The “(im)permanence” winners of the 2016 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers

The Architectural League of New York highlights emerging design talent in their annual Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers program. First launched in 1981, the Prize carries a legacy in the contemporary architecture scene in that many now-well-known architects have received the award at the start of their careers. A few previous winners include Steven Holl, Billie Tsien, Preston Scott Cohen, Eric Bunge & Mimi Hoang, Michael Meredith, Shih-Fu Peng & Roisin Heneghan, and several more. North America-based designers who are out of school no more than 10 years are invited to submit their work to the portfolio competition.

For every cycle, the Architectural League selects three previous winners for the League Prize committee, who are tasked to develop the next competition theme, which engages certain aspects of architectural form and practice that are most relevant to their fellow young practitioners. Things took a metaphysical turn in the 2016 theme, “(im)permanence”, which explores how “time affects architecture's assertion of style, methods of assembly, and relationship to program, thus altering our expectations of permanent structures in an impermanent environment.”

The jury — which included Mimi Hoang, Paul Lewis, and Anu Mathur — selected the winners for 2016:

• Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, DESIGN EARTH, Cambridge, MA and Ann Arbor, MI
• Juan Alfonso Garduño Jardón, G3 Arquitectos, Querétaro, Mexico
• Neyran Turan and Mete Sonmez, NEMESTUDIO, San Francisco, CA
• Neeraj Bhatia, The Open Workshop, San Francisco, CA
• Hubert Pelletier and Yves de Fontenay, Pelletier de Fontenay, Montreal, Canada
• Yasmin Vobis and Aaron Forrest, Ultramoderne, Providence, RI

Winners will lecture in late June and exhibit their work in NYC's Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at the Parsons School of Design this summer. Read on for more about this year's winners.

Yasmin Vobis and Aaron Forrest, Ultramoderne, Providence, RI

“Yasmin Vobis and Aaron Forrest established Ultramoderne in 2013 after several collaborations together since 2007. The office is ‘committed to creating architecture and public spaces that are at once modern, playful, and generous.’ In 2015, Ultramoderne realized Chicago Horizon, the BP Prize winner in the Chicago Lakefront Kiosk Competition, designed for the Chicago Architecture Biennial.” Yasmin Vobis was also very recently named as a 2016 Rome Prize recipient by the American Academy in Rome.

More info.

Neyran Turan and Mete Sonmez, NEMESTUDIO, San Francisco, CA

“Neyran Turan and Mete Sonmez founded NEMESTUDIO in San Francisco in 2009. NEMESTUDIO produces work ranging from installations to buildings and landscapes. Its ‘speculations draw upon the capacity of architecture to define a new relational aesthetic, one that is invested in questions of form and representation while being extremely rigorous about architecture’s relationship to the city, the environment, and geography.’” More info.

Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, DESIGN EARTH, Cambridge, MA and Ann Arbor, MIJuan

“DESIGN EARTH is a collaborative practice based in Cambridge, MA and Ann Arbor, MI founded in 2010 by El Hadi Jazairy and Rania Ghosn. Their work ‘engages the geographic to open up a range of aesthetic and political concerns for architecture and urbanism.’ Currently, DESIGN EARTH is completing an upcoming book entitled Geostories...This summer, the firm will participate in the Venice Biennale of Architecture in Kuwait’s pavilion and their Pacific Aquarium project will be exhibited at the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale beginning in September.” More info.

Juan Alfonso Garduño Jardón, G3 Arquitectos, Querétaro, Mexico

“G3 Arquitectos was founded in 1997 by Juan Alfonso Garduño Jardón in Querétaro, Mexico. Currently, G3 Arquitectos is working on designing strategies for social participation in a development located in the Altos de San Pablo neighborhood of Querétaro. Past projects include two schools, Kinder Álamos (2011) and the School of Design and Architecture (2013); as well as two private residences, Casa L (2015) and Casa GG (2013), all built in Querétaro. With its Taller Activo initiative, G3 has embarked on an ongoing investigation that ‘seeks to encourage citizen participation in citymaking by inverting the existing neoliberal model for another one based in the reactivation of the collective realm.’” More info.

Hubert Pelletier and Yves de Fontenay, Pelletier de Fontenay, Montreal, Canada

“Founded in 2010 by Hubert Pelletier and Yves de Fontenay, Pelletier de Fontenay is an architectural practice based in Montreal. The studio is ‘specifically interested in the relationship between the abstract concepts of architecture and their material incarnations.’ Recently, Pelletier de Fontenay — in partnership with Kuehn Malvezzi and Jodoin Lamarre Pratte — was named one of the winning teams in the international competition to design educational buildings for the ‘Espace pour la Vie’ museum campus in Montreal.” Last year, Pelletier de Fontenay won the Phyllis Lambert Grant.

More info.

Neeraj Bhatia, The Open Workshop, San Francisco, CA

“Neeraj Bhatia founded The Open Workshop in 2011 in San Francisco. The studio is dedicated to ‘reconciling and empowering the role of architecture within the transforming, evolving, fluctuating, and indeterminate conditions of the city, its public sphere, and its ecological context through reevaluation of Umberto Eco’s concept of The Open Work.’ The Open Workshop’s recent projects include Scaffoldia, a installation realized this year in an Oakland, CA park and a 2016 entry to the Varna Public Library and Archive design competition in Varna, Bulgaria.” More info.