‘The blues’: W Awards trophies 2023 by Mona Hatoum

This year’s W Awards trophies were created by last year’s Ada Louise Huxtable Prize winner Mona Hatoum, in a tradition dating from 2019. Named after New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, this prize recognises the contribution of an individual working in the expanded architectural field.

The 2023 trophies use a drawing from Hatoum’s ongoing series The Blues, which the Palestinian-British artist began during the various pandemic lockdowns. The drawings depict grids, a device Hatoum often returns to in her sculpture and installation work; here, they take on the character of barred windows or mashrabiyas, carved wooden latticework screens characteristic of traditional architecture in the Middle East.

The trophies were awarded to the 2023 winner of the Jane Drew Prize, Kazuyo Sejima; the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize winner, Phyllis Lambert; the Moira Gemmill Prize winner, Viviana Pozzoli; and the MJ Long Prize winner Kirsten Gabriëls Webb.

Following a tradition started in 2019, the winners of the W Awards receive a trophy made or commissioned by the previous year’s Ada Louise Huxtable Prize winner. Madelon Vriesendorp, winner of the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize 2018, began the tradition of designing and making the trophies for the W Awards (formerly the Women in Architecture awards) with her collection of four female torsos presented to the winners of the 2019 awards. That year’s Ada Louise Huxtable Prize winner was the photographer Hélène Binet, who went on to design and make a series of Diasec-mounted photographs as her trophies. The 2021 trophies were commissioned by 2020 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize winner Beatriz Colomina, who enlisted artist Cristina Iglesias to create a series of aluminium monotypes, and the 2022 trophies were created by the Accra-based artist Rania Odaymat, commissioned by the 2021 winner, writer and academic Lesley Lokko.

To create the 2023 trophies, Hatoum’s drawings were UV‑printed onto sheets of glass, which were then mounted onto wooden cubes. The mounts are a nod to Lina Bo Bardi’s glass and concrete easels, used for displaying artworks in her iconic museum of art in São Paulo, the MASP.

Credit:Luke Hayes

The resulting trophies produce a solarised effect, as the bars seem to be made of light and possess a fluidity and transparency emphasised by being printed on glass.

Credit: Luke Hayes

Credit: Luke Hayes