Annual Award Program
Open | Closes August 1
Architectural Excellence Design Awards
Call for Submissions
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Meet the Jurors





Singer Hall, Swarthmore College | Swarthmore, PA
Ballinger | 2023 Design Award, Silver Medal | Image credit: James Ewing
Download the call for submissions for complete details on eligibility and to preview submission requirements.
Annabelle Selldorf is the Principal of Selldorf Architects, a 65-person architectural design practice she founded in New York City in 1988. The firm creates public and private spaces that manifest a clear and modern sensibility with enduring impact. At every scale and for every condition, Selldorf Architects designs for the individual experience. As a result, its work is brought to life—and made complete—by those who use it.
The firm has particular expertise in the complex requirements of cultural projects, having completed numerous museums, galleries, exhibition spaces, study centers and artists’ studios. Cultural clients include The Frick Collection, National Gallery London, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Art Gallery of Ontario, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection, and Neue Galerie New York. Recent commissions also include the renovations of the Wallace Collection in London and the Musée Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, the Clark Art Institute’s new Aso O. Tavitian Wing, and a new winery for Château Haut Brion in Bordeaux.
Alongside cultural clients the firm works on major public and civic projects including Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility on the Brooklyn waterfront and two wastewater management buildings for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection on the Gowanus Canal. Residential architecture, both at the scale of private homes and multi-family dwellings, has also been a foundational part of the firm’s portfolio. This includes One Domino Square, Selldorf Architects’ first residential skyscraper, which spans 700,000 square feet across two towers connected by a podium.
Born and raised in Cologne, Germany, Selldorf received a Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute and a Master of Architecture from Syracuse University. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and serves on the Board the Chinati Foundation, the Architectural League of New York, the World Monuments Fund, and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Selldorf is a frequent lecturer and juror and has taught at Harvard and Syracuse University. In 2016, she received the AIA New York Medal of Honor in 2016. In 2025 Selldorf was named one of TIME 100 most influential people and received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute.
As a Founding Partner of MBB Architects, Mary Burnham brings decades of recognized excellence and expertise in the design of cultural, educational, and residential projects.
She has led transformative design projects for St. Hilda’s and St. Hugh’s School, Park Avenue Synagogue, the Bayard Cutting Arboretum, and many other institutions. Her understanding of the cultural impact of design has fueled her firm’s work with New York University’s Abu Dhabi Institute, Princeton University Art Museum, Williams College, the Latse Contemporary Tibetan Library, and the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Centering the needs of diverse clients and communities, her award-winning work often comprises strategic interventions in urban and campus settings. Her discerning command of light, space, materials, and color enable her to layer architecture with landscape and interiors.
A native New Yorker, Burnham is a graduate of the Yale University School of Architecture and the University of Pennsylvania. She serves on the Board of the Architectural League of New York, the Board of the American Academy in Rome, and the Dean’s Council of the Yale School of Architecture. She is the founding Board Chair for Lighthouse Works, a not-for-profit arts organization. In 2018 she was elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects.
Susan T. Rodriguez designs at the intersection of architecture and the public realm to create buildings and spaces that distill the essence of cultures and communities. Her award-winning work is recognized internationally for its contribution to the vitality of cities and landscapes and the institutions they serve. She founded Susan T Rodriguez | Architecture · Design in 2017, combining more than thirty years of design leadership with a passionate belief in the power of architecture to affect change and improve the quality of life for all. She is a recipient of the Women in Architecture Design Leader Award from Architectural Record recognizing the breadth and impact of her built work over the last three decades through the excellence in the design of buildings for the arts, culture, education and civic institutions. Prior to creating her own firm, she was a founding Partner and Design Principal in Ennead Architects (formerly Polshek Partnership).
Some of her current projects include the Lycée Français de New York, the Davis Center for Human Ecology at College of the Atlantic, Lodging for the cast and crew of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, a new Collections Center for the Bard Graduate Center and the recently completed Davis Center at the Harlem Meer in Central Park.
As an extension of her professional work, Ms. Rodriguez actively promotes the importance of design in the public realm as a long-time board member of the Architectural League of New York. She lectures frequently on her work and has taught numerous design studios at Cornell, Columbia and City College. Ms. Rodriguez received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, where she serves as the co-chair of the Dean’s Advisory Council and is a former trustee of the University. She received a master’s degree in architecture from Columbia University and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
Brigitte Shim is a principal of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects. Along with her partner, A. Howard Sutcliffe their design practice explores the integration and interrelated scales of architecture, landscape, furniture and fittings. Shim-Sutcliffe have realized built work in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia focusing on place-making.
To date, Shim and Sutcliffe have received sixteen Governor General’s Medals for Architecture from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) along with an AIA National Honor Award. In 2021, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada awarded Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe, the RAIC Gold Medal for their “tireless commitment to advocacy, teaching and mentoring along with their commitment to craft, tectonics, site and ecology in their built work and its lasting impact on Canadian architecture.” Professor Brigitte Shim is a faculty member at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto.
Brigitte Shim was the 2022, Norman Foster Visiting Professor at Yale University’s School of Architecture and has been a visiting chair and lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), The Cooper Union’s Chanin School of Architecture, The University of Auckland, and others. She has served on numerous international, national and local design juries as an unwavering advocate for design excellence. Brigitte Shim is an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Fellow Royal Society of Canada, Member of Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts.
AIA
Billie Tsien, AIA, is an architect and a founding partner with Tod Williams of the New York City-based studio Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners. The firm’s work is committed to reflecting the values of non-profit, cultural, and academic institutions through an architecture that is serene and enduring. Prominent examples include academic building projects at Princeton University, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, Bennington College, and the University of California, Berkeley. Some of their public and institutional projects include the Phoenix Art Museum, the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, and the Lefrak Center at Lakeside in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. They have long collaborated with artists as part of their practice, recently as the exhibit designers for “Martin Puryear: Liberty/Libertà” representing the U.S. Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. The firm’s current work includes the renovation of the David Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, the U.S. Embassy Complex in Mexico City, and the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Tsien holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Yale University and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is currently the Charles Gwathmey Professor in Practice at Yale University and contributes to a range of cultural institutions such as the Architectural League of New York, the National Academy of Design, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy in Rome and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where she serves as president. Her work has been recognized with the Thomas Jefferson Medal Award in Architecture and the Architecture Firm Award of the American Institute of Architects, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, and the National Medal of Arts. Tsien is steadfast in her mission to create a better world through architecture and to contribute to supporting a broader and more diverse cultural landscape.