Design Excellence

Three alums will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award at CED’s 2025 Commencement ceremony on May 20 at the Greek Theatre. This year’s awardees are John Cary (MArch 2003), Lee Ehmke (MLA 1988), Sujata Srivastava (MCP 2000). The award honors alums who have exhibited outstanding public service, in its broadest sense, throughout their career.

Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, founders of Emerging Objects, were honored with a National Design Award in the category of digital design. The awards honor innovation and impact and recognize the power of design to change the world.

Metropolis has named Kyra Johnston (MArch 2025) to the Future100 class of 2025. Each year, a jury of experts designates the top graduating architecture and interior design students in the U.S. and Canada, nominated by their instructors and mentors.

A team of students from landscape architecture and urban design earned an honorable mention for their project Regenesis Haven in the 2025 ULI Hines Competition.

designboom explores Professor Ron Rael’s Adobe Oasis created for Desert X in California’s Coachella Valley: “Layered in rhythmic ribbons of red adobe, the walls mimic the texture of the surrounding palm trunks, anchoring the work in both its landscape and architectural heritage aligned with the 2025 exhibition’s call for interventions that reimagine the desert as a site of memory, transformation, and resistance.”

“Their bold, simple forms define an architecture that supports life’s unfolding, inside and out,” writes The Architect’s Newspaper about Sidell Pakravan Architects, Continuing Lecturer in Architecture Rudabeh Pakravan’s practice with Kristen Sidell.

Associate Professor of Architecture Andrew Atwood designed the addition to blend in with other houses in the Los Angeles neighborhood, he tells The Architect’s Newspaper.

Department of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning Chair Walter J. Hood (MArch + MLA 1989) has been named the 2025 recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture, the University of Virginia’s highest external honor in the field. Previous recipients include Mies Van Der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Jose Luis Sert, I.M. Pei, Lawrence Halprin, Fumihiko Maki, Frank O. Gehry, Tod Williams & Billie Tsien, Zaha Hadid, Maya Lin, Rafael Moneo, Laurie Olin, Diébédo Francis Kéré, and Kate Orff.

A duplex in Providence, Rhode Island, shows off Ultramoderne’s take on “cheapskate” architecture, using discarded materials from local construction projects. “Innovative architecture is still possible in today’s economic climate—it just requires a new approach.”

Complex, a project in Atherton by lecturer Dan Spiegel’s practice Spiegel Aihara Workshop, named house of the month by Architectural Record. “Surprising details everywhere are the real joy of the project,” writes Clare Jacobson, who deems Complex “simply successful.”

Hempo Longhouse, Associate Professor Neyran Turan’s research and design project on hempcrete construction, has been awarded first prize in the Unbuilt-Residential Single-Unit category of The Architect’s Newspaper’s 2024 Best of Design Awards. The project was made possible with funding from a 2023 CED Lau Grant for Just Climate Futures.

IwamotoScott Architecture’s Moravec Hall at Ivy Tech Community College has been selected as an Editor’s Pick in the AN 2024 Best of Design Awards.

The National Building Museum selected LAEP Chair Walter Hood for the prestigious prize, noting that his “illustrious career embodies the affirmative spirit of Vincent Scully’s perspective; that of melding art, history, landscape, and urbanism.”

Architectural Record honored Associate Professor Neyran Turan’s office, NEMESTUDIO, with a Design Vanguard 2024 award. Turan, who joined the Department of Architecture faculty in 2016, is currently serving as chair of its MArch program.

Grace Diebel and Shayda Rashidi won the top prize in a contest aimed at generating innovative and cost-effective landscaping ideas that enhance wildfire defense while maintaining aesthetic appeal.

We’re proud to announce that Patricia Algara (MLA 2007), Michael D. Murphy (MLA 1968), Patsy Eubanks Owens (MLA 1987), Dale Schafer (MLA 1991), and Judith Stilgenbauer (MLA 1998) have been elected to the 2024 class of fellows of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

In an interview published in Arch Daily, Professor Ronald Rael shares his views on the potential of AI, material culture, the role of the architect in society, architectural education, sustainability, and more.

Metropolis has named Jack Tam (MArch 2024) to the Future100 class of 2024. A jury of design experts extends this exclusive designation annually to the top 100 graduating architecture and interior design students in the United States and Canada.

Architectural Record features the Kauhikoa Core House by Spiegel Aihara Workshop, the first built prototype of a low-cost, compact, easily shippable, prefabricated house that can be deployed for rapid rebuilding after disasters like the 2023 Maui fires.

The Architect’s Newspaper profiles new Ivy Tech campus building in Columbus, Indiana, designed by IwamotoScott (Chair of Architecture Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott, founding partners).