The FAD Awards for Architecture and Interior Design
The FAD Awards for Architecture and Interior Design are organised by ARQUIN-FAD, a design association based in Barcelona. Today, these awards are a wonderful opportunity to see which are the most outstanding trends in interior design and architecture of the past year.
Created in 1958, these awards are the most prestigious in Spain and the longest-running in the field of architecture and interior design at a European level. A way to see not only what the interior designer or architect considered best by experts is doing, but also the quality of the winners in interior design. These awards always help to drive and inspire the entire architecture and interior design sector.
History of the FAD Awards
After the Spanish Civil War, both materials and the possibility of carrying out any architecture project were scarce, let alone interior design or interior decoration projects. After the war, only the schools of architecture in Madrid and Barcelona remained active, graduating barely 15 architects each year.
In 1955, a group of young architects decided to begin reintroducing modern architecture in the face of the rigid Herrerian schemes. Following in the footsteps of the Annual Awards for Artistic Buildings of Barcelona City Council, which recognised the city’s architecture and commercial premises in the first third of the 20th century, Fomento de las Artes Decorativas created the FAD Awards for Architecture and Interior Design, led by architect Oriol Bohigas.
Since then, the FAD Awards have independently highlighted, year after year, the best trends in interior design and the most outstanding Spanish architectural works, becoming a benchmark for professionals in the architecture and interior design sector.
FAD Interior Design Award 2020
The 2020 FAD Interior Design Award was given to Run run run, a venue located in the Chamberí neighbourhood of Madrid. The jury highlighted the project’s broad cross-disciplinary approach to uses and intentions linked to healthy living. It achieved a highly visible space geared towards sustainable gastronomic proposals, with its own small vegetable garden for creating healthy menus and a space devoted to body care, designed so that runners could meet up.
Across the two floors of this irregularly shaped venue, a warm, homely atmosphere was achieved, with the inclusion of plants and communal-use elements, such as a public shower next to the lockers. The jury highlighted this proposal as “the commitment it represents to creative interior design with real character, one that reads and enhances the conditions of the venue and its location in an exemplary way, creating spaces in complete material and atmospheric harmony with the ambitions of the functional project it serves. And mindful of generating urban synergies with its immediate surroundings”.
In this way, the FAD Awards recognised, in their interior design category, the fresh reading that the project had made of citizens’ needs, through a fresh, creative proposal with its own identity.
FAD Interior Design Awards 2021
The 2021 FAD Awards for Architecture and Interior Design, which this year reach their 63rd edition, are already under way, chaired by Fabrizio Barozzi, with a total of 471 entries. 114 entries have been submitted in the Interior Design category, 169 in Architecture, 39 in City and Landscape, and 46 in Ephemeral Interventions.
Meanwhile, the FAD Award for Thought and Criticism, in which 67 entries are competing, will have Jorge Torres as chair, while the International FAD Awards feature 36 entries from studios headquartered in Spain with a worldwide scope, completed between 2018 and 2020. They may fall under the categories of Interior Design, Architecture, City and Landscape, and Ephemeral Interventions. This year’s jury will be chaired by Ricardo Bofill.
This year’s FAD jury verdict will be announced in June. Coronavirus circumstances permitting, an event will be held featuring an exhibition of the works the jury considers finalists. At Keinzo Interiores, as an interior design studio in Murcia, we are always at the forefront of interior design trends and a benchmark in interior design in Murcia. We invite you to follow the latest trends highlighted by the FAD Awards, confident that, once again, they will showcase some of the most inspiring projects, ones that will set the course for the architecture and interior design sector.
