Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour
l'Intelligence de la Main 2025
Image: Mille fleurs (2023) by Jean-Brieuc Chevalier. © Julie Limont
CRAFT
Jean-Brieuc Chevalier
Talents d'exception
Jean-Brieuc Chevalier is the winner of the Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main 2025 in the section Talents d'exception for his pieceMille fleurs. Jean-Brieuc Chevalier is a cabinetmaker who lives and works in Angers. His sumptuous medieval-inspired folding screen is a tribute to the Millefleurs tapestries housed in the castle of Villevêque, just outside Angers. All the delicacy and poetry of medieval tapestries can be found in his work - a profusion of flowers and plants, animals both real and imaginary. The iconography is served by a remarkable marquetry work, but also conceals a myriad of mother-of-pearl beads that transfigure the work, introducing exceptional interplays of matter, volume and light.
Image: Tufo by Elodie Michaud and Rebecca Fezard. © Julie Limont
CRAFT | DESIGN
Elodie Michaud and Rebecca Fezard
Dialogues
Elodie Michaud, staffer and stuccoer, and Rebecca Fezard, designer, are the winners of the Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main 2025 in the section Dialogues, for their pieceTufo that combines artisan heritage and ecology. Inspired by the tuffeau stone of the Val de Loire, Tufo is a coffee table that seems to have barely emerged from a block of stone. This creative gesture goes hand in hand with an ambitious innovation: contrary to appearances, this table is not made from tuffeau stone, but from Leatherstone©, a new biomaterial composed of shredded leather scraps mixed with a mineral filler and a biodegradable natural glue.
Image: Dominoes made by a craftsman from the Musée de la Nacre et de la Tabletterie. © Julie Limont
CRAFT
Musée de la Nacre et de la Tabletterie
Parcours
The Musée de la Nacre et de la Tabletterie (Oise) is the winner of the Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main 2025 in the section Parcours. Created in 1999, the museum showcases the art of the ‘tabletier’, who has been working with hard materials of plant and animal origin, such as bone and horn, for over five centuries. Established in the Middle Ages with the creation of small writing tables, this craft gradually expanded to include the manufacture of everyday objects: combs and brushes, walking sticks, buttons, knives, and even games such as dice and dominoes. The craft grew at the end of the 17th century with the diversification of raw materials (mother-of-pearl, ebony, ivory, tortoiseshell), but it was in the 19th century that it reached its peak with industrialisation.
About the Prix Liliane Bettencourt pour l'Intelligence de la Main
RIBA Stirling Prize 2025
Image: Witherford Watson Mann Architects, Appleby Blue Almshouse, Bermondsey, London.
ARCHITECTURE
Appleby Blue Almshouse
RIBA Stirling Prize
The Appleby Blue Almshouse social housing complex in London, designed by local studio Witherford Watson Mann Architects, has won this year's RIBA Stirling Prize for the UK's best new building. Created on the site of an abandoned care home in Southwark, Appleby Blue Almshouse comprises 57 apartments for over-65s, organised around a central courtyard. "By creating a radical and significant model that embraces co-living at a time where our demographics are shifting, Appleby Blue sets an ambitious standard for social housing among older people." said this year's jury chair Ingrid Schroder, who is director of London's Architectural Association (AA).
Le Prix Charlotte Perriand 2026
Image: DnA_Design and Architecture, reuse of the Jinyun quarries, Zhejiang Province, China, 2021-2022.
© Wang Ziling, Courtesy of DnA_Design and Architecture
ARCHITECTURE
Xu Tiantian
Le Prix Charlotte Perriand
The Créateurs Design Awards (CDA) announced Xu Tiantian, founder and principal architect of DnA_Design and Architecture, as the recipient of Le Prix Charlotte Perriand 2026 which celebrates visionary architects whose work embodies innovation, social responsibility and a deep engagement with community and place. Since founding DnA in the early 2000s, Xu Tiantian has focused on projects that engage local communities, cultural heritage and the landscape, integrating architecture into existing social and ecological systems to create interventions that strengthen rather than disrupt.
About Le Prix Charlotte Perriand
Prix de la mode du monde arabe
Image: Ahmed Hassan (KML), Talent émergent 2025. D.R.
FASHION
Ahmed Hassan
Talent émergent
The Institut du monde arabe (IMA) presented its Prix de la mode du monde arabe. Saudi Ahmed Hassan, co-founder and artistic director of KML, is the winner of the Talent émergent prize. KML is a conceptual fashion house rooted in tradition yet looking to the future. Semi-finalist in the LVMH prize 2025, Ahmed Hassan emerged on the Paris fashion scene thanks to Saudi 100 Brands programme. By reinterpreting elements of traditional Saudi clothing in a contemporary aesthetic, he creates a bridge between tradition and fashion.
About the Prix de la mode du monde arabe
Expo 2025 Osaka
Image: Pavilion of the Kingdom of Bahrain by Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture (LG—A), Expo 2025 Osaka. © Iwan Baan
ARCHITECTURE
Kingdom of Bahrain
Connecting Seas
Gold Award for Best Architecture and Landscape
The Kingdom of Bahrain's Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka, designed by Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture, titled Connecting Seas, has been awarded the Gold Award for Best Architecture and Landscape. The design draws from Bahrain's maritime heritage, referencing the traditional dhow boats that once defined the country's shipbuilding industry. Constructed primarily from timber, with an outer aluminum skin, the pavilion reinterprets historical boat-building techniques into a contemporary architectural language.
Prix International d’Art Contemporain 2025
Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco
Image: Simone Fattal, Sempre il mare, uomo libero, amerai! [Free man, you’ll love the ocean endlessy!], 2023, installation view, Thus waves come in pairs, commission TBA21–Academy, Ocean Space, Venice.
ART
Simone Fattal
Prix International d’Art Contemporain
The Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco awarded its Prix International d’Art Contemporain 2025 to Lebanese-Syrian artist Simone Fattal for her installation Sempre il mare, uomo libero, amerai! [Free man, you’ll love the ocean endlessy!]. The installation, commissioned by TBA21–Academy, was first presented at Ocean Space, Venice, in 2023, as part of the exhibition Thus waves come in pairs curated by Barbara Casavecchia. Simone Fattal's practice is a testament to the enduring power of storytelling and the ability of creativity to advocate for humanity and community.
About the Prix International d’Art Contemporain Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco
Prix du Frac Bretagne – Art Norac 2025
Image: Exhibition view, Elisa Florimond, Systèmes complexes, Sac vocal, 2024, Bonus - le Grand Huit, Nantes. © Robin Bourgeois
ART
Elisa Florimond
Prix du Frac Bretagne – Art Norac
Elisa Florimond is the winner of the Prix du Frac Bretagne – Art Norac 2025. To classifications, oppose constellations. On the one hand, clearly separated and hierarchical categories; on the other, a continuum of resonances and correspondences between entities that are at first sight remote from one another. In other words, two conceptions of the world, the first inherited from Western modernity, which Elisa Florimond dissolves into the second, inspired by contemporary schools of thought. Sarah Ihler-Meyer
About the Prix du Frac Bretagne – Art Norac
Frieze London 2025
Image: Michelle Uckotter, The Squat, 2025. Courtesy the artist and King’s Leap.
ART
King’s Leap
Focus Stand Prize
King’s Leap (New York) is the winner of the Focus Stand Prize at Frieze London 2025 for its solo presentation by New York-based artist Michelle Uckotter. Michelle Uckotter contorts a knowledge of painterly modernism with contemporary femininity on the verge of collapse. In her recent paintings, visceral and expressive use of oil pastel renders cinematic scenes, playing with Hollywood horror film tropes and the stakes inherent to those suspenseful scenes.
London gallery Modern Art has been awarded the 2025 Gallery Stand Prize for its solo presentation of ceramics by Sanya Kantarovsky.
PAD London 2025
Image: PAD London 2025, Sceners Gallery stand view © Yotam Shwartz, Friedman Benda gallery stand view © Genevieve Lutkin, Laffanour Galerie Downtown stand view © Jitske Nap.
DESIGN
PAD London Prize
The 2025 PAD London Prizes have been awarded. Sceners Gallery received the Stand Prize. The Contemporary Design Prize went to Faye Toogood's Maquette 208 / Paper Chair (2020) made in cast aluminum and acrylic paint presented by the Friedman Benda gallery. The Historical Design Prize was awarded to a rosewood paneling by Pierre Chareau (ca. 1924), a rare ensemble forming the heart of the presentation presented by Laffanour Galerie Downtown.
