The Best, Worst, and Most Questionable in 2022 Architecture and Design

A list of innovative projects, intriguing design, and flummoxing failures.

1 minute read

December 6, 2022, 12:00 PM PST

By Diana Ionescu @aworkoffiction


Rendering of Juneteenth Museum

Renderings for the Juneteenth Museum placed the Fort Worth project in Austin, earning the ‘Magellan Geography Award.’ | City of Fort Worth / Rendering of Juneteenth Museum

An annual list of architecture ‘awards’ from Mark Lamster, Alexandra Lange, and Carolina A. Miranda has celebrated and poked fun at all manner of things in the architecture world for over a dozen years. Its thirteenth year has been, as the authors put it, “yet another busy, dispiriting, ridiculous, racist, sexist, anti-semitic, and all around stupid year.”

With that said, the awards range from the ‘YIMBY Seal of Approval’—a commendation to Perkins&Will’s Galbraith mixed-income housing development in Dallas—to the satirical ‘Bye-Bye Birdie Badge’—“How will architects make friends without Twitter?” the authors lament. They also include Jessie Singer's There Are No Accidents, giving it the ‘Straight Talk Award’ for “how nomenclature (accident instead of crash) allows people, places and systems to evade responsibility and avoid change.”

The list also gives a nod to Bernheimer Architecture, which became the first American architectural practice to unionize. And in ‘real’ awards, “The Pritzkers honor Burkinabè architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, making him the first African and the first Black person to win the prize,” winning the ‘Make Prizes Relevant Again’ prize.

See the source article for the full list.

Monday, December 5, 2022 in Medium

portrait of professional woman

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

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Mary G., Urban Planner

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