As member organisations of the LINA European architecture platform, the Irish Architecture Foundation and architecture research and publishing practice dpr-barcelona are collaborating on the LINA Writing Awards programme for three years, 2023-2025. Through the annual LINA Open Call, two book proposals are selected each year for a writing award and publication.

The LINA Writing Awards encourage the creation of architecture-related writing, offering emerging thinkers a chance to publish their work with the support of the IAF and dpr-barcelona. The awards support inventive writing that fosters a genuine sharing of knowledge. We particularly value projects that explore pressing environmental concerns in the built environment from creative and interdisciplinary angles.

The LINA Writing Award recipients for 2024 are:

• Patrícia Coelho (Portugal) for Curating Ecologies on Architecture, commissioned by the IAF
• Juri Velt (Austria) for the signs are collapsing, and no longer certain, commissioned by dpr-barcelona

This is the second of three annual writing awards that we are supporting through the LINA programme. These recipients were chosen based on the creative strength of their proposed writing projects and their interest in writing and communicating architecture in a critical way.

Emmett Scanlon, Director of the IAF, stated: “The IAF is proud to be part of the LINA community and the international network for critical collaboration this provides. We deeply appreciate the partnership with dpr-barcelona on this writing award. Core to the IAF’s mission is ensuring support is directed toward new voices and toward the many forms of production of architecture, including writing and print publication. I wish both Patrícia and Juri well with their awards and the IAF looks forward to supporting the development of their work over the coming months.”

Bláithín Quinn, Curator of Learning at the IAF, added: “As a LINA member organisation, the IAF is delighted to announce that architect, curator and researcher Patrícia Coelho is the recipient of the LINA Writing Award 2024. The Award will afford Coelho the opportunity to interview curators operating in the expanded field of architecture and to reflect on their work as cultural agents, with a focus on architecture exhibitions as a site of discourse, experimentation and the generation of knowledge. Coelho will map and analyse curatorial dialogues on the architecture exhibition as a medium to debate urgent global issues and environmental challenges. This research and the proposed publication is relevant and topical, and resonates with our work at the IAF in many ways.”

Commenting from dpr-barcelona, Dr César Reyes Nájera stated: “This year we have decided to award Juri Velt’s project the signs are collapsing, and no longer certain. Velt’s proposal, which plays with toponyms, demonstrates an intelligent use of language – it is playful and agile. Set in the specific context of ‘vacant space’, it is a sensitive description of the future of our ‘altered world’.  Using a language that speaks of shared experiences in the midst of disappearing shared spaces, it highlights the pressing challenges of today’s rural and urban landscapes – the complexities of our living environments and their different facets. Their proposal will also reflect transversally on the work of other LINA fellows, expanding the project’s worldbuilding to other contexts.”

The IAF and dpr-barcelona will publish Patrícia Coelho and Juri Velt’s books in the summer of 2024, making their words and ideas heard within the European architecture community. We will also support the writers’ development through the process of working with professional editors, copy-editors, designers, and publishers, actively discussing how books are conceived, produced, and promoted and how to ensure they are not merely products but tools for discussion and spaces of encounter.

We in the IAF and dpr-barcelona seek to promote emergent voices that will enrich the panorama of architectural thinking. We have selected emerging writers with exciting projects and high potential and will immerse them in a collaborative environment to develop their cultural projects within the LINA programme’s parameters.

We look forward to sharing their works with you in the summer.

Meanwhile, the first set of LINA Writing Award publications are available for purchase from dpr-barcelona and, in Ireland, from The Library Project:

• Buy Shallow Time: The Burren by Tom Cookson
• Buy Atlas of Urban Mythologies by Francesca Cocchiara and Sergios Strigklogiannis

About the authors:

Patrícia Coelho is an architect, curator and researcher, working across the expanded field of architecture. She is a PhD candidate at ETSAM, Universidade Politécnica Madrid, holding a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Department of Architecture, University of Coimbra and a Master’s in Museum and Curatorial Studies from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto. Since 2020, she has been an integral part of the team at the Galeria Municipal do Porto, currently as a Curatorial Assistant. Additionally, she holds the role of Editorial Coordinator for Fertile Futures, the Portuguese Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.

Juri Velt moves between rural regions and cities and between a writing and a material-based practice. Trained as an architect and navigating life as a chronically ill and queer person, their practice revolves around the question of how to live together, with a focus on companionship and other forms of resistance. Bridging these interests with environmental questions and the climate crisis, Juri investigates the landscape(s) of thought and matter and the language(s) available to navigate the present. 

Image: “Haag, at a later time (Haag, später)”, part of the series “the signs are collapsing, and no longer certain”, Juri Velt, 2023. A picture of a pole at night, with a metal bracket on it — the trace of a toponym sign no longer there.