and of the GPS and Ababol supplements at LA VERDAD, considers that there is no small project to put into practice the great lessons of architecture, and, furthermore, respecting the landscape and without turns out to be a plagiarism of past cultures, as Le Corbusier feared. The series that the regional newspaper has dedicated these four summers to current architecture in the Region of Murcia respond to a recognition of Architecture as one of the Fine Arts, an active commitment of the newspaper justified for various reasons. «They are the confirmation», says Madrid, «of how in the diversity of examples of domestic architecture there is a clear assimilation of green culture, putting into practice all the possibilities of innovation offered by concepts in vogue such as ecology and sustainability, in line with with the demands of the moment.
LA VERDAD is a newspaper committed to innovative and quality architecture (giving a voice to architecture and heritage rehabilitation professionals in the Region pages with Miguel Rubio and Cultura and supplements such as Ababol throughout the year, with interviews and reports by Antonio Arco and Manuel Madrid, and opinion sections such as ‘Mesa para Cinco’, with the architect Patricia Reus, or the architect Juan Antonio Sánchez Morales with ‘La mirada del gato’) and this modest contribution from an Architecture section in Summer can undoubtedly serve to continue raising awareness within the general framework of the Strategy for Sustainable Architecture and Construction in the Region of Murcia, and to better understand a profession, architecture, always self-demanding and exposed to change.
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