The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced DAAR will receive the RIBA Charles Jencks Award 2025.
DAAR - which stands for Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency, was among 12 nominees in competition considered by an independent jury for the annual award and will receive a £3,000 honorarium and deliver a lecture at 66 Portland Place on 30 May.
The artistic research practice DAAR, established by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, has been given the award for a series of works — including art exhibitions, built architectural structures, reimagined learning spaces, and books promoting justice and equality. Over the last two decades they have developed a body of work that is both theoretically ambitious and deeply engaged in the pursuit of justice and equality.
For DAAR, art exhibitions are not only spaces of display but also sites of action, catalysing broader interventions that extend into built architectural structures, critical learning environments, and civic spaces. Their work challenges dominant collective narratives, redefines political concepts, and fosters new forms of civic engagement.
Among the many groundbreaking projects DAAR has been recognised for is a new layout for the Shu’fat School situated in a refugee camp, and a book dossier called Refugee Heritage which reuses and redirects UNESCO World Heritage guidelines and criteria to challenge and subvert the accepted idea of heritage.
On receiving the award, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, founders of DAAR said:
"This award comes at an extremely difficult time, when the role of architecture feels more fragile than ever. The Al Nada social housing we co-designed in Gaza has been obliterated, claiming hundreds of lives. Schools we built in Jerusalem are under threat. Refugee camps in the West Bank, where we have worked for years, remain under siege.
And yet, we know we have no right to lose hope.
In the face of devastation, the only thing we can do is act—act in ways that affirm life. Even as we bear witness to death, our task remains: to create life.
We dedicate this award to those who persist in their struggles for justice and equality, even when unseen or censored”
Founder of the Jencks Foundation, Lily Jencks said:
“We are thrilled to award the RIBA Charles Jencks Award 2025 to DAAR and are looking forward to their lecture.
The award celebrates architecture’s multiple intelligences; that it is not only building or design that is important, but a sincere dedication to theory and research that situates architecture in its wider social, economic and political context. DAAR have a long-standing commitment to the architectural and learning practices of decolonisation: propagated through exhibitions, teaching and publishing. This research driven art practice runs in parallel to significant building projects, creating a powerful body of work that is both theoretically and practically engaged with architecture’s effort to redress injustice.”
About the award
The award was established by renowned cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres, Charles Jencks.
Charles Jencks graciously donated prize money he received from the Nara Gold Medal, in 1992 to RIBA to set up the endowment fund for architects. The principle behind the award is to acknowledge the multiple intelligences at work in architecture and celebrate that other forms of thinking and production can drive architecture beyond design.
Following Charles Jencks’ passing in 2019, The Jencks Foundation and RIBA continue this award in his honour.
Previous winners have included Dogma for their practice focus on the relationship between architecture and the city; Peter Eisenman, who used philosophy as basis for his practice; Zaha Hadid, whose paintings were the medium that drove her work; and Rem Koolhaas, whose polemical journalism pushed and provoked his research-based projects.
Notes to editors:
- For more press information and to request images contact: Nancy.Ludwig@riba.org
- The artistic research practice of DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti – based in Bethlehem and Stockholm is situated between architecture, art, pedagogy and politics. Over the last two decades, they have developed a series of research- projects that are both theoretically ambitious and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality. In their artistic research practice, art exhibitions are both sites of display and sites of action that spill over into other contexts: built architectural structures, the shaping of critical learning environments, interventions that challenge dominant collective narratives, the production of new political imaginations, the formation of civic spaces and the re-definition of concepts.
- DAAR will host the RIBA Charles Jencks Award Lecture, at 66 Portland Place, London on 30 May 2025, followed by a conversation with Thomas Aquilina, co-director of the New Architecture writers.
