‘The Trail of Curiosities’ by IED Barcelona Interior Design student Bianca Giacomini wins the third edition of the IED Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue Award
Date
18 August 2025
With ‘The Trail of Curiosities’, a project that eulogises the act of walking aesthetically along a path that features four collective spaces for the creation of new memories, Bianca Giacomini has won the third edition of the IED Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue Award for Best Interior Design Thesis at IED Barcelona.
The jury, composed of Benedetta Tagliabue, President of the Enric Miralles Foundation and Director of EMBT Architects, as well as members of the Enric Miralles Foundation’s board of trustees, including architect Caterina Miralles, justified the selection based on the proposal’s ability “to construct its own imaginary, designed with originality and millimetric precision”, also highlighting its “attention to detail and sensitivity to celebrating nature and the everyday life of the ‘infraordinary’”.
Given the excellent level of the projects presented in this third edition of the award, at the awards ceremony, held on 12 June at the Enric Miralles Foundation and within the context of Barcelona’s Architecture Weeks, the panel of experts also recognised two other IED projects with an honorable mention.
The first was ‘The Invisible Impact’ by Alicia Sirera, an urban space focused on promoting dermatological, emotional and environmental health, with the aim of counteracting the negative effects of urban pollution on people’s skin.
The jury praised ‘The Invisible Impact’ for being a proposal that “eliminates the boundaries between interior and exterior, where nature envelops the senses and its beauty embraces body and mind”.
The second honorable mention went to ‘Adaptis VerΔ’ by Lana Mutaz, in this case “for being a proposal that cares for the interior space, adapting it to researched biological mutations to achieve a balanced relationship with the environment”.
“Adaptis VerΔ” is a modular system of pill-shaped capsules designed to facilitate the daily lives of astronauts and researchers during their missions, coexisting in space with plants and organic systems.
Exploring New Horizons
The projects presented this year for the third edition of the IED Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue Award for the Best Interior Design Thesis at IED Barcelona arose from a dual proposal by the Design School.
On the one hand, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, they took the drive to explore inherent to the human condition as their central theme. Thus, students had to design spaces in line with this desire to discover new spatial and temporal limits and expand knowledge, considering well-being and taking into account the limitations of the environment and the need to better interact with nature.
On the other hand, and in collaboration with IED Rome, the Italian Space Agency and Caimi, they addressed the topic of life on Mars.
Both the winning projects and the other shortlisted works were on display until 19 June at the Enric Miralles Foundation, as part of the exhibition “Exploring New Horizons. Where Are You Going Next?”
Cover photo: Bianca Giacomini and her project "The Trail of Curiosities"
The Enric Miralles Foundation jury, the IED Barcelona management, and members of the School of Design staff pose with the winner and honorable mentions.
“Adaptis VerΔ”, by Lana Mutaz.
"The Invisible Impact", by Alicia Sirera.
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