American architect Jennifer Siegal won the award, according to an announcement at the Teatro dell’Arte of the Triennale di Milano late on Thursday. There were three honourable mentions: Pat Hanson from Canada, Elisa Valero Ramos from Spain, and Cazu Zegers from Chile.

There were 20 nominees from 20 countries: Jordan, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Egypt, Sweden, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Morocco, India, China, Italy, the United States, Mozambique, Greece, Thailand, Slovenia and Chile.

Thailand was the only Asean country with a nominee.

“This was a great opportunity to [compete for] the arcVision Prize. This event opened the opportunity to meet with other female architects to exchange ideas and knowledge for developing architectural designs for the future,” Twitee, 43, founding partner of Department of Architecture Co Ltd, said in an interview with The Nation after the event.

Twitee founded Department of Architecture Co with Amata Luphaiboon in 2004. She has interesting ideas for contemporary design, illustrated by works such as the post-earthquake Pong Prae Wittaya emergency school in Chiang Rai in 2015 and a small multifunctional pavilion, the Flow, in Bang Saen in 2014.

Prefabrication

Martha Thorne, executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and a member of the jury for this prize, said Siegal won the arcVision award for her innovative use of prefabrication to develop buildings with low cost.

Stefano Casciani, scientific director of the arcVision Prize, said the Women and Architecture investigators explored the undiscovered landscape of individual ways of expression by a large group of female architects from all around the planet.

“It is definitely a new world of construction that has come to witness the growing importance of the female role in developing a new kind of ethics in architectural design, in terms of sustainability, social responsibility, and formal quality.”

Italcementi chief executive officer Carlo Pesenti said the arcVision Prize – Women and Architecture this year had selected feminine international architecture projects defined by the aspiration of beauty, the pursuit of functionality, and the hope to participate in the construction of new, happier cities and communities.

He said that by sponsoring the award, the group “reaffirmed its vision of ‘women’s issues’ within architecture that, above all, continue to amaze by producing masterpieces of technology and sustainability, marriages between materials and form and combinations of elegance and efficiency”.