Gustav-Peichl-Awardees 2024: Catherine Zesch and Otto Jaax

The Gustav Peichl Award for Architectural Drawing was launched in 2014 on the initiative of the graduates of the Gustav Peichl “Meisterschule” of Architecture with the support of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the Society of Friends of Fine Arts, and private sponsors. The award is given biennially to a student of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna for outstanding architectural drawings.

The jury has awarded the Gustav Peichl Award 2024 equally to two laureates. The works of both laureates are characterized by a high degree of delicacy and multidimensionality. At the same time, awarding the prize to Catherine Zesch and Otto Jaax creates a space between two very different approaches to architectural drawing, thus reflecting the diversity of the award.

Catherine Zesch works with an awareness of the connection to the significant issues of our time, such as demographic developments, climate change, diversity, and inclusion, in her project, "Inhabit the intangible multidimensional." She moves between analog and digital, between forest nature and technology, and focuses on the synthetic whole. Her innovation and versatility are manifested in numerous translations between photographic work, film clips, drawings from memory and imagination, three-dimensional models, collages, and design projects using a shadow-casting machine. Not only are fragility and porosity tangible and visible, but poetry and wholeness and the relevance and diversity of architectural drawing are also tangible and visible.

Otto Jaax combines delicacy, subtlety, and lightness with a consistent approach, solemnity, and depth. His coherent narrative "bridges" the landscape, moving from the concrete to the profound and abstract, working with charcoal on paper, pencil on paper, photography, and acetone print on paper. His view of the landscape reveals the interplay between beauty and complexity, detail and entirety, opening doors to various perspectives. This subtle density, this light solemnity, creates a space for atmospheres and a diversity of interpretations, building a bridge between digital and analog techniques.