Kjetil Trædal Thorsen honors Colectivo C733 as the winner of the Obel Award 2024
In a ceremony in Denmark on Monday, 21 October, the Mexican architect collective Colectivo C733 was presented the Obel Award for a body of 36 public works completed in just 36 months.
Snøhetta's Founding Partner, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, has been heading the jury for the 2024 edition of the Obel Award, which aims to honor outstanding architectural contributions to social and ecological development globally. Thorsen has been part of the jury since the Obel Award was established and is joined by distinguished professionals such as Xu Tiantian, Wilhelm Vossenkuhl, Nathalie de Vries, Louis Becker, Sumayya Vally, and Aric Chen.
Architectures with
Each year, the Obel Award jury establishes a focus to form a dialogue on emerging agendas that recognize the importance, fragility, and challenges facing our societies and the built environment.
The focus for 2024—Architectures with—emphasises the urgency of rethinking conventional mindsets and ways of practice in collaboratively and collectively responding to the ever-growing vulnerability of people and the planet. We can no longer think of simply designing ‘for’ communities and stakeholders but must do so 'with’ them.
It is an honor to announce the Obel Award 2024 to Colectivo C733. Their approach underscores the importance of inclusive, community-driven architecture in addressing the urgent vulnerabilities of both people and the planet.
Kjetil Trædal Thorsen Obel Award Jury Chair
Initiated as part of a nationwide effort, the 36×36 projects revitalised vulnerable urban and rural areas across Mexico through a collaborative and community-focused approach. According to the jury, the strength of the collective partly lay in the fact that, by designing together, ‘with’ a constantly fluctuating roster of stakeholders, and while utilising shared skills and resources, they were able to bring together 30 architects and a multidisciplinary team of consultants, learning to compress a process that previously could have taken years into just a few months — something practically unheard of by today's industry standards.
"As with every award cycle since the beginning, this year is also pushing the boundary to recognize seminal content, practice, and designs within the broader definition of architecture, " says Thorsen.