2025 AIA San Diego Design Awards Jury
Jury Chair: Ernesto Cragnolino, FAIA
Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ernesto Cragnolino grew up in Columbus, Ohio and Long Island, New York before moving to Austin to attend the University of Texas where he obtained degrees in Architecture and Architectural Engineering while completing the Plan II Liberal Arts Honors Program. After gaining experience at several Austin based firms Ernesto joined Alterstudio in 2003, forming a partnership with Kevin Alter and Tim Whitehill in 2009. Ernesto has focused on the design of a variety of project types with a focus on single family residential. Ernesto has taught design and construction at The University of Texas School of Architecture, with an emphasis towards building envelope design and detailing. Ernesto was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in 2016.
Brian Phillips, FAIA
Brian Phillips, FAIA is Founding Principal of ISA, and serves as Creative Director across all aspects of the firm’s work. He earned his MArch from the University of Pennsylvania and BS from the University of Oklahoma. He has lectured widely on urbanism, housing, and the work of ISA. Brian was awarded a 2011 Pew Fellowship in the Arts and was named an Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York in 2015.
ISA’s work has been featured in ARCHITECT, Architectural Record, DWELL, Metropolis, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times, and on NPR Radio. The office has won numerous local, regional, and national design citations, including five AIA National Housing Awards, the AIA Philadelphia Gold Medal, and an AIA COTE Top Ten Award.
David Dowell, AIA
David Dowell, AIA, is a partner with El Dorado. With almost thirty years of experience as a practicing architect and educator, David’s portfolio spans a wide range of typologies, scales, and locations. Projects under David’s leadership have won dozens of national, regional and local AIA and ASLA Design Excellence Awards including multiple Projects of the Year; the inaugural King Salman Charter for Architecture and Urbanism Award; numerous Interior Design Best of Year citations;
Architect magazine awards; RADA awards; American Architecture peer-review accolades; a SEED Award; two Les Grube Memorial Awards; a SCUP Award; a handful of AZ Awards, a Landezine International Landscape Award; multiple PLAN IT and Architect’s Newspaper A/N awards. His work is widely published.
David is a GSA National Peer Reviewer and he was recently invited to join the US State Department OBO’s Industry Advisory Group (paused), both are honors bestowed on a limited number of respected professionals across the United States.
David has taught graduate level architecture studios at the Technical University in Dresden (DE), University of Kansas, Washington University in St. Louis, and Kansas State University where he founded the award-winning Design+Make Studio in 2011. The focus of the studio is to prepare students for a life of meaningful practice, through real world projects, often implemented, ranging in focus from affordable housing to mental health facilities, to elevating environmental awareness and conservation projects. Starting in Fall 2025 David will be Professor of Practice at Kansas State University.
Karen Lu, FAIA, NOMA
Karen's commitment to design excellence and to positively impacting future generations of architecture professionals and global citizens is evident in her professional work and service to the AIA and her community. Karen advocates for equity in the built environment and the profession and leads the studio's initiatives in this work. Her passion for making strategic connections and building meaningful relationships inspires Karen's approach to integrated design thinking.
Karen serves on local and national design award juries and presents the studio's work at universities and professional conferences. She has led and collaborated on projects that have won National AIA Honor Awards, AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Project Awards, AIA Minnesota Honor Awards, and Progressive Architecture Awards. In addition, Karen has been recognized for her leadership locally and nationally with the AIA Minnesota and National AIA Young Architect Awards. Karen currently serves on the national AIA Committee on Design Advisory Group.
Steve Wiesenthal, FAIA
Architect Steve Wiesenthal, FAIA, leads Studio Gang’s San Francisco office, where he guides teams in articulating and translating project visions into physical reality. His current and recent projects include a new home for the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability in Palo Alto, an expanded campus for the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and the renewal of Kresge College at the University of California Santa Cruz.
Prior to joining Studio Gang, Steve worked for twenty-five years as a university architect, leading the development and operations of the built environment during periods of significant growth at the University of Chicago, the University of California San Francisco, and the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. At both UChicago and UCSF, Steve initiated their first campus-wide environmental sustainability programs. Early in his career, he worked for six years with influential designers Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates.
