AIA’s Most Honored Architects for 2022

Back in 1907, the American Institute of Architects began awarding its Gold Medal to architects of worldwide distinction – many of them from the outset based in other countries. It wasn’t until 2014 that they awarded the Gold to a woman, posthumously to Julia Morgan, who practiced in California early in the 1900s. The first – so far only – Black architect to win the Gold, Paul Revere Williams, whose practice flourished in the 1930s through the 1960s, was also awarded a posthumous Gold in 2017.

In 1962 AIA instituted the Firm Award, belatedly acknowledging that architecture is not an art accomplished by individuals alone. The prestige of this honor was intended to equal that of the Gold, but that equality has taken decades to be achieved, perhaps reaching it now. Meanwhile, in 2016 AIA belatedly agreed that the Gold need not go invariably to an individual, but could be shared by a couple of partners — initially Robert Venturi, FAIA, and his wife/partner Denise Scott Brown, Hon. FAIA – the only pair of architects so recognized until now.

Gold Medal to the Brooks + Scarpa partners

Partners in life as well as design practice, this year’s Gold Medal winners Angela Brooks, FAIA, and Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA, are cited for “architecture that profoundly enriches the human experience.” Their firm, Brooks + Scarpa, is headquartered in Hawthorne CA, in the Los Angeles area, with a second office in Fort Lauderdale FL. Its practice extends beyond conventional architecture to include: landscape architecture, planning and environmental design; graphic, furniture, and interior design; and materials research.

“Aside from being award-winning design architects,” wrote Steve Dumez, FAIA, and Douglas A. Benson, FAIA, in a nomination letter for this honor, “they are motivated by a social responsibility and environmental stewardship that seeks to find ways to improve the livability of cities and ennoble the daily lives of their citizens.” Together, the partners have founded organizations such as the A+D Museum in Los Angeles and the Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute, which has provided valuable design tools for developers across the country,

Brooks and Scarpa both hail from towns in Central Florida and met while studying architecture at the University of Florida. Scarpa had returned to Florida after working for the eminent architect Paul Rudolph in New York to pursue graduate studies and Brooks was completing her undergraduate work.

The two married in 1987 and eventually moved to California, where Brooks attended graduate school at SCI-Arc and Scarpa began working with Gwynne Pugh. They established the firm Pugh + Scarpa in 1991, which quickly grew to a 20-person office that attracted international attention and won the AIA’s Firm Award in 2010. Brooks launched her career with the Los Angeles Community Design Center, tackling issues involving affordable housing and homelessness. In 1999 she joined Pugh + Scarpa as a principal, and the firm was renamed Brooks + Scarpa when Pugh exited in 2011.

While Brooks’s name was not yet part of the firm’s public identity, she played key roles in the office’s work that won the firm nearly a dozen AIA Design Awards. Those honored projects include the Colorado Court Apartments, the first US project of its type to be 100 percent energy neutral, and Step Up on 5th, which provides housing for the homeless and mentally disabled – both located in Santa Monica. In 2014 their socially engaged approach to design excellence earned the firm the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum’s National Design Award in Architecture.

As architect Robert Berkebile, FAIA, wrote in support of their Gold Medal nomination, “If every architect operated in this manner – combining design excellence, social and environmental responsibility, and public service – our profession’s relevance and positive impact on society would increase tenfold.”

Firm Award to MASS Design Group

This year’s honored firm is a nonprofit collective comprising more than 200 architects, engineers, researchers, and even film-makers, with offices in Boston, Santa Fe, Bozeman MT, Poughkeepsie NY, and Kigali, Rwanda. Founded in 2008, it has provided design services worth millions of dollars for projects in the U.S. and abroad. The firm’s commitment to addressing social concerns worldwide is embedded in its name, an acronym for Model of Architecture Serving Society.

Established during the design and construction of Rwanda’s Butaro District Hospital, the MASS team has evolved to include MASS Made, a furniture design and production company, and MASS Build, a construction company that employs more than 2,000 people. All of the work by these entities has leveraged lessons learned in Rwanda.

The firm’s projects include numerous works providing for health care, housing, and other essential services, and also some that eloquently inform the public about social justice. Among those are the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, honoring 4,400 victims of lynching, and the Gun Violence Memorial Project exhibit, traveling to various U.S. venues.

In addition to the exceptional works of architecture the firm creates, it contributes significantly to the communities it serves. When MASS Design started working in Rwanda, there was a very limited community of architects there. Today, as the largest architecture firm in that country, its Rwanda office includes 80 design professionals, 72 percent of whom are Rwandans. Among its members are the first female Rwandan landscape architect and a growing group of female architects and engineers.

One of MASS’s social investments in the US is its Design Labs initiative, acting in areas where design is not generally seen as an agent for change. Its successful projects in this arena include the Sustainable Native Communities Design Lab, for which MASS recruited Indigenous architect Joseph Kunkel, and the Public Memory and Memorial Design Lab, overseen by architect and spoken-word artist Jha D Amazi.

MASS Design has also established two fellowship programs to encourage the next generation of design leadership in Rwanda and the US: the African Design Centre and the Space & Society Fellowship. They hope these will help more of the young to harness their design skills for the betterment of society.

In support of the firm’s nomination for this honor Kimberly Dowdell, AIA, NOMAC, wrote “Their work not only facilitates beautifully built spaces and environments, but MASS also critically strives to share valuable tools and resources with their project stakeholders,” demonstrating that design can be “both beautiful and just.”

Two More AIA Awards of note

The American Institute of Architects’ 2022 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award is going the group RIDING THE VORTEX, which has been contributing to notable improvements in the profession’s racial and gender diversity. Following its launch at the AIA 2007 national conference, VORTEX has been inspired by the challenge Whitney Young, head of the National Urban League, delivered to architects at AIA’s 1968 national convention (one result of which was establishment of this award): to confront racial inequality in the profession as well as the communities where it functions.

VORTEX has had a direct impact during the years 2007-2021, helping to increase the number of black female architects in this country from approximately 175 to more than 500, according to the Directory of African-American Architects. Through its in-person and online programs, the organization has helped many aspiring women to attain their professional goals with information and advice on navigating the maze of architectural education and licensure. The success of VORTEX’s programs has inspired related regional and local efforts toward diversity in the architectural profession.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) have named Deborah Berke, FAIA, as winner of the 2022 Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education. She has served as Dean of Yale’s School of Architecture since 2016, the first woman to lead the school. She has initiated successful efforts to improve the diversity of the faculty and student body there. Her other notable accomplishments as dean include establishment of the Yale Center for Ecosystems in Architecture and the introduction of an urban studies major for undergraduates.

Berke’s keen understanding of spaces that support creativity and learning has led her New York firm, Deborah Berke & Partners, to assemble a substantial portfolio of projects for higher education for campuses including Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania – along with numerous residential, office, and hotel projects. Having now expanded from three to eleven partners, the firm has won numerous awards for design, including the National Design Award from Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.