Today, the Architectural League of New York revealed the winners of its annual Emerging Voices competition, recognizing eight North American firms for their contributions to architecture, landscape design, and urbanism. "The works of this year’s Emerging Voices winners exhibit architecture’s ability to work across the various scales of the built environment in the production of community, sociality, space, and discourse," said the league's president Mario Gooden in a press release.
The 2023 honorees are Janette Kim, of Oakland, Calif.–based All of the Above and Urban Works Agency; Asa Highsmith, AIA, from Common Works Architects in Oklahoma City; Tom Carruthers, AIA, and Jennifer Newsom, AIA, of Minneapolis- and Ithaca, N.Y.–based Dream The Combine; Katherine Hogan, AIA, and Vincent Petrarca, AIA, from Katherine Hogan Architects in Raleigh, N.C.; Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, of Mexico City's LANZA Atelier; Nahyun Hwang and David Eugin Moon, AIA, from N H D M Architects in New York; Adriana Chávez, Victor Rico, and Elena Tudela, of Mexico City– and New York–based ORU - Oficina de Resiliencia Urbana; and David Godshall, Jenny Jones, Alain Peauroi, and Story Wiggins, from Los Angeles and San Francisco's Terremoto. In March, winners will present their work in a virtual lecture series, which will be open to the public.
This year's Emerging Voices class was selected by a nine-person jury, which reviewed submissions from some 50 competitors. Jurors included Marie Law Adams, AIA; Fernanda Canales; Stephanie Davidson; Mario Gooden; Zach Mortice; Marc Neveu, Assoc. AIA; Rashida Ng; Chelina Odbert; and Nader Tehrani.
Janette Kim
All of the Above and Urban Works Agency
From the League: Janette Kim is an architectural designer, researcher, and educator based in the San Francisco Bay area. Kim’s practice operates in three modes: as principal of the design firm All of the Above, as co-director of the research laboratory Urban Works Agency at the California College of the Arts, and as an independent scholar and author. Across these roles, she promotes equitable design protocols and creates multimedia decision-making tools to help translate between architecture and its stakeholders. In her own words, Kim aims to “empower communities to realize a more equitable redistribution of land, resources, and risk.”
Asa Highsmith
Common Works Architects
From the League: Asa Highsmith founded Common Works Architects in Oklahoma City in 2015. The architecture and design firm operates almost exclusively within its local context, designing with and against Oklahoma City’s often-elusive vernacular. Through its familiar material palette and accessible architectural language, Common Works is dedicated to “democratizing design and elevating that which is common,” in Highsmith’s words. The firm’s projects range in program and scale, from residences to restaurants to public spaces, but share a refined simplicity and compositional restraint.
Tom Carruthers and Jennifer Newsom
Dream The Combine
From the League: Tom Carruthers and Jennifer Newsom founded Dream The Combine in Minneapolis in 2013. Working at the intersection of art and architecture, the practice designs site-specific installations in public space. Carruthers’ and Newsom’s large-scale installations use industrial materials like steel, glass, and construction textiles to form, in their words, “perceptual frameworks for vision and movement that complicate the relationship between body, space, and image.” Located in galleries, downtown streets, and public parks, these installations aim to spur chance encounters and embrace shifting interpretations.
Katherine Hogan and Vincent Petrarca
Katherine Hogan Architects
From the League: Katherine Hogan and Vincent Petrarca are the principals and owners of Katherine Hogan Architects, an architecture practice based in Raleigh, N.C. When the firm was first founded in 2003 (under the name of Tonic Design | Tonic Construction), its work focused on small design–build commercial and residential projects. As it has grown, its portfolio has broadened to include projects for public schools, universities, state parks, and nonprofits. Often the product of modest but impactful interventions, the practice’s designs reflect the principals’ “unyielding explorations into assembly, tectonic craft, and resourcefulness,” in the words of the firm.
Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo
LANZA Atelier
From the League: Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo founded LANZA Atelier in Mexico City in 2015. Initially oriented toward exhibition design, the practice’s portfolio has since expanded to include private residential and commercial projects, along with several public commissions. Ranging from research and teaching to furniture design to buildings, LANZA’s work expresses an inventiveness, a sensitivity to context, and a compositional refinement that spans scales and forms. In the words of its founders, the practice aims “to find and contribute to the beauty of the world.”
Nahyun Hwang by David Eugin Moon
N H D M Architects
From the League: Nahyun Hwang and David Eugin Moon founded N H D M Architects in New York City in 2010. Operating at the intersection of architecture and urbanism, the collaborative design and research practice “aims to explore some of the most critical inquiries of our times through the rigorous investigation of, and provocative propositions in, the built environment,” in its own words. Through built work and speculative research, the practice explores a wide range of topics, including immigrant and migrant spaces, emerging residential typologies, environmental justice, and adaptive reuse and reprogramming.
Adriana Chávez, Victor Rico, and Elena Tudela
ORU - Oficina de Resiliencia Urbana
From the League: Adriana Chávez, Victor Rico, and Elena Tudela founded ORU - Oficina de Resiliencia Urbana in Mexico City in 2018. Working across the academic, public, and private sectors, the practice advocates for “scaled-up architectural thinking to foster new futures of interconnected urban regions, strengthened ecological structures, and resilient human and non-human communities,” in its own words. With a profound sensitivity to each project’s environmental and social context, ORU produces a broad spectrum of work, from regional analyses and strategic plans to landscapes, buildings, and exhibitions.
David Godshall, Jenny Jones, Alain Peauroi, and Story Wiggins
Terremoto
From the League: David Godshall and Alain Peauroi founded the landscape architecture design studio Terremoto in 2013. Three years later, they were joined by partners Jenny Jones and Story Wiggins. With offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the TERREMOTO team creates, in its own words, “well-built, site-specific landscapes that respond to client needs while simultaneously challenging historical and contemporary landscape construction methods, materials, and formal conventions.” Ranging from residential gardens to public parks, the practice’s work reflects a playful, sensitive, and selfcritical approach to landscape design.
