AIA New York Announces Honors and Awards Recipients Ahead of 2026 Luncheon

The American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (AIANY) will confer its highest annual awards and recognize the winners of the AIANY Design Awards 2026 at the Honors and Awards Luncheon at Cipriani Wall Street, 55 Wall Street, on Friday, April 24, 2026.

Every year, AIANY honors architects, philanthropists, public servants, and organizations that are committed to improving communities through design excellence. The Chapter's annual Honors and Design Awards reinforce AIANY's central principle: design matters. In 2026, the chapter will honor Alloy with the Medal of Honor; Sharon Prince with the Champion of Architecture Award; Head Hi with the Architecture in Media Award; and BlackSpace Urbanist with the New Perspectives Award.

The Chapter honors recipients were selected by the 2026 Honors Committee, chaired by AIANY 2026 President Mark Gardner, AIA, NOMA, Jaklitsch/Gardner Architects. The 2026 committee members are Everardo Jefferson, AIA, Caples Jefferson; Allison Lane, RA, AIA, ASID, NOMA, LEED AP, WELL AP, NCARB, NCIDQ, AECOM; Sara Lopergolo, FAIA, Sara Lopergolo Architect; Eve Michel, AIA, EMREcon; Clare Miflin, AIA, Center for Zero Waste Design, and Katie Swenson, Assoc. AIA, MASS Design Group.

AIANY will also fête the 24 winning project teams of the AIANY Design Awards 2026 at the Luncheon.

MEET THE HONOREES

Medal of Honor: Alloy

Alloy is committed to making Brooklyn beautiful, sustainable and equitable. As architects and developers, they see opportunity in the diversity and complexity of our urban context, and use great architecture and thoughtful development to positively impact the built environment. The fundamental promise of Alloy's business has always been driven by the belief that rigorous analysis and quality design can create enduring and recognizable value. Through its unique organizational culture, they challenge the architecture and real estate disciplines by questioning existing practices and proposing new ways to benefit the social and built environment. After 20 years of practice, Alloy has established itself as a steward of the community in which we live and work.

About the Medal of Honor
The Medal of Honor is the highest honor for distinction in the profession, conferred to an architect or a firm of architects for distinguished work and a high professional standing. Any architect who is a member of the Institute practicing within the territory of the Chapter is eligible for the Medal. Past recipients include Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1947), Marcel Breuer (1965), Louis Kahn (1970), Richard Meier (1980), Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (1996), Weiss/Manfredi (2007), Diller Scofidio + Renfro (2009), and Denise Scott Brown, RIBA, Int. FRIBA, Robert Venturi, FAIA, Int. FRIBA (2014), Claire Weisz, FAIA (2018), Deborah Berke, FAIA, LEED AP (2019), Snøhetta (2020), Kim Yao (2021), Tsao & McKown Architects (2022), Andrew Bernheimer (2023), MARVEL (2024), and SHoP Architects (2025).

Champion of Architecture Award: Sharon Prince

Sharon Prince is the CEO and Founder of Grace Farms, a globally recognized cultural and humanitarian center in New Canaan, Connecticut. Firm in her belief in the power of space to communicate a set of values, she commissioned SANAA to design the boundary-defying public space to create more grace and peace in the world.

Recognizing exploitation in the global building materials supply chain, Prince mobilized industry leaders and launched the Design for Freedom movement in 2020 with a groundbreaking report. Pilot Projects and Toolkits put these ethical sourcing strategies into practice worldwide. The With Every Fiber exhibit educates the public about Design for Freedom at Grace Farms and Prince convenes the Design for Freedom Summit annually with 550 industry leaders.

Prince is the Co-Founder of Grace Farms Tea & Coffee, a certified B Corp that demonstrates ethical and sustainable supply chains and offered nationally at JPMorgan to Whole Foods. 100% of profits supports Design for Freedom.

Grace Farms has garnered numerous prestigious awards for contributions to architecture, environmental sustainability, and social good, including the AIA National Honor Award and the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize. Prince's leadership has earned recognition from Fast Company, naming her the Most Creative People in Business for Cleaning up Construction, and from AIANY and Center for Architecture's NYC Visionary Award.

About the Champion of Architecture Award
The Champion of Architecture Award is conferred on an individual from outside the architecture profession for his or her critical work towards the advancement of architecture and design. It was first given to R. Buckminster Fuller in 1952, and, more recently, to Ai Weiwei (2018), Justin Garrett Moore, AICP, NOMA (2021), Maxine Griffith, FAICP (2022), Richard C. Yancey, FAIA, LEED AP (2023), Jonathan F.P. Rose (2024), and Nico Kienzl (2025).

Architecture in Media: Head Hi

Head Hi is a cultural organization bridging art, architecture, design and sound via projects, reading materials and public programming. Featuring a bookstore with a curated selection of new publications from around the globe and working with local and international artists, architects, designers, publishers and organizations in various fields, Head Hi is a space for exploration and interaction that hosts talks, book launches, exhibitions, music, performances and other events. After realizing a need to sustain alternative organizations shaping art and architecture culture, Head Hi was founded in New York City in 2017 by Alvaro Alcocer, a self-taught artist, and Alexandra Hodkowski, whose career in the cultural field spans over 20 years.

About the Architecture in Media Award
Originally named after Stephen A. Kliment, the Architecture in Media Award recognizes individuals and publications that elevate and challenge architectural discourse. This award has been given since 2003 to journalists and critics who, through their writing, have shaped the practice of architecture and elevated its standards. Recent awardees include Inga Saffron (2018), Cindy Allen (2019), Alexandra Lange (2020), Cathleen McGuigan (2021), Urban Omnibus (2022), New York Review of Architecture (2023), Madame Architect (2024), and I Would Prefer Not To (2025).

New Perspectives Award: BlackSpace Urban

BlackSpace Urbanist Collective bridges gaps between people, place and power to realize racial justice in Black communities. Founded on principles of Black liberation in Brooklyn in 2015, BlackSpace began as a group of urbanists dissatisfied with the lack of imagination in shaping neighborhoods to center justice and joy. Today, BlackSpace facilitates opportunities for urbanists and creatives to co-create social and spatial change. They share tools and strategies through educational workshops and ethical and speculative design to enact individual, community-based, and systemic change. They have completed seven neighborhood-level projects to resist Black cultural erasure, launched four workshops reaching over 6,000 people across NY state, and distributed two publications reaching 22 million people worldwide; their BlackSpace Manifesto has been cited in the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice's 2024 EJNYC Plan and 2025 Active Design Guidelines 2.0.

BlackSpace's newest program, Kinfolx Imagining Neighborhoods (Studio KIN), is an urbanist entrepreneurship accelerator aimed at reimagining how communities are planned, revitalized, and built. By investing in the creative autonomy and capacity of urbanist ventures, Studio KIN leverages ethics-based practices as tools for appreciating neighborhood heritage and collectively building a sustainable future, especially towards racial justice for majority-Black neighborhoods in NYC and nationally.

About the New Perspectives Award
Since 2021, the New Perspectives Award has celebrated individuals and/or collectives who, through their own recently published or curated work, take unique, critical positions that contribute to the broader understanding of architecture. Past recipients include Deem Journal (2022), WIP Collaborative (2023), Nina Cooke John, AIA, NOMA (2024), and Interboro Partners.