by: AIA New York
On Tuesday, February 11, the AIANY New Practices Committee welcomed the New Practices New York 2025 competition jury to the Lladro showroom, where they announced the competition’s six winners: A+A+A, Aanda, AUR, BAAB, IGG, and Mattaforma.
With its ninth competition, the AIANY New Practices Committee continues to serve as a platform for new and innovative models of architecture practice. After a pause since the last award cycle in 2020, this year’s competition sought New York City-based architecture and design practices who offer a distinctive voice in engaging the critical issues that are relevant now. In particular, the jury called for portfolios with innovative design work and thinking that drew upon the idea of voice, both as an expression of unique identity and as an instrument for communicating purpose and intent. To qualify for entry, practices had to be founded since 2012 and be located within the five boroughs of New York City.
As part of the award, firms will receive a stipend for an installation and exhibition at the Center for Architecture, which will open on May 8, 2025.
ABOUT THE WINNERS
A+A+A
A+A+A is a women-led, multidisciplinary design studio committed to making places more inclusive, collaborative, and joyful. Founded in 2018 by Andrea Chiney, Arianna Deane, and Ashely Kuo, A+A+A was born from the belief that practice of architecture could amplify unheard voices. We envisioned a future that moves beyond Euro-centric and patriarchal systems, prioritizing care, kindness and collective ways of designing and building. Almost seven years later, as we face the dawn of a second Trump administration, these core beliefs remain as vital as ever. We continue to prioritize hyper-local and accessible approaches, emphasizing a radically inclusive methodology. Our strength lies in this approach: every project begins and ends with the direct involvement of those it impacts.
Aanda
An architecture and urban design studio led by Annie Barrett and Adriel Mesznik, aanda are architects, thinkers, designers, agitators, educators, advocates, parents, problem solvers, and project stewards. They collaborate with individuals and organizations to design and construct unique spaces for civic, community, and family life. They share with their clients and collaborators a commitment to re-imagining how constructed environments can shape and invigorate the ways we live, work, and spend time together. The inventive projects that emerge from this process are conceptually rigorous, exquisitely designed, and implemented with precision.
AUR
AUR, और in Hindi, signifies the ‘other’ and signals a ‘prompt’. AUR as a practice is invested in providing a voice for the ‘other’. Architecture is seen as a responsibility and the studio uses history as a tool to address social relevance, cultural significance, and environmental resilience. They are interested in architecture that crafts histories of the future thoughtfully excavating histories of the past. The work is embedded in narratives of cultural continuity, social equity, and material specificity. AUR is an international architecture firm with a focus on social and cultural projects. It was founded in 2019 by Aurgho Jyoti and currently operates out of New York and New Delhi. Aurgho previously worked as a Project Lead and Senior Architect for SOM, OMA/Rem Koolhaas, Gehry Technologies, Studio Fuksas, and 3Gatti Architecture Studio. He is a licensed architect in the US and India. He holds an M.Des in Architecture and Technology from Harvard and an M.Arch-II in Architecture and Urbanism from Cornell as a Tata Scholar. He has conducted research on housing and materials at MIT Media Lab and Harvard. He holds a B.Arch with distinction from SPA, New Delhi.
BAAB
Established by Ted Baab, AIA, BAAB believes architecture and buildings are complimentary but distinct ideas. Architecture is the ideology of how rooms are organized, the shape of a roof, and the experience of gathering around a window. Building is the manifestation of those ambitions in forms of concrete, stacks of bricks, assemblies of wood and gypsum, and the building systems we expect to make buildings perform. A good project should be thoughtfully both. BAAB brings together a vision of what architecture can do with the understanding of how buildings come together. Successful architecture is more than a strong idea, or a bold material. It is also the imperative to be functional, efficient, buildable, and durable. With a wealth of experience designing through drawings, models, and images, but also walking the construction site and problem-solving with contractors, BAAB makes projects knowable. Ted Baab is Assistant Professor Adjunct at Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union, where he teaches housing design, and coordinates first year design studios, focusing on techniques of geometric manipulation in concert with analysis of historical precedents. He has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Barnard College at Columbia University, and been a guest critic on reviews at many schools of architecture.
IGG
Ignacio G. Galán (IGG) is a New York-based architect, historian, and curator. His work explores and intervenes in the entanglements of architecture, politics, and the making of society, with attention to questions of residence, citizenship, belonging, and kinship. These interests manifest in design projects as much as in diverse scholarly and curatorial endeavors concerning nationalism, colonialism, migration, and disability cultures. His work operates across media and is continuously informed by different collaborations. The office has recently designed and built a number of projects exploring new forms of residence, hospitality, and care, including Another Seedbed (Shortlised Dezeen Awards) and Beyond-the-family Kin (recently published in Architectural Record). Galán is Assistant Professor at Barnard and Columbia Colleges and teaches both undergraduate studios, seminars, and lectures as well as graduate courses at Columbia GSAPP. He graduated as an architect at ETSAM, holds an MArchII from Harvard GSD as well as an MA and a PhD from Princeton University. He is a licensed architect in Spain.
Mattaforma
Mattaforma is an award-winning design studio specializing in projects that conceive of the built environment as an actionable medium towards a more equitable planet. Committed to investigating design in the broadest sense, they realize built commissions from concept to construction alongside research, writing, and speaking engagements. Their goal is to work with clients and experts to jointly imagine opportunities for improving forms of wellness and expanding the types of spaces we enjoy spending time in. This includes our homes, schools, retreats, restaurants, and more. Founded by Lindsey Wikstrom, Mattaforma believes that shaping the next generation of buildings in our built environment requires an ethical underpinning, a new perspective towards resources. Wikstrom’s extensive research and writing on renewable and reclaimed materials informs her belief that material choice is one of the greatest levers we have in this regard; it is the moment we actively eliminate carbon from our palette. Material choice is when existing or new supply chains are affirmed or denied; hence Mattaforma’s investment in research on contextual technical, historic, and cultural material values.
Thank you to the 2025 New Practices New York Jury:
Alice Grandoit-Šutka, Co-founder and Editor in Chief, Deem Journal
Kim Yao, FAIA, Principal, Architecture Research Office
Chris Leong, Co-founder, Leong Leong
Jaffer Kolb, Co-founder, New Affiliates
Beatrice Galilee, Co-founder and Executive Director, The World Around