The Foundation’s aim and the reason for its establishment is to keep alive the memory of Barbara, who was a young student at the Venice I.U.A.V. Faculty of Architecture, by the promotion of the quality of architecture.
This quality can be obtained if the Contractor, Designer and Constructor, the three inseparable figures that pivot around construction, gather and appropriate that subtle thread that links life and architecture, directing choices, ideas and materials towards quality, which is the binding objective of our society.
The Barbara Cappochin Prize for Architecture is the tool that the Foundation uses to achieve this aim. It is a biennial prize that is directed at works built during the two years preceding the date of the prize. It is a biennial prize that, following an initial provincial edition in 2003 and while maintaining a provincial section, has seen a widening into an international ambit since 2005 with the collaboration of the U.I.A. (International Union of Architects) and the C.N.A.P.P.C. (Consiglio Nazionale Architetti Pianificatori Paesaggisti e Conservatori, translated as the National Council of Architects, Planners, Landscapers and Conservationists), to extend the comparison and to show that work of quality can only be achieved through a balanced and positive synthesis of the three roles stated above.
There is no anomaly or discrepancy between memory and architecture as the latter can strangely appropriate the most beautiful qualities of the people we have loved and disseminate them all over the world.
Simplicity, inner strength, hospitality, respect towards others, the ability to appreciate gestures, the small, simple things; all of these were Barbara’s characteristics that can imbue a strong architecture which being simultaneously delicate and welcoming towards the people who will live there and respectful to the surrounding environment, being capable of optimising the use of energy and raw materials by observing that wise simplicity that excludes ostentation, overstated preciousness and waste.
This isn’t an anomaly or discrepancy. The message left by Barbara during her 22 years and that of the Biennial International Prize for Architecture that bears her name is actually a unique message of positiveness, hope, peace and a message of quality: quality of life and quality of architecture.
