Francesca Torzo, architect of Z33 art house in Hasselt is the Winner of the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture

Winner of the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture

Francesca Torzo, founder of Francesca Torzo Architetto, has won the Moira Gemmill Prize. Based in Genoa, Torzo’s architecture is one of care but also persistence and unyielding will. The extension to the Z33 art house in Hasselt, Belgium, and due to open on 14 March 2020, is informed by a memory of the beguinage in which it sits, creating a ‘silent’ facade of red brick along the street and a Kasbah of rooms nestled behind. The practice’s future projects include two residential projects in Italy and two in China, including a dance school in Bishan near Huangshan and a tea house in Yangshuo. Torzo will receive a £10,000 prize fund created in memory of the late Moira Gemmill, director of design at the V&A and latterly director of capital programmes at the Royal Collection Trust. The prize fund will support Torzo in her continuing professional development.