Meet the AIANY 2026 Design Awards Jury

The winners of any awards program reflect the values and ethos of the jury evaluating the entries, which is part of why AIA New York places such gravity on its jury invitations for the annual AIANY Design Awards program. For the 2026 awards, we welcome seven architects and educators from around the world who will deliberate January 12 during an in-person jury session at the Center for Architecture.

The Design Awards recognize outstanding architectural design in New York and around the world. Members, architectural professionals, and designers across the industry are encouraged to apply, and we welcome small- to large-scale and low- to high-budget projects. The program awards projects that exemplify design excellence, demonstrating exceptional skill and creativity in the resolution of formal, functional, and technical requirements. Projects should consider the impacts of built design, addressing issues including ecological stewardship and social responsibility.

As we solicit entries through November 21, 2025, we are honored to introduce the seven jurors who are participating in this year's program.

Adam Ainslie, Assoc. AIA, Architectural Designer, bld.us, Lecturer, University of Maryland

Adam Ainslie is an architectural designer working in Washington, DC. Working as an Associate with BLDUS, the office explores natural material assemblies that create a healthy domestic architecture fit for the MidAtlantic climate. Using local, readily available products and prefabricated components to make market-friendly houses, BLDUS thoroughly engages with the realities of the built environment in part to test the viability of a natural, rapidly renewable construction cuisine: an architecture that connects past with future, modernity with tradition, and humanity with the natural world. Their work has been exhibited at the National Building Museum, the Southern Utah Museum of Art (SUMA), and the University of Virginia, and published in Metropolis, Dwell, and Architectural Record. Speculative work also engages and supports teaching at a number of local architectural schools, where he has taught studios and seminars since 2021. Previous work includes design, exhibitions, and writing code (software) with MOS Architects (2018); research with LTL Architects for the Manual of Biogenic House Sections (2021); and construction management with Ditto Residential in D.C. Ainslie received a BA in Architecture with a Certificate in Environmental Studies from Princeton in 2017, and a Masters in Architecture in 2020.

Maarten Gielen, Director, Halfwerk

Maarten Gielen is a Belgian designer and researcher whose work explores how material reuse can reshape the culture and economics of architecture and construction. He is the founder of Halfwerk, a Brussels-based studio developing new methods and supply chains for the high-quality reuse of building materials-currently focusing on metal sheet systems and industrial components. Before establishing Halfwerk, Gielen co-founded Rotor (2005) and later Rotor Deconstruction (2014), two influential companies that helped redefine the architectural conversation around waste, value, and circularity. Rotor's work bridged research, curation, and practice-spanning major exhibitions such as Usus/Usures (Venice Biennale 2010), Behind the Green Door (Oslo Triennale 2013), and OMA/Progress (Barbican Centre, London)-while Rotor DC demonstrated that large-scale building deconstruction and material resale could be both technically and economically viable. Gielen's approach combines hands-on experimentation with policy and design research. His projects often question conventional ideas of aesthetics, durability, and authorship, showing how reuse can become a creative and systematic part of contemporary building culture. He has lectured widely at architecture and design schools across Europe, North America, and Asia, and his writings and projects have been featured in numerous international publications. In recognition of his contributions, he received the Maaskant Prize for Young Architects, one of the Benelux region's most prestigious awards. Today, through Halfwerk, Gielen continues to advance practical and infrastructural pathways for circular construction-turning material reuse from an ethical ambition into an industrial reality.

Brie Hensold, HASLA, Principal and Urban Planner, Agency Landscape + Planning

Brie Hensold is an urban planner, co-founder and principal of Agency Landscape + Planning. With a commitment to understanding places through each community's perspective, Brie brings a systems-based approach that integrates multiple disciplines and celebrates diverse ideas. Community-engaged planning and design is foundational to her practice, which ranges from strategic visions to neighborhood plans and from citywide park systems to resilience strategies. Her work has received awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects. Brie is a Design Critic in Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Susan Jones, FAIA, Principal Architect, atelierjones

Susan Jones is the founder of atelierjones, a Seattle-based architecture firm devoted to the vision that design can help shape local communities and promote sustainable changes in the building industry at large. For the past 20 years, atelierjones has worked across multiple scales, from large-scale urban housing to tactical reuse projects, hands-on forest research, and regulatory advocacy. The firm's work has been recognized by numerous national, regional, and local design awards and has been published internationally. For the past decade, the firm has been committed to the advancement of mass timber as a more sustainable and functional alternative to traditional, carbon-intensive construction methods. atelierjones completed four of the first contemporary mass timber projects permitted in the United States, and continues to build on that experience through design, research, and advocacy. In 2016, Jones represented over 90,000 architects on behalf of the American Institute of Architects, successfully changing the International Building Code to allow tall mass timber buildings up to 18 stories in the US. She has published two books on her firm's extensive body of work with Mass Timber, Mass Timber | Design and Research in 2018, and Light on Wood in 2025. A third-generation Pacific Northwesterner, Jones has been working for architects since she was sixteen years old. She has taught at the University of Washington since 1991, been a visiting design critic at numerous national universities. A licensed architect in multiple states, she was elected to the AIA College of Fellows in 2010 and in 2024 received the AIA Seattle Gold Medal for lifetime achievement.

Jeff Kamuda, AIA, Senior Architect, Birdseye

Jeff Kamuda is a Senior Architect at Birdseye, a Vermont-based architecture studio and custom-building company specializing in custom homes and supported by a wide range of in-house craftspeople. A licensed architect and AIA member, he focuses on residential projects from concept through construction. Kamuda began his professional journey in high school at Bread Loaf Corporation in Middlebury, followed by internships at Munly Brown Studio in Syracuse and Audrey Matlock in New York City. During college, he participated in the Clinton Global Initiative University and volunteered annually at CGI and Clinton Foundation meetings and events. After graduating from Syracuse University in 2011, he joined SHoP Architects in New York, where he contributed to a wide range of work, including supertall towers, stadiums, master plans, retail spaces, and U.S. diplomatic facilities. He also played a key role in the development of the National Veterans Resource Center at his alma mater. A native Vermonter, Kamuda returned to his home state with his high school sweetheart in 2017 to start their family. Since then, his work at Birdseye has been rooted in creating architecture that resonates with its landscape and users-spaces that serve their purpose with clarity and have the potential to quietly inspire through thoughtful construction and craft. Practicing in Vermont is especially meaningful, as it allows him to contribute to the landscape and community that shaped him. Outside of work, he spends much of his time biking, hiking, and skiing in the Green Mountains-often with his wife and two young daughters in tow.

Christiana Moss, FAIA, Principal, STUDIO MA

Christiana Moss, FAIA, is an ecologically focused, climate-driven architect working at the intersection of the natural and built environment in her beloved desert home of Phoenix, Arizona. Her firm, Studio Ma, has been nationally and internationally recognized for its sensitive, tech-adaptive, and regeneratively inspired approach to complex projects, including embassies, campuses, nearly net zero offices, and museums. Her uniquely innovative approach sees all architecture as fundamentally part of a larger ecological system, and her work frames sustainability through the lenses of water, heat, history, and human experience. Significant projects include a student life master plan for the University of California, Berkeley; a New Embassy Compound in Praia, Cabo Verde; a regenerative research facility for Arizona State University; Scottsdale's storied Museum of the West; and multiple campus projects around the United States. From her earliest projects working with Phoenix's four-thousand-year-old water canals to her most recent work, which uses state-of-the-art technology mixed with ancient architectural principles to reduce heat and increase environmental regeneration, Moss has sought to design the built environment to bring balance, equity, and joy to the world.

Kia Weatherspoon, NCIDQ, ASID, President, Determined by Design

As the design voice of impact and change, Kia Weatherspoon, NCIDQ, ASID, has spent the last 15 years defying every design stereotype. The most damaging: interior design is a luxury reserved for a few. Her voice, advocacy for Design Equity™, and design practice have shifted the narrative, making interior design a standard for all. Kia is challenging the lack of these standards in economically challenged communities. Her presence and leadership have created ripples, prompting housing developers, agencies, and industry partners to not just take notice of her work-but to do better. As an advocate and educator in business leadership, equity, and diversity, Weatherspoon has been recognized by Interior Design Magazine as a HiP Design for the Greater Good - Small Firm and selected as a GlobeSt.com Real Estate Forum 2020 Woman of Influence. She was honored as part of the 40 under 40 classes for both Washington Business Journal and BD+C Magazine. She also received the International Interior Design Association Luna Textile/ Anna Hernandez Visionary Award and the CREW DC Raise Up Your Voice Award. For over a decade, Weatherspoon has led her firm, Determined by Design, in creating elevated equitable design outcomes for over 3,500 hundred families, 25 communities, and designed over 165,000 sq.ft of interior spaces for affordable and low-income housing. Communities where the average median income was below $35,000/year per family. Communities that mirrored her, with 95% of the residents being black and/or of color. Weatherspoon believes Interior Design should be in service to all people, so every person and community is uplifted by the spaces they inhabit. No matter the project type, her focus is elevating communities-a path that requires advocacy and empathy!