Congratulations
To the 2023 Design Awards Honorees
June 21st 2023 | UCSD Park + Market
Downtown San Diego
“Celebrate the best of the best in a ceremony that honors design excellence, craftsmanship, and sustainability.
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Each year, AIA San Diego celebrates our bi-national design community and award-worthy projects at a lively ceremony attended by hundreds of distinguished design professionals in our region.
Join us as we celebrate design excellence in San Diego and Tijuana, surrounded by industry friends and the people, places, and spaces that make our region special. The Design Awards Ceremony marks a tremendous opportunity to view outstanding work, celebrate design, and network with design pros.
The best of the best in San Diego/Tijuana
The annual design awards shine a light on projects that are pushing innovation, growth, sustainability and renewal in San Diego and Tijuana. Celebrate groundbreaking architectural projects, treasured icons, and exceptional design concepts that have redefined the boundaries of creativity and design in our region.
Legendary design pros
Every year the Design Awards Ceremony attracts over 250+ architects, design experts and advocates as we gather in celebration of the places, spaces, and people that make our region unique, making this a tremendous opportunity for fraternizing and networking.
Distinguished work
Gain inspiration from the remarkable achievements of the award winners, groundbreaking architectural projects and exceptional design concepts. These exemplary projects are selected through a rigourous process and demonstrate sustainability, social responsibility, and a strong sense of place.
THE PEOPLE | CONNECT WITH INDUSTRY LEADERS
The annual celebration marks a unique opportunity to come together as one design community and foster connections across borders and disciplines. Engage with distinguished architects, designers, and industry professionals shaping our region's future and beyond. Forge valuable connections and expand your professional network while mingling with like-minded individuals who share your passion for architecture and design.
THE PROJECTS | DISTINGUISHED WORK
The AIA San Diego Design Awards recognizes Design Excellence - Those exemplary projects that demonstrate design skill of formal, functional and technical requirements, including ecological and environmental sustainability, social responsibility, and a strong sense of place.
THE PROCESS | RIGOROUS, ANONYMOUS
Each year, we receive hundreds of submissions in multiple diverse categories.The selection process is rigorous and focused on both function and form, with an emphasis on sustainability. The recruitment of a non-local jury of highly distinguished architects means that the projects awarded embody design excellence to the highest extent.
2023 DESIGN AWARDS JURY
Jury Chair
Marlon Blackwell, FAIA
Marlon Blackwell, FAIA, is a practicing architect in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He is the recipient of the 2020 AIA Gold Medal, the Institute’s highest honor, which recognizes those whose work has had an enduring impact on the theory and practice of architecture, as well as a lifetime member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Blackwell was named 2020 SEC Professor of The Year and among the “30 Most Admired Educators” by DesignIntelligence in 2015. Work produced in his professional office, Marlon Blackwell Architects, has received national and international recognition with significant publication in books, architectural journals and magazines and numerous design awards, including the 2016 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture.
Vice Chair
Barbara Bestor, FAIA
Barbara Bestor, FAIA and her studio, Bestor Architecture, have actively redefined Los Angeles architecture with a practice that rigorously engages the city through design, art, and urbanism. Increasingly, the firm applies L.A.’s lessons to national undertakings. She explores the architectural form through experiments in spatial arrangements, graphics, and color – evident in her projects from custom residences to headquarters for international companies. Her varied and progressive body of work connects with people on many levels, often outside the traditional boundaries of architecture. She believes that good design creates an engaged urban life and embraces the ‘strange beauty’ that enhances everyday experience. Bestor is the recipient of numerous design awards and recognitions, including being named to the Architectural Digest AD 100.
Andrea Love, FAIA
Andrea is a Principal and the Director of Building Science at Payette, the 2019 AIA Firm Award recipient for their work fusing design and building performance and has worked on six recent COTE Top Ten Award winning projects. At Payette, she integrates building performance into all of their work and leads their internal research efforts. She was the Principal Investigator on the AIA Upjohn Grant research grant focused on thermal bridging and lead the development of Payette’s Glazing and Winter Comfort tool, and Kaleidoscope an early embodied carbon tool which won both the AIA Innovation Award and R&D Award in 2022. She is a Lecturer at MIT and Harvard on building performance, and has her BArch from Carnegie Mellon and a Masters in Building Technology from MIT where she was the recipient of the Tucker-Voss Award. She was recently on AIA COTE Advisory Group, is a past chair of the AIA 2030 Working Group and USGBC Massachusetts, and currently serves as the 2023 President of the Boston Society of Architects. She was a 2017 recipient of the AIA Young Architect Award, and is a LEED Fellow, as well as a Fellow of the AIA.
Christiana Moss, FAIA
Christiana Moss, FAIA, forges a sustainable architecture driven by a commitment to accessibility, inclusivity, and joy by bringing an exceptional design approach to residential work, university campuses, and cultural buildings.
By uniting innovative processes, regenerative bioclimatic sustainability, and a commitment to equity with outstanding place-based design, Moss ushers in new standards for practice that inspire colleagues and clients to use the power of design to effect meaningful and necessary changes.
Studio Ma is an internationally recognized architecture firm founded in 2003 that designs inspiring environments for all. Guided by a holistic perspective, deep expertise, and shared passion, Studio Ma balances joy with function. Working in close partnership with forward-thinking clients, we transform ideas into significant forms and spaces, creating lasting connections between people and place.
Moss’s design career has been informed by her studies at Cornell University and the Oslo School of Architecture, where she studied with Sverre Fehn. In Norway, the work of Norberg-Shultz and the concept of genus-loci, or placed-based architecture, established what would become the basis of her collaborative practice.
Alex Ogata, AIA
Alex Ogata is an educator, designer and architect at Populous, a global architecture and design firm dedicated to the creation of places where millions of people come together to share incredible experiences. As a Principal and the director of the Populous Design Studio, Alex leads a team formed specifically to foster ideas of innovation and push the boundaries of what is possible. His team accomplishes this, by focusing on conceptual design, advanced technology and applied research in close collaboration across the global Populous network. A saying in the design studio is “sometimes we ignore the facts to get at the fundamental truth”.
Alex has a unique and diverse background having worked in design practices in his native Peru as well as Italy and France. As an architect, Alex has worked on the design of major projects for San Francisco International Airport, the FBI, the National Nuclear Security Administration as well as a variety of civic, aviation, convention and sports clients both in the United States and abroad.
Alex was born in Lima, Peru. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Architecture from the University of Kansas and is a registered architect in Missouri.
MADE POSSIBLE BY | 2023 Design Awards Sponsors
All registration cancellations and refund requests must be made in writing June 14, 2023. A refund of the full event fee, minus a $25 administrative fee per ticket, will be given for cancellations received by that date. No refunds will be granted for requests submitted after June 14, 2023. Please submit all requests to AIA San Diego via email at aiasdawards@gmail.com. AIASD regrets that refunds will not be given for no-shows.
Awards Archives
Project Information and credit to project partners is provided by the architectural firm or entrant of record in AIA San Diego's Design Awards Call for Entries. AIA San Diego, its Design Awards Committee/Representatives, and its Design Awards Jury (Juries) are not the authors of this content, nor are they responsible for verifying its accuracy. Companies/consultants/contractors should contact the firm of record to address discrepancies. To be eligible for consideration and receipt of award in AIA San Diego's Design Awards, entries must be made by AIA members in good standing who abide by the Ethical Standards of Attribution of Credit set forth by the American Institute of Architects.
