The Honor Award recipients were chosen by this year’s Honors Committee members: Matthew Bremer, AIA; Victor Body-Lawson, FAIA; Karen Fairbanks, FAIA, LEED AP; Yasemin Kologlu, Int’l Assoc. AIA, RIBA, LEED; Henry Myerberg, FAIA; Annya Ramírez-Jiménez, AIA; and Jacob Reidel, AIA.
Medal of Honor
Andrew Bernheimer, FAIA
The Medal of Honor, conferred by AIANY since 1914, is the Chapter’s highest form of recognition. It acknowledges an architect or firm of architects for distinguished work and high professional standing. Past recipients have included Kim Yao, FAIA; Denise Scott Brown; Claire Weisz, FAIA; and, further back, Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn.
Andrew Bernheimer, FAIA, is a Brooklyn-based architect and associate professor of architecture at the Parsons School of Design. Bernheimer leads an eponymous firm responsible for a wide variety of residential, civic, and commercial projects, including new award-winning multi-unit affordable housing developments across the five boroughs as well as private residences in the Northeast. His studio is also the only private architectural firm in the United States with unionized labor.
Bernheimer edited Timber in the City (ORO Editions, 2015), a book featuring innovative practices in wood construction, and co-edited the collection Fairy Tale Architecture (ORO Editions, 2020) with his sister, Kate Bernheimer. In 2018, Bernheimer was elevated to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects. Bernheimer sits on the Executive Board of the Institute for Public Architecture in New York City. While director of the M.Arch program at Parsons from 2012 to 2016, Bernheimer strengthened the connections for students between design in the classroom and practice, with a distinct focus on New York City’s communities and their constructed environments. He currently teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. Previously, he was a founding partner of the award-winning firm Della Valle Bernheimer.
Champion of Architecture Medal Richard
Richard C. Yancey, FAIA, LEED AP
The Champion of Architecture Medal is conferred on an individual from outside the architecture profession for his or her critical work towards the advancement of architecture and design. It was first given to R. Buckminster Fuller in 1952, and, more recently, to Ai Weiwei, Justin Garrett Moore, David Rockefeller, and Jane Jacobs.
Richard C. Yancey, FAIA, LEED AP, is the founding executive director of Building Energy Exchange (BE-Ex), a non-profit center of excellence accelerating the transition to healthy, comfortable, and energy-efficient buildings by serving as a resource and trusted expert to the building industry. Through education, exhibitions, and actionable research, BE-Ex plays a central role in New York City and New York State’s climate action plans. As the founding member of the United Nations International Centres of Excellence for High Performance Buildings, BE-Ex also advances high-performance buildings globally.
With buildings responsible for nearly 70% of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions, Yancey recognized the power of creating a physical and virtual space that could engage all building stakeholders around effective climate action. Beginning in 2009 with an unfunded idea and an inchoate conceptualization, he used his leadership and vision to build a talented team and established BE-Ex as an innovative, international hub that has become a model for other cities. Yancey has collaborated to help launch high-performance building resource centers in Washington, DC, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, Denver, and Vancouver.
Prior to BE-Ex, Yancey practiced architecture in Seattle and New York, and received a Master of Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
Architecture in Media Award
New York Review of Architecture
Originally named after Stephen A. Kliment, the Architecture in Media Award recognizes individuals and publications that elevate and challenge architectural discourse. This award has been given since 2003 to journalists and critics who, through their writing, have shaped the practice of architecture and elevated its standards. Recent awardees include Cathleen McGuigan, Inga Saffron, Robert Ivy, and Alexandra Lange.
New York Review of Architecture (NYRA) reviews architecture in New York, and published its first issue on May 1, 2019. Rooted in New York but interested in architecture every-where, the publication avoids themed issues, offering pieces that break down architecture’s silos to tie together academia, practice, and the public we all serve.
The bimonthly print magazine is laden with essays, reviews, dispatches from lectures and architecture events, reported work, and original art that reaches subscribers across the world, including Singapore, Hungary, Kenya, and Brooklyn. NYRA also publishes a weekly email newsletter, SKYLINE, with an even mix of reviews, news, reported dispatches, and gossip.
The NYRA team includes Editor Samuel Medina; Deputy Editor Marianela D’Aprile; Editors-at-Large Carolyn Bailey, Phillip Denny, and Alex Klimoski; Publisher Nicolas Kemper; Art Director Laura Coombs; Web Developer Seth Thompson; and Operations Coordinator Nicholas Raap. Co-founders include Dante Furioso, Sarah Kasper, James Coleman, and Julie Turgeon. NYRA has worked with more than 100 writers, and benefits from the support of the Graham Foundation, other sponsors, and dedicated print subscribers.
New Perspectives Award
WIP Collaborative
Since 2021, the New Perspectives Award has celebrated individuals and/or collectives who, through their own recently published or curated work, take unique, critical positions that contribute to the broader understanding of architecture.
WIP Collaborative is a shared practice of independent design professionals focused on research and design projects that engage communities and the public realm. The practice foregrounds considerations of embodiment, neurodiversity, and collectivity through design. Based in New York City, WIP was founded in February 2020 on feminist principles, and supports those who eschew patriarchal conventions and define new narratives of architectural and design practice through their work.
WIP is a dual acronym for both “Work in Progress” and “Women in Practice,” describing the collective emphasis on experimentation, research, mutual support, and co-creative design that engages everyone. Distinct from a traditional firm that is built around a singular identity and authorship, the collective works as an adaptable framework to meet the needs of its projects and collaborators. The founding members of WIP Collaborative are Abby Coover, Bryony Roberts, Elsa Ponce, Lindsay Harkema, Ryan Brooke Thomas, Sera Ghadaki, and Sonya Gimon.
