Architectural Association School of Architecture
London W11 3AH
United Kingdom
The Cosmic House and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) are pleased to announce the 2026 recipient of the RIBA Charles Jencks Award is Anna Puigjaner. This annual award is given to an individual or practice that has recently made a major contribution internationally to both the theory and practice of architecture. The Award was established by renowned cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie’s cancer care centres, Charles Jencks.
Anna Puigjaner is an architect and researcher who co-founded the practice MAIO in Barcelona and is Professor of Architecture and Care at ETH in Zurich. Her theoretical and built work with MAIO has reframed the question of how to live together collectively, and reveals that the structures that organise our spaces and their functions are historically contingent, not fixed. Her work has repositioned housing as a question of collective infrastructure, care and social organisation, opening up new ways of thinking about domesticity and urban life.
The Award was established when Charles Jencks donated prize money he received from the 1992 Nara Gold Medal to RIBA to set up the endowment fund. Following Charles Jencks’ passing in 2019, The Cosmic House and RIBA continue this Award in his honour.
Previous winners have included DAAR for a series of works promoting justice and equality; Dogma for their focus on the relationship between architecture and the city; Zaha Hadid, whose paintings were the medium that drove her work; and Rem Koolhaas, whose polemical journalism pushed and provoked his research-based projects.
The 2026 jury consisted of Chris Williamson, RIBA President, Lily Jencks, founder of the The Cosmic House, Dr. Adrian Lahoud, Professor of Architecture at the Royal College of Art, Edwin Heathcote, Architecture and Design Critic, Financial Times and Samaneh Moafi, Assistant Director, Forensic Architecture, winners of the 2022 RIBA Charles Jencks award.
The Award will be presented at the Architectural Association on 9 October 2026, followed by a lecture by Anna Puigjaner and an interview with Thomas Aquilina of New Architecture Writers.
Lily Jencks, Founder of The Cosmic House said: “The RIBA Charles Jencks Award celebrates the belief that architecture advances through new conceptual frameworks, as well as exceptional buildings. Anna Puigjaner’s enduring line of enquiry on reframing collective urban life, articulated through her built work with MAIO and her own research, shows that hybridity of passions, and the constant negotiation between theory and building that we think marks the best in architecture.”
Chris Williamson, RIBA President and jury member, said: “Over the course of her career, Anna Puigjaner has developed a body of work that focuses on how architecture can reorganise the infrastructures of everyday life. She has since been a driving influence for a new generation of architects, researchers and educators. Her pioneering work on inclusive domestic architecture has challenged biases and expanded our understanding of how the built environment can support more equitable ways of living.”
Anna Puigjaner said: “It is a true honour to receive the Jencks Award, which every year reminds us of the importance of blurring the boundaries between theory and practice, and invites us to reflect on the possibilities and responsibilities embedded in our work as architects.
Architecture is never neutral. It often contributes to shaping spatial structures that privilege certain ways of living over others. The built environment plays a fundamental role in determining who is included and who is excluded, who is given visibility and agency, and who is not. Who is centred? Who circulates freely? Who remains in the background? Who cleans? Who repairs? Architecture inevitably responds to these questions. The question is whether we answer them consciously.
I would like to share this award with my colleagues at MAIO and CARE at ETH Zürich, with whom I have had the privilege of exploring these questions.”
Anna Puigjaner was chosen from a 2026 shortlist of four nominated architects: Arno Brandlhuber, Fernanda Canales and Mabel Wilson.
