Petra Ceferin is the winner of the Bruno Zevi Prize 2008

Petra Ceferin was awarded the 2008 Bruno Zevi Award for her essay entitled Transforming Reality Through Architecture: The Finnish Contribution.

The object of the essay is the specificity of Finnish architecture during the 1950s. As highlighted by the Jury – composed of Peter Blundell Jones, Roberto Dulio, Aldo Loris Rossi, Robert McCarter and Luciana Miotto – the author sheds light on the work of Alvar Aalto, exposing a concrete example of a desire to transform reality using a form of modern architecture capable of organically inserting itself within its environmental context. With an impeccable analytical and documentary seriousness, which examines the cultural and social climate, critical fortune and the role of institutions, Ceferin verifies in the work of Aalto, above all the Villa Mairea, and that of other Finnish architects from the 1950s, from Aulis Blomstedt to Aarne Ervi, Viljo Revell, Keijo Petäjä, Kaija and Heikki Siren, the concept of “intrinsic rational surplus”, developed by Aalto as far back as 1935.

An architect and architectural theoretician, Petra Ceferin lives in Ljubljana, where she directs the Zavod ARK – Institute for Architecture and Culture. She is the author of the book Constructing a Legend (SKS Publishing, Helsinki 2003) and co-curator of Architectural Epicentres: Inventing Architecture, Intervening in Reality (AML, Ljubljana 2008).