Here are the winners of the 2026 AIA Architecture Awards

Awards season has arrived at the American Institute of Architects, with this year’s winners unveiled during the AIA26 Conference on Architecture in San Diego. The annual celebration recognized standout work across 10 categories, honoring everything from interiors and housing to urban design, sustainability, and small-scale interventions.

Among the most closely watched announcements are the recipients of the 2026 AIA Architecture Awards, a program that highlights exemplary contemporary architecture in all its forms. Unbound by project type, budget, or stylistic approach, the awards offer a snapshot of the ideas, ambitions, and design excellence shaping the profession today.

Here are the winning designs:

Arbour House, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Patkau Architects

Excerpt: "Intertwining landscape, light, and family life, Arbour House is a loosely knit fabric of spaces that overlook Cadboro Bay in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The design harnesses the virtues of its coastal site with inland breezes, sloping topography, temperate climate and abundance of sunshine. A rhythmic pleated ceiling is a singular architectural invention that coheres and activates the interior. This intricate wooden arbour, suspended below arrays of operable skylights, alternates between greater and lesser porosity. The rhythms of the sun play within the house evoking the feeling of dappled light beneath a canopy of Garry Oaks."

California College of the Arts Expansion, San Francisco, California
Design Architect and Architect of Record: Studio Gang
Associate Architect: TEF Design

Excerpt: "Conceived as a creative ecosystem where 34 different art and design disciplines can overlap in one location, the California College of the Arts Campus Expansion provides new art-making facilities, learning spaces, and green spaces for students, faculty, and visitors. The concrete ground level features indoor-outdoor workshops for intensive art-making practices and fabrication, promoting visibility, accessibility, and interdisciplinary interaction. Above, two mass timber pavilions house classrooms, art studios, and exhibition galleries. The project, which provides healthy, resilient spaces for informal learning, working, and socializing, targets carbon neutrality and net-zero energy and is among California’s first exposed mass timber structures."

Davis Center, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Leers Weinzapfel Associates Architects in association with JGE Architecture + Design

Excerpt: "The Davis Center manifests the enduring impact of student advocacy for social justice and inclusive community at Williams College. The reimagined 25,800 sf Davis Center nestles a major new addition between the existing, beloved Rice and Jenness Houses to create a unified complex. The project is net-zero operational and embodied carbon, incorporating fossil-fuel free systems, deep-energy retrofit strategies, low-carbon wood structure, and healthy material choices. Pursuing Living Building Challenge Petal Certification, the Davis Center is a bold and vivid expression of Williams’ commitment to cultivating a community that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative."

Evergreen Charter School, Hempstead, New York
Martin Hopp Architect PLLC

Excerpt: "The mass timber Evergreen Charter School is a model for how sustainable, community-oriented design excellence is possible even in the nation's most marginalized communities. Built to LEED Platinum, net-zero, and Healthy Building standards, the building integrates classrooms, art studios, laboratories, and rooftop learning spaces within a daylight-filled, biophilic environment. With information stations about embodied carbon and exposed mass timber structure, the building itself acts as a teaching tool about sustainability. At night and on weekends, it doubles as a community center, creating a much-needed civic space in a neighborhood where average incomes are 57% below the national average."

Franklin Antonio Hall, La Jolla, California
Perkins&Will

Excerpt: "The Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego strives to develop advanced solutions for public good. This kind of innovation and learning calls for a space that inspires creativity and sparks collaboration. Thirteen large research facilities called "collaboratories" make up the heart of Franklin Antonio Hall. Each collaboratory houses a collection of professor-led research groups from different but related disciplines. Together, these complementary research teams pursue grand-challenge research in areas like renewable energy technologies, smart cities and transportation, wearable and robotics innovations, real-time data analysis and decision making, digital privacy and security, nanotechnology, and precision medicine."

Lindsay Boathouse, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Lead Design Architect: VJAA Inc.
Local Architect and Canadian Architect of Record: RDHA Inc.

Excerpt: "This facility on Toronto’s waterfront supports a public-facing mission for a 160-year-old rowing program. The 9,400-square-foot facility houses boat storage bays, locker rooms, and a rowing training room that converts to community space for a variety of events. The passively heated and cooled building has no mechanical systems; environmental measures include the primary use of CLT, expansive bird-safe glazing for daylighting, passive ventilation, and green roofs. The boathouse, sited on a sensitive lakefront ecosystem, includes a launch area and crew docks. It is part of Ports Toronto’s masterplan to improve public access to the site and adjacent nature preserve."

Newhouse Replacement Building, Olympia, Washington
The Miller Hull Partnership, LLP

Excerpt: "Washington State's first Capitol Campus addition since 1958, the Newhouse Replacement Building transforms legislative infrastructure through sustainability and civic transparency. Achieving LEED Platinum with 75% energy reduction, the all-electric structure integrates 90-kilowatt solar arrays and salvaged marble, sandstone, and glass from its 1934 predecessor. The four-story 'Mixing Chamber' anchors collaborative spaces beneath a skylight, showcasing a reclaimed Douglas fir art wall honoring Washington's landscapes. Ground-level accessibility, flexible workspaces, and transparent public connections redefine democratic engagement. By prioritizing local materials, eliminating harmful chemicals, and designing for net-zero operation, Newhouse exemplifies how historic preservation and climate leadership unite in service of governance."

Northlake Commons, Seattle, Washington
Weber Thompson

Excerpt: "Northlake Commons exemplifies the evolution of healthy, restorative mixed-use office design. At 275,000 GSF, it's one of the largest mass timber buildings in the country, blending an ambitious program of lumber warehousing, retail, restaurants, lab and office use, supported by 64,500 SF of multi-level outdoor space. This LEED Platinum building is centered on tenant and ecosystem health, evoking the comforts of home, connections to nature, and deep green strategies."

Palm Springs Homeless Navigation Center, Palm Springs, California
John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects

Excerpt: "Palm Springs Homeless Navigation Center transformed a dilapidated commercial property into a holistic campus that supports unhoused individuals and families. Two existing warehouses were renovated into a 50-bed overnight shelter and 24-7 service facility containing offices, dining and multipurpose spaces, and care programs. 80 transitional residences occupy new modular buildings over two levels. The Center is extroverted and welcoming, with a wide central promenade and generous public spaces that complement dignified individual living sanctuaries. Intelligent site planning, focus on natural light and views, and vibrant environmental graphics support the designers’ belief in architecture as a social service that improves lives."

Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, Connecticut
Centerbrook Architects and Planners

Excerpt: "The Yale Peabody Museum’s comprehensive renovations and additions are its first major changes since opening in 1925. After 10 years of planning, the LEED Gold project: Increased teaching, exhibit, and collection space; Improved wayfinding; Advanced sustainability; Preserved Peabody’s character. Fossils were remounted, anthropological exhibits increased, natural history exhibits refurbished, and historic dioramas restored. Collection space adjacent to a K–12 learning center improved with climate control, restoration labs, and new storage systems. New classrooms engage Yale undergraduates. New entries welcome students, while an expanded public one remains. The project consists of a new 57,631-square-foot, four-story infill."