MIAMI, United States. – The Cuban architect Jorge Luis Suárez Alfonso (23 years old) achieved an honorable mention in the Golden Trezzini Awards for Architecture and Design in the category of “Best Building Project or Installation by Student”.
Suárez Alfonso, who presented his project to the competition “The Advanced Media Library of Regla — ReAdMe” he became the first Cuban recognized by the Golden Trezzini Awards in the student category.
The project, said the architect to CubaNetarose from an academic exercise carried out in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2021, when I was a third-year student at the José Antonio Echeverría Technological University of Havana (CUJAE).
Suárez Alfonso described his media library as a “medium complexity” building.
“A media library -he explained- is one of the forms most used internationally for knowledge generation buildings, which contain many spaces inside: libraries, toy libraries, sound libraries, newspaper libraries…”.
In interview with the media CubaNews360, the young man explained that his project includes “two buildings in one.” “It is in a single block, based on various applications of composition theories and form studies, where one of the buildings is dedicated directly to culture and the other to knowledge, which interact with each other, connect and form a general program based on the main order”.
Suárez Alfonso also highlighted that his project ―located on the Andrés González Lines dock, in the Bay of Havana― is adapted to a very specific context and need, and is fully developed within the international scene of this type of building.
In addition, as he explained, ReAdMe takes into account the urban context in which it is located, the municipality of Rulerwith values such as relations with water, the lack of public spaces, religion and the number of independent artists and creators.
Suárez Alfonso, who currently works as a professor at the CUJAE, has celebrated the honorable mention obtained at the Golden Trezzini Awards, a competition in which various architects of great international prestige participate as members of the jury. “It is something wonderful that a Cuban proposal of this type has been recognized,” he told CubaNews360.
The Golden Trezzini Award is named after Domenico Trezzini, considered the first architect of Saint Petersburg, and has been held since 2018 with the support of various institutions. The competition has become an excellent thermometer on the trends of architecture and design in the world, and a platform to discover new talent.
In 2021, another Cuban architect, Jorge Luis Veliz, was nominated for the Golden Trezzini Awards for his projects Casa Inzeta, Sivri apartment building, Cabañas Capullo Ecological Hotel and Vitral Music Museum. Later, in 2022, won one of the Golden Trezzini Awards in the “Best Project of Public Building or Facility” category, thanks to its “Seed Cabin” project.
In 2022, in addition to Suárez Alfonso and Veliz, the Cuban architects Julio Lau, Elisabetta Alé, Iván Gracia, Linnet Valdés, Frank Barrios, Universo García, Daniel Muñoz and María Carla Ojeda also participated in the Golden Trezzini Awards.
