The “Support” winners of the 2017 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers

The Architectural League of New York revealed six talented winners for the 2017 League Prize for Young Architects + Designers! Established in 1981, the League Prize carries a legacy in the contemporary architecture scene in that many now-well-known architects received the award at the start of their careers. Some previous recipients 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.

The 2017 theme was “Support”, which “identified a present situation in which precarious forms and precarious social arrangements exist side by side. How does one clarify the modes of support in architecture today when the discipline’s role is obscured by a tangled network in which exchanges between built form and various systems of framing, assistance, and reinforcement are constantly in flux?” 

Here are the winners!

Greg Corso and Molly Hunker - SPORTS | Syracuse, NY

Founded by Greg Corso and Molly Hunker in 2010, SPORTS is a studio that ‘approaches architecture in a playful way by balancing rigor and research with amusement and curiosity.’ As a result, SPORTS trades on the familiarity of built environment only to destabilize and reimagine its ‘latent assets’ of space, material, and site.”

Jonathan Louie and Nicole McIntosh - Architecture Office | Syracuse, NY

Jonathan Louie and Nicole McIntosh founded Architecture Office in 2015. ‘Part practice and part observation,’ the firm’s projects attempt to ‘support architecture’s unique capacity to not be static and singular, but, to simultaneously engage and refresh the real-time value of the things around it.’’

Kevin Hirth - KEVIN HIRTH Co. | Denver, CO

Founded in 2009 by Kevin Hirth, KEVIN HIRTH Co.'s work “has recently focused on the rural and urban condition of the American West including ‘single family homes down unnamed roads in the mountain wilds and mixed-use towers pushing up against the edge of the Midwestern plains.’”

Isabel Martínez Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo | LANZA Atelier, Mexico City

“For LANZA Atelier, exhibitions ‘become moments of possibility and study.’ Founded in 2015 by Isabel Martínez Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, the Mexico City-based practice insists on calling exhibition design ‘exhibition architecture,’ and approaches its residential and public projects with the same risk-taking approach that they foster with their work in the realm of the gallery and museum.”

Michelle JaJa Chang | Houston, TX

Michelle JaJa Chang formed her Houston-based practice in 2014. She is motivated by ‘the coincidences between shifts in architectural conventions and political and philosophical movements to understand how form can engage social, cultural, and physical contexts.’ Through this formalist optic, Chang shifts the assumptions of prevailing representational modes to ‘engage architecture on new terms.’”

Mustafa Faruki - theLab-lab for architecture | New York, NY

“Mustafa Faruki is the founding partner and creative director of theLab-lab for architecture in New York. Founded in 2010, the practice is ‘dedicated to completely re-inventing the potential outputs of architectural design.’ theLab-lab for architecture believes that ‘architecture, by definition is the creation of imaginary worlds.’”

This yearʼs League Prize jury featured Sylvia Lavin, Guy Nordenson, Mark Robbins, and Shohei Shigematsu. This summer, the winners will lecture and exhibit their work at The New School's Sheila C. Johnson Design Center. You can learn more about the 2017 League Prize here, or check out some of the recent-winning practices in the links below.

The Architectural League also recently published “Young Architects 17: Authenticity”, a book that revisits the work of the 2015 League Prize winners.

All images courtesy of the Architectural League of New York.