CDA | CHANEL Next Prize | ceramic brussels | WMF/Knoll Modernism Prize | Serpentine Pavilion | Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains | Planches Contact Festival

architecture

Christian de Portzamparc

Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award

Christian de Portzamparc received the 2026 Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award at the Créateurs Design Awards (CDA). French architect and urbanist Christian de Portzamparc began to make himself known through the Hautes Formes housing complex in Paris in 1979. He is the first French architect to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1994. From the Cité de la Musique in Paris to the LVMH Tower in New York and the Suzhou Bay Cultural Center in China, Portzamparc has reshaped how cities are imagined and experienced. His work bridges architecture and urbanism with poetry, rigor and a profound sense of civic life.

Image: Christian de Portzamparc, Suzhou Bay Cultural Center, China, 2020. Photo: Shao Feng.

art

CHANEL Next Prize

The CHANEL Culture Fund has named the recipients of its 2026 CHANEL Next Prize, awarded to 10 artists working across visual art, performance, design, music, and film. The biennial prize was launched in 2021 and is now in its third edition. It recognizes contemporary practitioners whose work is regarded as reshaping their fields and influencing the future of culture. This year’s cohort includes artists from 10 different countries: visual artist Álvaro Urbano; jazz musician Ambrose Akinmusire; fashion designer Andrea Peña; artist and filmmaker Ayoung Kim; fashion designer and artist Bárbara Sánchez-Kane; sound artist Emeka Ogboh; choreographer Marco da Silva Ferreira; experimental musician Pan Daijing; filmmaker Payal Kapadia; and painter Pol Taburet.

Image: Ayoung Kim, Body^n (2025). Performed at Canyon, New York (13 November 2025). Photo: Walter Wlodarczyk. Pol Taburet, Mud Field, 2023. Acrylic, alcohol-based paint and oil pastel on canvas, 200 x 200 cm. Mendes Wood DM. Installation view, Álvaro Urbano: September and the Lions, ChertLüdde, Berlin, 2025. Photo: Marjorie Brunet Plaza.

craft

Marie Pic

ceramic brussels art prize

French ceramic artist Marie Pic is the winner of the ceramic brussels art prize 2026. She was chosen by a jury from ten nominees exhibiting in a curated group show during the fair. She explores the notions of passage and threshold through sculptural forms that combine architecture and the plant world. Bas-relief doors and gates, inspired by Art Nouveau or 17^th century jewellery, combine formal rigour with organic motifs, where ornamentation becomes structure.

Image: Marie Pic, Fusion des clés égarées [Fusion of lost keys], 2025. © Romain Blanck

architecture

Africa Hall

World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize

The renovation of Africa Hall in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by Australian studio Architectus has been awarded the 2026 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize. Architectus completed in 2024 a decade-long restoration of the building, which was originally designed by Italian architect Arturo Mezzedimi as the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. The studio sought to preserve the core elements of the building, which opened in 1961, while making it more suitable for today's needs as a diplomatic institution.

Image: Architectus, Africa Hall, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Photo: Rory Gardiner.
Courtesy World Monuments Fund.

architecture

LANZA atelier

Serpentine Pavilion

Serpentine announced that the Mexican architecture studio LANZA atelier, founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, has been selected to design the 2026 Pavilion. Their practice is rooted in the everyday and the informal, and proposes ways of building that foreground dialogue and collective experience. For this year’s pavilion, titled a serpentine, LANZA took inspiration from a type of brick wall originating in ancient Egypt which often goes by the same name. Composed of alternating curves, its shape provides stability through lateral support, meaning it requires fewer bricks than a straight wall.

Image: Serpentine Pavilion 2026 a serpentine, designed by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, LANZA atelier. Design render, aerial view. © LANZA atelier. Co

photography

Oleñka Carrasco and La Chica

Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains

The Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains brings together photography and music, giving artists the freedom to create an original work together, combining their respective worlds. The winners of the 7^th edition of the award are photographer Oleñka Carrasco and composer La Chica, chosen for their intimate project on Venezuela, entitled Le chaos qui me donne la vie. Atlas d’un pays imaginé [The chaos that gives me life. Atlas of an imagined country]. "Our joint approach is part of a personal artistic quest: to examine exile as a universal movement and as a painful and destabilizing experience of rupture that forces people to reinvent themselves. We approach resilience as a process of reconstruction: repairing bonds, passing on memories, establishing gestures of care and solidarity." Oleñka Carrasco and La Chica

Image: From the project Le Chaos qui me donne la vie. Atlas d’un pays imaginé.
© Oleñka Carrasco / ADAGP.

photography

Anaïs Ondet

Prix du Public de la Jeune Création Photographique

At Planches Contact Festival in Deauville, Normandy, Anaïs Ondet received the Prix du Public de la Jeune Création Photographique for her work Les Filles d’ici – Celles qui n’ont pas peur du calme [The Girls from around here – Those who are not afraid of peace and quiet]. Through this work, Anaïs Ondet explores the daily lives of young girls living in ‘in-between’ territories, on the border between urban and rural worlds. After spending her childhood and adolescence roaming these areas, they became the main subject of her photographic investigation. Her patient and respectful documentary approach reveals identities, aspirations, and connections to the territory that are often invisible. A unique perspective that has left a deep impression on visitors this year.

Image: Les Filles d’ici – Celles qui n’ont pas peur du calme series. © Anaïs Ondet