Medal of Honor
Marvel
The Medal of Honor, conferred by AIANY since 1914, is the Chapter’s highest form of recognition. It acknowledges an architect or firm of architects for distinguished work and high professional standing. Past recipients have included Kim Yao, FAIA; Denise Scott Brown; Claire Weisz, FAIA; and, further back, Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn.
Marvel is a multidisciplinary design studio with offices in New York; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Richmond, Virginia. The firm is composed of integrated teams of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, urban design, and interi-ors professionals, and has a three-decade legacy of working alongside communities and stakeholders to tackle issues facing the built and natural environments of New York City. Recent local projects exemplify Marvel’s deep and profound civic commitment: the affordable residential development Rockaway Village in Queens and the Stonewall House for LGBTQ+ seniors in Fort Greene; the adaptive-reuse of the St. Ann’s Warehouse theater and the Battery Maritime Building at South Ferry; the One Clinton condominium tower overlooking Cadman Plaza Park, with a Brooklyn Public Library branch at ground level; and the open green
Champion of Architecture Medal
Jonathan F.P. Rose
The Champion of Architecture Medal is conferred on an individual from outside the architecture profession for his or her critical work towards the advancement of architecture and design. It was first given to R. Buckminster Fuller in 1952, and, more recently, to Ai Weiwei, Justin Garrett Moore, David Rockefeller, and Jane Jacobs.
Jonathan F.P. Rose is a real estate developer, urban planner, author, and philanthropist. Since 1989, Jonathan Rose Companies LLC—a real estate development, planning, investment, and project management firm—has been dedicated to the creation and preservation of affordable, mixed-use, and environmentally responsible urban housing. Today, the firm is one of the largest acquirers of affordable and mixed-income housing in the
country. Its latest development, Gowanus Green, will create 950 units of 100% affordable housing in Brooklyn upon completion later this year.
In 2016 Rose published The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life, a guide to creating more environmentally resilient and socially harmonious cities. He and his wife, Diana Calthorpe Rose, are the co-founders of the Garrison Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes contemplative, nature-centered methods of addressing social and environmental challenges. Rose is a trustee of Enterprise Community Partners and serves as chair of the Board of the Bhutan Urban and Regional Planning Global Advisory Committee. He received the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development in 2021, and The Order of the Beloved of the Thunder Dragon in 2023, awarded by His Majesty, The King of Bhutan.
Architecture in Media Award
Madame Architect (MA)
Originally named after Stephen A. Kliment, the Architecture in Media Award recognizes individuals and publications that elevate and challenge architectural discourse. This award has been given since 2003 to journalists and critics who, through their writing, have shaped the practice of architecture and elevated its standards. Recent awardees include Cathleen McGuigan, Inga Saffron, Robert Ivy, and Alexandra Lange.
Madame Architect (MA) is a digital magazine that highlights the ideas, accomplishments, and personal experiences of women in the architecture field around the world. Founded in 2018 by architect Julia Gamolina and run with a small, dedicated team of full-time practitioners, MA is a far-reaching design publication with a female perspective. By featuring women in a variety of occupations and at various stages of their careers, MA aims to inspire women in the industry to confront staid conventions and challenge their preconceptions about what a meaningful career in architecture could be. “The Madame Architect team and I are so honored to receive the Architecture in Media award this year,” says Gamolina. “Five years ago, I sought to create something that didn’t exist yet—I wasn’t seeing enough stories of the people behind the architecture in design media, and I wasn’t seeing many architects featured in general interest magazines. Today, I’m proud that all our content—feature Q&As, essays, historical pieces, and reviews—not only feature extraordinary practitioners making an impact, but are all told through a female lens, and that both are being recognized.”
New Perspectives Award
Nina Cooke John, AIA, NOMA
Since 2021, the New Perspectives Award has celebrated individuals and/or collectives who, through their own recently published or curated work, take unique, critical positions that contribute to the broader understanding of architecture. Nina Cooke John, AIA, NOMA, is an architect, artist, designer, and educator, and the founder of Studio Cooke John, a multidisciplinary design practice. Her portfolio includes residential projects, public art installations, and conceptual work, such as the Obsidian Virtual Concept House—an expansive exploration of Black domestic futures, which she did in collaboration with the Black Artists + Designers Guild. In March 2023, Cooke John unveiled Shadow of a Face, a multisensory monument to Harriet Tubman in Newark, New Jersey.
Following that, she revealed Two Boxes of Oranges and installation in New York’s Flatiron Plaza. Admonia Jackson, an installation featuring vertical steel tubes resembling the hull of a sunken slave ship, in Alexandria, Virginia. Her work has been featured in Architectural Record, Madame Architect, The New York Times, Dwell, and the Center for Architecture’s 2018 exhibition Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture. “I am deeply appreciative and honored to be receiving the New Perspectives Award from AIA New York’s Center for Architecture, and to be amongst the other brilliant honorees,” says Cooke John. “I hope in considering ‘new perspectives,’ we continue to open up our profession to include new voices, new ways of looking at old problems, and a new understanding of what architecture is and can be.”
