Johnston Marklee founders Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee named Richard Neutra Award winners for 2024

The winner of this year’s Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence has been announced as Johnston Marklee, the Los Angeles-based studio founded by Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee in 1998. 

Established in 1980 by the Department of Architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, the Neutra Award looks to honor the legacy of the late architect and pioneer of Biorealism by elevating the work of contemporary practitioners whose concern with designing environments in which we "live, work, and play" reflect the ambition he shared with the world so brilliantly over five decades in practice. 

After an auspicious beginning designing private residences in the Los Angeles area, the tandem has since expanded to become a noteworthy global practice. To date, projects have been completed in 14 countries. Both architects are currently on faculty at the Harvard GSD (where Lee served as the Architecture Department's Chair until last year). Upcoming projects that will add to their portfolio include the Reverend James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center at UCLA and the interiors for the Kuntmuseum Hauptbau in Basel, Switzerland.

"We are honored to receive this award named after Richard Neutra and join a long list of distinguished practitioners and thinkers who have dedicated their careers to the design, research, and development of innovative environments," the pair said in a joint statement. "Past recipients have blazed a trail that enabled this type of speculative practice for our generation, especially those rooted in Los Angeles, such as Konrad Wachsmann, Ray Kappe, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Michael Rotondi."

An award ceremony and public lecture will celebrate their win at 6:00 p.m. on September 9th in the Ursa Major Suite at the Bronco Student Center. 

You can learn more about the early days of Johnston Marklee and their approach to design through our live 2018 Archinect Sessions interview here.