CORA wins Gold Prize at Design Educates Awards 2025

IAAC is pleased to announce that CORA – Cathedral of Robotic Artisans, a prototype designed and built by students of the Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities, has won the Gold Prize in Architectural Design at the Design Educates Awards 2025.

CORA is a vaulted timber structure located in the forested landscapes of Valldaura within the Collserola Natural Park. Conceived as a gathering place and an architectural hypothesis, CORA explores how digital fabrication and ecological materiality interact—how craft can scale up to architecture, and how robotics can align with the intelligence of organic matter.

The prototype merges ancestral construction logics with contemporary robotic precision. Built entirely from locally sourced Aleppo Pine, each element of the vault was individually milled using a KUKA KR-210 robotic arm. Far from standardizing repetition, the robotic process was used to produce variation: each timber piece is unique, designed through computational methods that respect both the geometry of the vault and the constraints of the material.

The students of the 2023/24 class of MAEBB worked with an integrated system that spanned from scanning the trees felled on-site, to orienting and programming the robotic cuts, and assembling the structure in the forest. The result is a space that embodies a choreography between human gesture and digital code, matter and intent.

With a 12-metre span and a height of 4 metres, CORA is the largest structure ever realized at Valldaura Labs. Its scale frames the surrounding forest, engaging with light and inviting social interaction. By working with irregular geometries and site-sourced timber, the project develops tectonic systems that embrace material variation and ecological intelligence.

The gallery of all Design Educates Awards winners can be viewed here.

Credits

Project: CORA – Cathedral of Robotic Artisans

Direction: Vicente Guallart, Daniel Ibañez and Michael Salka

Valldaura Executive Director: Laia Pifarré

Developed by: The students of the Master in Advanced Ecological Buildings and Biocities (MAEBB), 2023/24 class: Alexander Tamazov, Toni Javor, Emma Rodriguez Berghmans, Neeshi Doshi, Lamprini Makarona, Diana Ruzanska, Alfred Ziad Aramouni, Anushreya Kondapi, Juan Sebastián Batallas Cueva, Marianna Santos Fujii, Varun Sreenath, André Arruda Navarro, Mustafa Teksoy, Oliver Needham, Alireza Shayan, Alkiviaids Avarkiotis. Maya Shoavi, Sharvari Sharath, Sveta Sathyanadhan, Vanessa Marie Alvarado Barrios, Helen Girma, Karla Velarde Sandoval, Kristina Schüssler

Project Management: Esin Aydemir

Expert Staff: Bruno Ganem, Marielena Papandreou, Lorenzo Salinas, Viorel Cazacu

Staff: Pilar Fontanals, Laura Sanchez

Advised by: Miquel Rodriguez, Elena Orte, Guillermo Sevillano, Ignasi Caus, David Valldeoriola, Silvia Burés, Toni Arola, Ionut Cosenco, Carles Enrich, Firas Safieddine, Arturo de la Maza

Sponsors: Tallfusta, Alberch; Montpart

With the support of: Parc de Collserola  Ajuntament de Cerdanyola del Vallès

Photography: Adrià Goula

Communication: Pati Nuñez Agency