The 8th Annual A+Awards promises to be bigger than ever. The world’s largest awards program celebrating the world’s best architecture and building products is currently accepting entries, with an Early Entry Deadline of February 14th this year. To be in the running for international publication, global recognition and the prestigious A+Awards trophy, act now and submit your best works for consideration:
The success of the A+Awards is dependent on the caliber of projects that are identified, selected and ultimately showcased. While the public voters have their say thanks to our easy-to-use online voting system, the Jurors’ Awards our selected by an illustrious team of judges from fields as diverse as fashion, publishing, product design, real estate development and tech.
Maintaining the A+Awards’ quality and reputation is why a carefully crafted cast of jurors — each experts and influential within their respective industries — is essential in guaranteeing the best possible architecture and products are rewarded. We are proud and excited to unveil a diverse and incredibly talented new group of jurors for the 8th Annual A+Awards. The A+Awards is held by the integrity and wherewithal of these individuals, so it’s only right that we share their stories with you.
Aric Chen
Aric Chen is a design and architecture curator and writer based in Shanghai, where he is Professor of Practice at the College of Design & Innovation at Tongji University. In addition, Chen currently serves as Curatorial Director for the Design Miami/ and Design Miami/Basel fairs and as Curator-at-Large for M+, the new museum for visual culture under construction in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. From 2012 to 2018, he was that institution’s first Lead Curator for Design and Architecture.
Annalie Riches
Annalie Riches is one of the founding directors of the recent Stirling Prize-winning practice, Mikhail Riches. She established Mikhail Riches Architects to improve the quality of housing and neighborhoods in the UK. Her focus is on the delivery of projects that change the perceptions of the places they touch, making enjoyable new places, as well as great homes.
Annalie contributes across all the scales of architectural practice; she is recognized for her master planning and strategic abilities, as well as her in-depth knowledge of housing. Annalie is also well known for her ‘hands on’ expertise in architectural design and detailing. Her projects include VeloCity, the winning entry in the 2018 Infrastructure Commission Competition, which centered on a re-imagining of the village for the 21st Century.
Annalie studied architecture at Sheffield, after which she joined the circus on the static trapeze. Two years in Paris saw her working for celebrated engineer Peter Rice. Annalie went ‘on the tools’, building her own house, Whatcotts Yard in 2002 — she did all the electrics and plumbing herself, knowing these trades are the most expensive. The project subsequently won the 2004 RIBA / AJ first Building award.
Natsai Audrey Chieza
Natsai Audrey Chieza is Founder and Director of Faber Futures, an award-winning multidisciplinary design agency operating at the intersection of nature, technology, and society. The London-based studio empowers industry and institutions with innovative design solutions and R&D for an impactful transition towards sustainable futures.
A background in Architectural Design and Material Futures, Chieza pioneered the design-driven application of microbial pigment dyes for textiles and has been awarded the Index Award 2019 for the chemical-free, water-saving biofabrication system she developed. In her 2017 TED Talk, Chieza demonstrates how emerging biotechnologies converge with craft and interact with the contemporary realities of resource scarcity, climate change, and sustainable development.
With a highly influential practice in the contemporary design for ecology movement, Chieza has exhibited at prestigious institutions including at the Cooper Hewitt (US), Pompidou Centre (FR), Vitra Design Museum (DE), The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, The Victoria & Albert Museum (UK) and Science Gallery Dublin (IE). An international speaker on emergent futures, Chieza is named on OkayAfrica’s “100 Women 2018” for her work in STEM, ICON Magazine’s 2019 “ICON Design 100” list and It’s Nice That’s “Ones to Watch 2019”.
Christian Benimana
A+Awards juror Christian Benimana joined MASS Design Group as a Global Health Corps Design Fellow in 2010. Today, he works as one of the firm’s Senior Principals and Managing Directors, and is Director of the African Design Centre, a field-based apprenticeship that is set to empower leaders who will design a more equitable, just, and sustainable world. At MASS, Christian has been involved with design/build projects, development initiatives, and operational and administration leadership. He has taught at the Architecture School of the former Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and currently serves as the Secretary General of the East Africa Institute of Architects.
Prior to joining MASS, Christian worked with LongiLat Architecture and Research in Shanghai assisting with the Porsche Center in Shanghai and the Netherlands Pavilion in the 2010 International Expo. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) of Tongji University in Shanghai, China and his goal is to develop the next generation of African designers with socially focused design principles.
Julian Weyer
Julian Weyer was born in Berlin, and has lived in Denmark since 1975, where he finished his studies at the Aarhus School of Architecture in 1994. Since then, he has lectured at the School of Architecture, and worked professionally as an architect, before becoming a partner of C.F. Møller Architects in 2007. Julian Weyer has extensive experience in the field of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, including numerous competition wins and award-winning designs. He is working on projects in Denmark, Germany and the UK as well as worldwide.
He is also a frequent lecturer worldwide, and author of articles and book publications. Awards include the Civic Trust Award, RIBA International Award, Aarhus Municipality Architecture Award, Residential of the Year WAN AWARD, Worldwide Brick Award and the Danish Academy Council prize. He is working on projects in Denmark, Germany, the UK and beyond.
Sydney Mainster
A+Awards juror Sydney Mainster serves as the Director of Sustainability for The Durst Organization, a 100-year-old family-run real estate company based in New York City. She brings over 13 years of professional and academic architecture, design and construction experience to her role. Her current passion is defining strategies to transform the building product industry and resulting material waste streams. Prior to joining the Durst Organization in early 2014, she served as Adjunct Faculty and Director of the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture Materials Resource Center.
She moved to Austin, TX after earning a Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2010, and after spending the summer teaching design as an Architecture Studio Instructor for the GSD’s Career Discovery program. Between her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley, a BA in Architecture and Minor in Structural Engineering, and graduate school, as well as post-GSD, she worked at a variety of construction industry-related jobs in Los Angeles, Berkeley, Boston, New York City, London and Austin. She has professional experience working in architecture, structural engineering, construction, academia, and experience as a Green Building Consultant to Texas and New York developers.
Liam Young
Liam Young is a speculative architect and director who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. He is cofounder of Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, an urban futures think tank, exploring the local and global implications of new technologies and Unknown Fields, a nomadic research studio that travels on expeditions to chronicle these emerging conditions as they occur on the ground. His world building for the film and television industries has been acclaimed in both mainstream and architectural media, including the BBC, NBC, Wired, Guardian, Time Magazine and New Scientist. He is a BAFTA nominated producer and his work has been collected by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum and MAAS in Sydney.
He has published several books including the recent Machine Landscapes: Architectures of the Post Anthropocene and has taught internationally at the Architectural Association, Princeton University and now runs the groundbreaking Masters in Fiction and Entertainment at Sci Arc in Los Angeles. Liam’s narrative approach sits between documentary and fiction as he focuses on projects that aim to reveal the invisible connections and systems that make the modern world work. Liam now manages his time between exploring distant landscapes and visualizing the future worlds he extrapolates from them.
Amanda Levete
Amanda Levete CBE is a Stirling Prize-winning architect and founder and principal of AL_A, an international award-winning design and architecture studio. Recently completed projects include the Victoria & Albert Museum Exhibition Road Quarter (2017) in London; MAAT (2016) a Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, commissioned by EDP; Central Embassy (2017), a 1.5 million-square-foot luxury shopping mall and hotel in Bangkok; a media campus and headquarters building for Sky (2016) in London.
Ongoing commissions include the transformation of the flagship, Galleries Lafayette Haussmann, department store in Paris; a new centre for the cancer care charity Maggie’s in Southampton; two new buildings for Wadham College at the University of Oxford; the renovation and expansion of Paisley Museum in Scotland; and the Monte St Angelo subway station in Naples. She is a regular radio and TV broadcaster, writes for a number of publications and lectures throughout the world. In 2017 Levete was recognized in the Queen’s Birthday honors list and made a CBE for services to architecture. In 2018 she was awarded the Jane Drew Prize and in 2019 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
Shogo Kawata
A+Awards juror Shogo Kawata is a representative of teamLab Architects, an architectural group that explores new architecture and space. teamLab crosses architectural boundaries to create cities for a new era through digital technology, art, nature, people and biology.
Kimberly Dowdell
A+ Awards juror Kimberly Dowdell collaborates with other members of the leadership team in HOK’s Chicago studio to develop and implement strategic business development and marketing initiatives. In addition to cultivating and maintaining relationships with clients and partners, she is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events and a mentor to HOK’s emerging leaders. Kimberly is the 2019-2020 National President of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA).
She initiated the concept behind Social Economic Environmental Design (SEED), an organization that she co founded in 2005. She was a 2018 Crain’s Detroit Business “40 Under 40” honoree. In 2019, Kimberly delivered the 19th Annual Dunlop Lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She earned her B’Arch from Cornell University and her Mid-Career MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as a Sheila C. Johnson Leadership Fellow.
Dong-Ping Wong
Dong-Ping Wong is the Founding Director of Food New York, a design firm based in New York City. The studio focuses on designing environments, from ground-up structures to renovations to landscapes, all with the intent of transforming how people relate to the context, culture and resources around them. Ongoing projects include the 19,000sf New York headquarters for a Hong Kong based media company, a garden in the Cayman Islands, and + POOL, the world’s first floating, water-filtering pool.
Before starting Food in 2018, Dong was a founding partner of Family New York with Oana Stanescu, which led the designs of contemporary art museums in Mänttä, Finland and Maribor, Slovenia, stand-alone stores for Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh in New York, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong, the stage design for Kanye West’s Yeezus Tour, and residential projects for Kanye West and Kim Kardashian West in Paris and Los Angeles.
Dong’s work has been featured in publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, PIN-UP Magazine, Fast Company, Complex and Wired and has been awarded the Diamond Award for Engineering Excellence, the New York Design Award for Best Young Practice and was nominated for the INDEX Awards in Copenhagen.
Evan Loomis
A+Awards juror Evan Loomis has been a successful entrepreneur for more than 15 years and most recently co-founded the Austin-based startup, ICON, the construction technologies company leading the way into the future of human shelter and homebuilding using 3D printing and other scientific and technological breakthroughs. In 2018, ICON delivered the first 3D-printed home to receive a building permit in the U.S. and closed a seed round of $9 million that included investments from Silicon Valley heavyweights, a renowned international developer and America’s largest homebuilder among others.
Evan began his career as an investment banker on Wall Street. From there, he co-founded Wedgwood Circle, an angel investment group with a focus on the media and entertainment sectors. In 2010, he co-founded TreeHouse, the eco-friendly Home Upgrade Company disrupting the field of home improvement
In 2017, Evan launched a holding company called Saturn Five with the mission of building companies that matter. Unlike traditional VC firms, Saturn Five designs and launches companies from scratch, working hands-on in the early stages to launch and scale companies. Evan is a start-up mentor at Techstars Austin, SKU and Praxis. He is the co-author of Get Backed from Harvard Business Press (2015) and Elon Musk: This Book Is About Rockets! (2017).
David de Rothschild
Bringing his expertise as an environmentalist and explorer to the A+Awards, David de Rothschild is one of the leaders of a new generation of change-makers focussed on reigniting collective hope in the future of the planet.
Since 2006, David has used exploration, adventure and storytelling to “give Nature a voice.” In 2010, he designed and constructed Plastiki, a fully recyclable catamaran made buoyant by 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles. He sailed it 8,000 miles, from San Francisco to Sydney via the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, to alert the world to the devastating effects of single use plastics. And in November 2011, he and another crew travelled into the heart of Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest to draw attention to the effect that the controversial Belo Monte Dam project was having on local communities.
In 2015 he founded his latest initiative, the Lost Explorer, a sustainable lifestyle company that aims to set an industry blueprint for fashion and wellness manufactured in true partnership with Nature, giving 100% of profits back to Nature.
David has been recognized as a climate ambassador by UNEP, National Geographic, Clean up the World, the World Economic Forum and the Clinton Global Initiative. He has also published books, produced a Sundance Channel TV series, and a National Geographic documentary. Most recently, David has been named an Ambassador for DEFRA’s 25 year Environmental Plan and Year of Green Action and the World Surf League.
Amanda Ferber
Amanda Ferber is the young architect who founded Architecture Hunter, one of the largest architectural Instagram pages in the world, with over 2 million followers. She has already worked with Marcio Kogan, one of the greatest Brazilian architects and also with renowned digital platforms. She is the ambassador of Morpholio, the Sketching app for Architects and designers and also one of the partners of Arquiforma, a Brazilian platform for students.
We can’t wait to see which projects you enter for consideration by our expert jury. Submit your works for the 8th Annual A+Awards before February 14th to secure your Early Entry Discount. Good luck from the whole team at Architizer!
The post Creative Minds: 14 Influential Thought Leaders Join the A+Awards Jury appeared first on Journal.
Read more: architizer.com