Monika Marinova’s project was one of four winners of the award.
Date: 09 October 2020
London Met graduate Monika Marinova has been announced as a winner of the 2020 Young Talent Architecture Award (YTAA).
Monika’s project, Stage for the City, was praised by the YTAA for its “approach for the regeneration of Stoke, an epitome of Britain’s post-industrial towns.”
Stoke, which has been branded the ‘Brexit Capital of Britain’ has been severely affected by the decline in British industry, and particularly the potteries that used to define its economy. This left the six towns of Stoke with “no appreciable centre and a poorly developed public realm” while “severe austerity budget cuts further forced council services to be dispersed leaving the town in lack of a unified civic centre and no formal participation of public institutions in city life.
Monika’s project is said to define a civic centre in a city “that has grown without one… challenging its architectural language of monumentality and democratising the image of public institutions, a venue for celebration and protest is proposed, allowing integration and acceptance between institutions and society.”
The other winning projects were:
- Off the Grid by Willem Hubrechts
- OASI by Álvaro Alcázar Del Águila, Eduard Llargués, Roser Garcia and Sergio Sangalli
- Three places to inhabit the mountain range in the Maule region by Pía Montero, Maria Jesús Molina and Antonia Ossa
Another London Met graduate, Oliver Carter, was shortlisted for the award for his project, Polyvalent Models. The award has also previously been won by a London Met grad, Matthew Gregorowski, in 2018.
Established in 2016, the YTAA supports the talent of recently graduated Architects, Urban Planners and Landscape Architects who will be responsible for transforming our environment in the future. This year, 382 projects were submitted from over 155 European, South American, Asian schools of architecture, landscape and urban design. These were narrowed down to a shortlist of 43 projects by an esteemed jury of architects and curators.
The four YTAA 2020 Winners were announced by Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth on 5 October.
