MCHAP Book One: The Americas edited by Fabrizio Gallanti
IITAC Press/Actar, 2016
Hardcover, 444 pages

In October 2014 the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) announced the winners of the inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP), with Álvaro Siza's Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, winning for 2000-2008 and Herzog & de Meuron's 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida, winning for 2009-2013. By the time this book documenting the prize and its seven finalists came out last year, the winner of the 2014-15 MCHAP was already announced: SANAA's Grace Farms in New Canaan, Connecticut. MCHAP recognizes the best building realized in the previous two-year period (minus the inaugural) in North and South America, such that it functions like an Americas equivalent of the EU Prize ? Mies Award.
Even though it documents the winners and finalists, this book isn't really about them. This is clear from the introductory essays, by Dutch architect and IIT dean Wiel Arets and editor Fabrizio Gallanti. The former is about cities and technological developments on the two continents and "the creation of a new dream," while the latter explores the fluid ideas and meanings of "America" ? nary a mention of the prize is found. Furthermore, if one were to read the book from cover to cover, they wouldn't learn which projects won until page 417. Between the introduction and back matter, with its listing of the winners, finalists, outs...