Here are the 'DIRTY' winners of the 2024 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers

The Architectural League of New York just announced the 2024 winners of its annual League Prize for Young Architects + Designers. 

Now in its 43rd edition, the contest that is open to those practicing within ten years of completing their education, has seen past winners such as Meejin Yoon and Steven Holl rise to international prominence while launching the careers of hundreds of others across the country.

The theme for 2024 is ‘Dirty.’ The League's brief explained: “Dirt is matter: it is the soil, the ground, and the earth. But when dirt makes things dirty, they become unclean. To be dirty is not only a physical state of being; it is a moral position, as “dirty” subjects are understood to be vulgar, illicit, unpleasant, and improper. If cleanliness is next to godliness, dirtiness is debased. [...] We prompt designers to expose the forces that shape design practice, projects, modes of representation, and communication. It’s time to dish the dirt… How do you reject sanitized ways of working with built, natural, and political environments? Show us your dirty ways and dirty things.”

Winners will have their work exhibited online over the course of the next year. 

Take a look at each of the 2024 recipients:

Lola Ben-Alon of The Natural Materials Lab, Columbia University GSAPP (New York, NY)

"The Natural Materials Lab, founded and directed by Lola BenAlon, investigates raw, earth, and fiber-based building materials across scales, from fabrication research and design/build projects to policy investigations and installations. The Lab, located at Columbia University GSAPP, unites experimental research with Ben-Alon’s teaching practice. Integrating emergent technologies with historical techniques, the Natural Materials Lab leverages material experimentation to 'imagine and invent socially equitable.'"

Erik Carranza of Anonima (Mexico City, Mexico)

"Erik Carranza founded Anonima with Sindy Martínez Lortia in 2007. Based in Mexico City and Oaxaca City, the multidisciplinary studio engages in both design and research projects related to urban spatial practices, ranging across scales from street-level interventions to institutional built work to advocacy campaigns. Across this diverse portfolio, Anonima explores the ways in which architecture creates relationships between human beings and place while maintaining a 'playful character' in all projects, according to the studio."

Strat Coffman (Ann Arbor, MI, and Los Angeles, CA)

"Trained as an architect, Strat Coffman’s work explores the concept of 'the embodied subject as an agitator of design,' in the designer’s own words. Currently located in both Ann Arbor and Los Angeles, Coffman’s practice incorporates installation, set pieces, guerilla performance, and wearable garments. Their provocative objects and installations engage the live body, often tactilely, in new orientations toward systems of design such as building codes and generic products, inviting, in Coffman’s words, “misinterpretation, readjustment, and misuse.”

Chase Galis, Christina Moushoul, Sonia Sobrino Ralston of Office Party (New York, NY)

"Chase Galis, Christina Moushoul, and Sonia Sobrino Ralston founded Office Party in 2021. The research and design collective produces temporary events, installations, and exhibitions internationally that investigate 'the role of parties and similar ephemeral spaces as the origin of complex social and material networks with urban, political, and environmental effects,' in the firm’s own words. In addition to live events, Office Party publishes written and editorial work, such as the collective’s journal Party Planner, further exploring the concept of parties with interdisciplinary collaborators across media formats."

Rayshad Dorsey, Joseph James, Diego Zubizarreta Otero, Julian Owens, Michael Urueta of Partners of Place (PoP) (Greenville, SC; Brooklyn, NY; Austin, TX; Washington, DC; Charleston, SC)

"Partners of Place was established in 2023 by its five members: Rayshad Dorsey, Joseph James, Diego Zubizarreta Otero, Julian Owens, and Michael Urueta. The research, ideation, and design collective focuses on issues of social and environmental equity. Partners of Place’s speculative designs imagine a more inclusive future. Throughout their projects, the collective proposes interventions into the built environment contextualized by the social sciences, using techniques of data visualization, historical mapping, and storytelling."

Leah Wulfman (Salt Lake City, UT)

"Traversing physical and digital realms, Leah Wulfman’s practice develops non-normative uses and misuses of spatial technologies. Currently located in Salt Lake City, Wulfman adapts the systems and logic of architecture and game forms for purposes of embodied physicality, play and performance. Wulfman’s installations integrate digital tools such as AI and video game engines with material counterparts of dirt, weeds, trash, plastic and foam. According to Wulfman, their work elucidates mixed reality as 'not simply THE NEXT BIG THING but a method of working that undercuts binary assumptions of gender and physicality, as well as technology.'"