ACADIA Awards of Excellence
Inaugurated in 1998, the ACADIA Awards of Excellence represent recognition, by colleagues worldwide, of consistent contributions and impact on the field of architectural computing. Through 2005, awards were given in three categories: Teaching, Service, and Research. In 2006 an award was added in Emerging Digital Practice and the prior three were renamed as Teaching Excellence, Innovative Research, and Society. In 2007, an additional award for an innovative academic program was added to recognize individual or collective efforts in the establishment of an innovative academic program that contributes to the education of students in the field of digital design. At most one award is presented each year in each category, to an individual or academic program that, in the eyes of the review committee, exhibits "evidence of exceptional and innovative achievement."
ACADIA Award Categories
ACADIA Digital Practice Award of Excellence
This award recognizes creative design work that advances the discipline of architecture through development and use of digital media.
ACADIA Innovative Research Award of Excellence
This award recognizes innovative research that contributes to the field of digital design in architecture. The award distinguishes research with the potential to transform contemporary architecture.
ACADIA Innovative Academic Program Award of Excellence
This award recognizes an innovative academic program that contributes to the education of students in the field of digital design. The award distinguishes one or more individuals responsible for the establishment, success, growth, or management of the academic program.
ACADIA Teaching Award of Excellence
This award recognizes innovative teaching in the field of digital design in architecture. Teaching approaches that can be adopted by other educators are recognized in particular.
ACADIA Society Award for Leadership
This award recognizes extraordinary contributions and service to the ACADIA community.
ACADIA Award Winners
ACADIA 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award
Thom Mayne
Founding Principal
Morphosis (link)
Bio:
Thom Mayne is founding principal of Morphosis, a global architecture firm engaged in architecture, urban planning, and research since 1972. Based in Los Angeles, New York, and Shanghai with projects world-wide, Morphosis’ work represents a wide variety of scales and typologies, from civic projects, schools, and museums to commercial towers and city planning. Under Mayne, Morphosis’ X-Tech group pursues technology and fabrication research, working with industry partners to arrive at new solutions for constructability and performance. In partnership with UCLA where he is a Distinguished Professor since 1993, Mayne also leads The Now Institute, a graduate studio dedicated to applying design thinking to real-world issues facing cities today. Mayne's distinguished honors include the Pritzker Prize (2005) and the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal (2013). He served on the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities under President Obama, between 2009-2016. With Morphosis, Thom Mayne has been the recipient of 29 Progressive Architecture Awards, over 100 American Institute of Architecture Awards and numerous other design recognitions. Morphosis works have been published extensively. The firm has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and over 33 monographs.
ACADIA Teaching Award of Excellence
Dana Cupkova
Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture
and a Design Director of EPIPHYTE Lab (link)
Bio:
Dana Cupkova is a Co-founder and a Design Director of EPIPHYTE Lab, an interdisciplinary architectural design and research collaborative. She holds an Associate Professorship at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Architecture and serves as the Track Chair for the Master of Science in Sustainable Design program. She was a member of the ACADIA Board of Directors from 2014 to 2018, and currently serves on the Editorial Board of The International Journal of Architectural Computing (IJAC). Dana’s work positions the built environment at the intersection of ecology, computational processes, and systems analysis. In her teaching and research, she interrogates the relationship between design-space and ecology as it engages computational methods, thermodynamic processes, and experimentation with geometrically-driven performance logics. In May 2018 Epiphyte Lab received the Next Progressives design practice award by ARCHITECT Magazine, The Journal of The American Institute of Architects.
ACADIA Digital Practice Award of Excellence
Roland Snooks
Associate Professor, RMIT University in the School of Architecture and Urban Design
Director of Studio Roland Snooks (link)
Bio:
Roland Snooks directs of the architectural practice Studio Roland Snooks and is a co-founder of the experimental research practice Kokkugia. Roland is an Associate Professor at RMIT University in the School of Architecture and Urban Design, where he directs the RMIT Architectural Robotics Lab. He has previously taught widely in the US, including at Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, SCI-Arc and the Pratt Institute. Roland’s design work has played a pioneering role in the development of a behavioral approach to architectural design, which draws from the logic of swarm intelligence and the operation of multi-agent algorithms. His work has been exhibited widely and acquired for the permanent collections of institutions including the Centre Pompidou and the FRAC. Roland received a PhD from RMIT and holds a Master in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University, where he studied on a Fulbright scholarship.
ACADIA Innovative Academic Program Award of Excellence
Catie Newell
Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Director of the Master of Science in Digital and Material Technologies (link)
Bio:
The Master of Science in Architecture concentration of Digital and Material Technologies is an intensive 10-month post-professional degree that invests in the technologies, materials, and production logics that are most drastically shaping and challenging our built world and its respective industries.
Joining digital technologies to material systems as a cohesive framework of study, the MS DMT's project-based research and training is led by faculty innovators in the college's world-class digital fabrication lab, the FABLab. Through direct-hands-on engagement with technology and materials, students explore the design theories and methodologies poised to have disruptive effects on the built world. We provide a platform for motivated students to explore novel construction approaches at various scales and to master processes that position them to drive innovation in research, practice, and industry.
ACADIA Innovative Research Award of Excellence
Jose Sanchez
Assistant Professor, USC School of Architecture
Director of the Plethora Project (link)
Bio:
Jose Sanchez is an Architect / Programmer / Game Designer based in Los Angeles, California. He is the director of the Plethora Project, a research and learning project investing in the future of online open-source knowledge. He is also the creator of Block’hood, an award-winning city-building video game exploring notions of crowdsourced urbanism, and is currently working in his new game Common’hood, exploring the ecology of labor.
He has taught and guest lectured in several renowned institutions across the world, including the Architectural Association in London, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.
Today, he is an Assistant Professor at USC School of Architecture in Los Angeles. His research ‘Gamescapes’, explores generative interfaces in the form of video games, speculating in modes of intelligence augmentation, combinatorics, and open systems as a design medium.
ACADIA Society Award for Leadership
Chris Yessios
Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University
Founder and former President of AutoDesSys, Inc.
(link)
Bio:
Chris I. Yessios holds a PhD in Computer Aided Design from Carnegie-Mellon University (1973), a BArchitecture (1967) and a Diploma in Law (1962) from the Aristotelian University in Greece. He taught and researched at The Ohio State University from 1973 to 1995 as a Professor of Computer Aided Design and Director of the Graduate Program in CAAD. During his tenure he published numerous research papers and book chapters and conducted research worth a few million dollars that resulted in a number of prototypical CAD and 3D modeling systems. His list of sponsors includes IBM, DEC, and the National Science Foundation.
In 1990, with David Kropp, an ex student of his, he founded AutoDesSys, Inc., the company that produces form.Z. He has been the CEO and President of the company from which he retired in 2015. Awards received include the Creative Achievement Award from ACSA (1995), the Award for research Excellence from ACADIA (1998), the Professional Achievement Award from the Architect’s Society of Ohio (1990), and the Joe Greco Award from the CAD Society (2006). Also, form.Z has received numerous awards.