On a cold weekend in early January, seven jurors arrived in New York to review over 300 awards submissions for this year’s edition of the AIANY Design Awards. But beyond discussing the merits of each project, the jury had an ongoing, robust conversation about the state of architecture. Over the course of two days, they wondered if the level of risk-taking is as high as it had been in years past; they questioned whether sustainability was the normative baseline yet for all design in the U.S.; they noted that they’d like to see more projects that deal with multifamily housing and issues of social justice. In a year dominated by architecture submissions, the jury challenged AIANY members to submit more interiors and urban design projects in 2019. They remarked on the range of scales in the work and the international reach of so many New York firms, but, above all, they were impressed by the level of design excellence.
Across four categories—Architecture, Interiors, Projects (unbuilt), and Urban Design—the jury gave three types of awards: Honor, recognizing the highest level of design excellence; Merit, for runners up; and Citation, a new honorable mention award that recognizes a specific and notable design aspect of a project.
2018 Jury
Gro Benesmo, SPACEGROUP, Oslo, Norway
Ila Berman, Dean of UVA School of Architecture, Charlottesville, Virginia
Aaron Forrest, Ultramoderne, Providence, Rhode Island
Walter Hood, Hood Studio, Oakland, California
Tom Kundig, Olson Kundig Architects, Seattle, Washington
Debra Lehman Smith, LSM Studio, Washington, DC
J. Meejin Yoon, Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Head of the Department of Architecture, MIT Boston, Massachusetts