The curator, educator and AR contributor will join this year’s jury in London in November
Catharine Rossi is a researcher, curator, writer and educator with an interest in histories of 20th and 21st-century design, craft and architecture. She is currently Professor of Architecture at University for the Creative Arts (UCA) Canterbury.
Rossi writes – including for the AR – on a variety of subjects from craft to chair design. ‘What happens when consumers start to question the conditions of those who make their buildings,’ Rossi asked in her keynote for AR February 2017, ‘just as many demand ethical conditions in the manufacturing of clothing, coffee and even smartphones?’ In the AR’s sports issue in June 2024, Rossi revealed the complex Reputation of the Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, tracing his relationship with Mussolini’s Fascist government.
Rossi published Crafting Design in Italy in 2015 and co-edited The Italian Avant-Garde (2013) and Post-Craft (2022). Recent exhibitions include At Home: Panoramas de nos vies domestiques at the 2022 Saint-Etienne Design Biennale, and Night Fever: Designing Club Culture 1960-Today at the Vitra Design Museum in 2018.
Extended entry deadline: 22 August 2025
Inaugurated in 1999, the AR Emerging awards support young architects and designers at a key stage in their career, promoting their best work to a worldwide audience.
The awards recognise excellence in an overall body of work, rather than a singular project: entrants are asked to submit a small portfolio rather than an individual completed building. Shortlisted projects will be featured in a special edition of the AR and all finalists will present their work to our acclaimed judging panel in London this November to win the £5,000 prize.
Previous winners include A Threshold, Comunal Taller de Arquitectura, Carla Juaçaba Studio, Sou Fujimoto, Klein Dytham, Anna Heringer, Bjarke Ingels, Thomas Heatherwick, Li Xiaodong and Frida Escobedo. Find out more about last year’s winning and commended projects here.
