Vol. 17, Issue 04 2019
Celebrating the 2021 Young Architect Award and Associate Award winners Each year the AIA elevates emerging professionals for their individual achievements within the profession, the institute, and their communities. The two awards include the AIA Young Architects Award and the AIA Associates Award. AIA Young Architects Award Emerging Talent deserves recognition. The AIA Young Architect Award honors individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the architecture profession early in their careers. AIA members who are in good standing and have been licensed to practice architecture for fewer than 10 years. The AIA Associates Award is given to individual Associate AIA members to recognize outstanding leaders and creative thinkers for significant contributions to their communities and the architecture profession. We asked the 2021 award winners a few questions about their contributions, mission, and the award impact. Check out what these leaders had to share!
What do you feel is your most impactful contribution within the architectural profession thus far and why?
Mark Bacon AIA
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I’m passionate about teaching and mentoring the next generation of architects. In 2014, I co-founded the ongoing SGH/Dri-Design student competition at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Architecture. The two-stage competition invites students to present their thesis projects to a jury of nationally recognized architects. This experience exposes students to a diverse range of practitioners and their work. It provides them a valuable glimpse into firms from across the country. The College also receives recognition for the student’s work and the awards that their projects garner. Currently, in its seventh year, the competition has awarded more than $70,000 in scholarships and has made a lasting impact on the direction that the participating students take after school.
Jack Becker NCARB, AIA
Designing, developing, and building the LEED Platinum-certified Grass House: the first code-compliant bamboo structure on the East Coast. This small carriage house in the Historic Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, DC embodies our aspirations for the profession and our practice, bld.us, towards renewable, organic, healthy architecture. The Grass House stands in the midst of a community that is learning about architecture and development in order to advocate for a better future for itself. The Grass House invites people to understand where a building’s materials originate, how they get to the site, are processed, and might be recycled when the building is ultimately dismantled. Acting as the architect-developer allowed for a testbed of plant-based, small-scale solutions which have since migrated to larger multi-family projects with greater economies of scale.
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