by: AIA New York
AIA New York returns to Cipriani Wall Street on April 20 to celebrate the honorees of the 2023 Honors and Awards Luncheon. The awards program recognizes design excellence in New York City by honoring the winners of the AIA New York Design Awards and recipients of AIA New York’s four major annual awards. The event also serves as an important fundraiser for AIA New York and its ongoing mission to show that design and the city’s built environment matter.
At this year’s event, the chapter will honor Andrew Bernheimer, FAIA, with the Medal of Honor; Richard Yancey, FAIA, LEED AP, and the Building Energy Exchange with the Champion of Architecture Medal; New York Review of Architecture with the Architecture in Media Award; and WIP Collaborative with the New Perspectives Award. Get to know the honorees below!
Medal of Honor
Andrew Bernheimer, FAIA
Andrew Bernheimer 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 award-winning, multi-unit affordable housing developments across the five boroughs and private residences in the northeast. The studio is also currently 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 oversaw a graduate program known for its connections between design and practice and its distinct focus on the constructed environment of New York City’s communities. The program includes a signature design-build studio and cross-disciplinary curricular opportunities with graduate programs in lighting and interior design. He currently teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate architecture sequences.
Previously, Bernheimer was a founding partner of the award-winning firm Della Valle Bernheimer.
Champion of Architecture Medal
Richard Yancey, FAIA, LEED AP, and the Building Energy Exchange
Richard C. Yancey, FAIA, LEED AP, is the Founding Executive Director of Building Energy Exchange (BE-Ex), a nonprofit 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 percent 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, his leadership and vision have built 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
New York Review of Architecture has reviewed architecture in New York since the publication of its first issue on May 1, 2019. Rooted in New York but interested in architecture everywhere, New York Review of Architecture avoids themed issues, publishing pieces that break down architecture’s silos to tie together academia, practice, and the public.
New York Review of Architecture publishes a bimonthly print magazine laden with essays, reviews, reported work, and art that reaches subscribers from Singapore to Hungary and Kenya to Brooklyn. We also publish a weekly email newsletter, SKYLINE, with a mix of reviews, news, reported dispatches, and gossip.
It is a team effort. The publication’s Editor is Samuel Medina; its Deputy Editor is Marianela D’Aprile; its Editors-at-Large are Carolyn Bailey, Phillip Denny, and Alex Klimoski; and its Publisher is Nicolas Kemper. Laura Coombs is the magazine’s Art Director, Seth Thompson is its Web Developer, and Nicholas Raap is Operations Coordinator. New York Review of Architecture co-founders include Dante Furioso, Sarah Kasper, James Coleman, and Julie Turgeon. The publication also has a dozen skyline editors and has worked with more than a hundred writers. New York Review of Architecture benefits from the support of the Graham Foundation and additional sponsors, and would be nowhere without its print subscribers.
New Perspectives Award
WIP Collaborative
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 on feminist principles in February 2020 and supports those who eschew patriarchal conventions, defining new narratives of architectural and design practice through their work. The founding members of WIP Collaborative are Abby Coover, Bryony Roberts, Elsa Ponce, Lindsay Harkema, Ryan Brooke Thomas, Sera Ghadaki, and Sonya Gimon.
WIP is a dual acronym for both “Work in Progress” and “Women in Practice,” emphasizing the practice’s collective emphasis on experimentation, research, mutual support, and co-creative design that engages everyone. Distinct from a traditional firm built around a singular identity and authorship, the collective is centered around a way of working as an adaptable framework to meet the needs of its projects and collaborators.