Photography Competition – 1st Edition. Vernacular Architecture
News Detail
Share Your Green Design is proud to announce the competition jury for the 1st Edition of Vernacular Architecture Photography Competition.
Submissions are open until the 3rd March 2023. All competition details here.
The jury is formed by eight outstanding professionals in the ambits of photography and architecture. Their passion for sustainability and the environment is what brings them to collaborate with Share Your Green Design in this competition designed to highlight Vernacular Architecture around the world.
Read more about the international professional judges below.
Piers Taylor –Architect, Researcher, Lecturer and Founder Invisible Studio (United Kingdom)
Taylor is a Chartered Architect, was the inaugural Studio Master at the Architectural Association for the Design & Make Programme at Hooke Park, a former Design Fellow at the University of Cambridge, an external examiner at the Arts University, Bournemouth and the Convenor of Studio in the Woods. Taylor was also a PhD candidate at the University of Reading and received their anniversary scholarship funding for his Doctoral research.
Invisible Studio is an innovative and award winning architecture practice founded by Dr Piers Taylor.
Alejandro Gómez Vives – Photographer (Spain)
- http://Alejandro Gómez Vives | Fotografía de Arquitectura (alejandrogomezvives.com)
- Alejandro Gómez Vives (@alejandrogomezvives) • Instagram photos and videos
“I was born in Vilafamés in 1983 (Castellón). When I was 9 years old, I had my first camera and since then my gaze has changed. And now I apply it to my two passions: architecture and photography, trying to extract the best from each discipline.”
Alejandro Gómez Vives is both architect and architecture photographer. In 2012 he opened his professional office in Valencia, publishing his reports in various magazines such as Diseño Interior, Proyecto Contract or Conarquitectura. His photographs can also be found in international digital media such as Archdaily, Divisare, Metalocus, Domus, Afasia, Hic Arquitectura and Veredes. He is co-author of the book Le Village Vertical: La Maison Radieuse de le Corbusier à Rezé, and author of the photographs in the book Mestres of the Arquia Foundation. In recent years he has won various photography awards, highlighting the first prize of the Imaginaria Festival-CTAC (Castellón, 2018). For two consecutive years, he won the second prize in the Mirar la arquitectura contest organized by COAVNA (Pamplona, 2019 and 2020). It has also been a finalist in the Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism. His photographic work has been part of various national and international exhibitions, highlighting the photographs exhibited in the testimonial apartment of Le Corbusier’s unité d’habitatión in Rezé.
Maíra Acayaba – Photographer (Brazil)
- Maíra Acayaba – Fotografia (mairaacayaba.com)
- Maíra Acayaba (@mairaacayaba) • Instagram photos and videos
Maíra Acayaba 1980, lives and works in São Paulo. She has graduated in Social Sciences and in parallel dedicated herself to photography and then to architectural photography. It’s been more than 15 years photographing architecture in Brazil.
The concern with formal framing, the vanishing point and the elimination of any noise to remain the main architectural element give the emphasis to her work.
“The biggest reason I choose architectural photography to dedicate myself is because it is on the threshold between pure technical record and artistic interpretation, when an image abstracts and transports you to the architectural work, that is what has always interested me in photography, this ability to transport us to other places, poetically and culturally.”
Together with ETH Zurich, she published an online guide to architecture in São Paulo – SP2014.net.
In 2016 she published the book Bold and Bright – chic and exuberant interior inspiration from Brazil, by the English publisher Ryland Peters & Small.
Her work can be seen in several national and international publications.
Aida Zare – Dr. Architect and Lecturer at Shiraz University of Arts. Professor Vernacular Architecture (Iran)
1984, Shiraz, Iran, Architect and University Lecturer. Main teaching and research activities: Vernacular Architecture, Climatic Design and Earth Material. Co-Founder (with her brother, Sobhan Zare) of Gel Studio; Architecture Design Studio in Shiraz. Main Design focus: Natural Material, Vernacular and Contextual Architecture, Passive Design and Architecture for Humanity.
Timothy Soar – Photographer (United Kingdom)
My Father was a keen and accomplished amateur photographer. His love of photography & architecture created a distinct and handsome portfolio, one he was able to exhibit alongside Edwin Smith’s work in a joint show, a proud moment. Together Dad and I built a darkroom at home, I was processing and printing before I was 10, I don’t think a week has gone by in the past 50 years when I haven’t been making photographs.
I started my career in photography as a precocious teenager, witness to the riots and rock concerts of the late ’70’s. I was sponsored into the NUJ, and my first news front pages, by my early mentor the Sunday Times’s senior photographer Peter Dunne. Exciting times; black and white 35mm film, hand processing, wet prints, darkrooms, and smoke filled offices. Life revolved around Fleet Street, the picture desk and the print works, vast cathedrals mastered by men with hot lead linotype, green visors and shirt sleeves clipped up with steel armbands. The Wapping dispute refocussed my ambitions to large format photography, a more technically demanding image making made at a gentler pace. Early success with photographs for David Thurlow and Syd Furness of Cambridge Design, a string of RIBA award winning projects, and my future path was set.
I have been around long enough to witness the fascinating change from the protracted analogue processes of the photography of my youth, to the instantaneous, ubiquitous force it is today. Although the technology has changed the essential conversation, the core narrative of architectural photography, still cleaves to a formal sensibility established over 150 years of recording the built environment.
My work has encompassed projects from Stonehenge to the Google Headquarters, my first RIBA award winning scheme in 1982 to celebrating more than a few Stirling Prize candidates. It has been a privilege to be working alongside so many great talents and inspirational careers. Especially the joy that accompanies watching the early moves of a young practice flourish into design celebrated around the world.
There are, of course, a thousand stories: Landing in a ferocious blizzard in Kazakhstan, sandstorms in Kuwait, child soldiers in Uganda, flying through tornadoes in Oklahoma, leaving Cairo on the last commercial jet as the Arab Spring engulfed the city. Memorable commissions in Rome, Milan, Venice, Athens, Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Berlin, Brussels, Oslo, Paris, Nimes, Almaty, Sydney, New York, Boston, Seattle, Riyadh, Dubai…. And London, from St Paul’s Cathedral to the top of the Gherkin. Overnight shoots in the British Museum, the National History Museum, Harvey Nichols. The delight of having a free run of the Millennium Dome, The Jubilee Line, Terminal 5, One Hyde Park and the Olympic Park.
Certainly architectural photography has provided a stimulating time behind the lens.I am constantly mindful of the role the photographer plays in communicating the ambition and spirit of architecture, great images are made as a collaboration between creative individuals, not an imposition of styles or photoshop filters. I always return to the idea that my work needs to inspire and to create enduring appetite for the work of my clients. Never before has mastery of the photographic image been more important, or better able to affect change.
I hope to continue enabling my architects to find a voice that helps make a distinct argument for their design. To find a clarity, authenticity and honesty in my image making that helps describe, explain and illuminate complex and demanding programs. And to continue making the deep and lasting friendships that have sustained me and the work for so long.
Ana Paula Fuentes – Photographer (Mexico)
“My name is Ana Paula Fuentes, and I am a cultural photographer and social designer from Mexico City living in legendary Oaxaca for 17 years.
I specialize in Mexican culture and traditions, as I believe the majority of people desire to experience Mexico authentically and colourfully. Therefore, I have been wrapped and tangled in the world of textiles, travel, organizing, and outreach for most of my professional career.
I use my creativity, passion and eye for photography to tell stories that exhibit both beauty and truth, and I weave connections between foreign partners and locals that place a non-negotiable emphasis on culturally sensitivity and respect.
I specialize in photographing colours, patterns, textures, lights, people, places, and the artisans that I work with whom I have close relationships.
Since the age of 8 and due to my dad´s job in a textile company, I used to love textiles, fibers and colors and I remember spending hours playing with threads and fabric samples to “weave” collages and patchworks. Another of my passions is to travel, to discover new places, to learn about other cultures and ways of life. To walk cities and towns, to walk in the nature and of course to capture all these visual and emotional experiences with my camera. I´ve been a cultural guide for the last seven years and what I love about this job is to share my love for Mexico, its culture and traditions and to make people live a memorable experience and fall in love with my country.
In the year 1998 I graduated from Textil Design and then moved to Barcelona in Spain to study a postgraduate degree in Knitwear Fashion Design. In 2005 I moved to Oaxaca where I founded and directed the Museo Textil de Oaxaca…and then a longing for broader experience and further diverse cultural immersion led to five months traveling solo throughout India. I have worked for the non-profit association El Camino de Los Altos, formed by Maya weavers and French designers, developing promotion and marketing. I also developed a marketing and promotion plan and served as community liaison & social designer for the cooperative La Flor de Xochistlahuaca, formed by 35 Amuzgo weavers, Las Sanjuaneras, formed by 20 Mixtec weavers and a group of Zapotec weavers from San Bartolo Yauteopec, in three projects funded by the Rubin Foundation and in collaboration with the textile designer and contemporary artist Maddalena Forcella. Currently, I am the Executive Director of CADA Foundation, a non-profit organization interested in and worried about the future cultural patrimony, local identity and value; researching and documenting artisanal communities and working as real partners to develop products that compete while incorporating the culture and skills of the community.
For the last six years I´ve been working as a cultural guide with different travel companies and independently as a consultant and facilitator to connect educational institutions, companies, textile design brands, designers, etc. with artisans and their communities using the same social design methodology that I have implemented in all my past projects.
Iason Athanasiadis – Photographer (Greece)
Iason Athanasiadis is an Athens-based photographer and documentary filmmaker working on the Mediterranean and Middle East. He uses all media to recount the story of how we can adapt to the era of climate change, mass migration, and the misapplication of distorted modernity.
Klein Nettoh – Photographer (Kenya)
Independent filmmaker/photographer based in Nairobi, Kenya.
My area of specialty is in documentary photography, travel, lifestyle content, places, wildlife and people driven narratives like portraiture among others
I am also very skilled and passionate in telling stories through video and short cinematic films because I believe in Africans telling their own stories because nobody can do it better than we can.
