The Multi-Year Partnership Will Honor Architects Who Challenge Convention, Beginning With an Inaugural Ceremony at Luis Barragán’s La Cuadra in Mexico
Bottega Veneta is extending its engagement with architecture and design through a new partnership with La Cuadra, launching an international award dedicated to individuals pushing the boundaries of contemporary architecture.
The New Architecture Prize will recognize figures whose work challenges convention, expands the possibilities of the discipline and influences how people inhabit the world. The initiative takes inspiration from Luis Barragán, the influential Mexican architect and the country’s only recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
The inaugural ceremony will take place October 9 at La Cuadra in the State of Mexico, one of Barragán’s defining architectural works.
Designed in the late 1960s as an equestrian estate, La Cuadra embodies many of the qualities that made Barragán’s work distinctive: monumental geometry, intense color, carefully controlled light and an unusually intimate relationship between architecture and landscape. Today, under Fundación Romero, the site operates as a cultural institution exploring Barragán’s legacy across architecture, landscape, art and equestrian culture.
For Bottega Veneta, the partnership builds on the house’s longstanding relationship with architecture, art and design. Under Creative Director Louise Trotter, La Cuadra provides a particularly resonant setting for that dialogue, bringing the Italian house into conversation with one of the most distinctive figures in 20th-century architecture.
The prize is intended to look forward rather than function simply as a celebration of Barragán’s legacy. Its focus will be on contemporary individuals who rethink established architectural conventions and introduce new possibilities for how spaces are conceived and experienced.
That approach also reflects a broader cultural strategy at Bottega Veneta, where collaborations and initiatives outside fashion have increasingly provided a way to connect the house’s emphasis on craftsmanship and materiality with other creative disciplines.
The October ceremony will be invitation-only but livestreamed internationally, giving the new award an audience beyond La Cuadra itself.
More significantly, the inaugural event marks the beginning of a multi-year relationship between Bottega Veneta and La Cuadra. The partners intend to establish the prize as a recurring presence on the international architecture calendar while creating a lasting cultural platform in Mexico.
The relationship will also extend into Bottega Veneta’s retail presence in the country. A future activation is planned at the house’s new Mexico City boutique following its opening, connecting the architecture initiative with Bottega Veneta’s expanding presence in the market.
By establishing an ongoing prize rather than staging a one-off cultural collaboration, Bottega Veneta is positioning the project as a longer-term investment in the architectural community — using Barragán’s legacy as the starting point for a conversation about what architecture might become next.