Winners of the 2014 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers

The Architectural League of New York has announced the six winning young architects and designers of the 2014 "Overlay" Architectural League Prize. As one of North America's most prestigious awards for young practitioners, since 1981 the Prize recognizes provocative and exemplary work and provides a public outlet for the exchange of their ideas.

After The Architectural League and the Young Architects + Designers Committee hosted the portfolio competition, whose theme this year was "Overlay", six winners were invited to publicly present and showcase their work:

• Kutan Ayata and Michael Young, Young & Ayata
• Brooklyn Claus Benjamin Freyinger and Andrew Holder, The LADG, Los Angeles
• Adam Fure, SIFT Studio, Ann Arbor
• Thomas Kelley and Carrie Norman, Norman Kelley, Brooklyn and Chicago
• Jenny E. Sabin, Jenny Sabin Studio, Philadelphia
• Geoffrey von Oeyen, Geoffrey von Oeyen Design, Los Angeles

"The Young Architects + Designers Committee, a group selected each year from past winners of the League Prize, is responsible for developing the program’s theme and selecting competition jurors. This year’s committee members were Ajmal Aqtash, Beat Schenk, and Bryan Young.

They asked entrants to organize their work under the theme of Overlay, as the term 'directs—rather than merely reconstructs—process.'  They continued in the Call for Entries: 'We are interested in how overlay (iterative, conceptual, and notational) drives discourse, tension between iterations, design solutions, and the parameters by which work is reviewed. Overlay is unique to the designer; the techniques developed are activated overtime with layered meanings to push architectural concepts…Thus submissions might include interpretations of overlay that vary from process to presentation to product to shape and establish your identity as a young practice.' 

The 2014 jury consisted of Preston Scott Cohen, Evan Douglis, Florian Idenburg, Jennifer Lee, Charles Renfro, and Annabelle Selldorf. Anne Rieselbach, the League’s Program Director, oversees the program."

Scroll further down to learn more about the winners.

Kutan Ayata and Michael Young, Young & Ayata

"In 2008, Kutan Ayata and Michael Young co-founded Young & Ayata in order to “explore novel formal and organizational possibilities in architecture and urbanism.” The Brooklyn-based partnership is committed to experimentation, and views “the reality of contemporary building as a provocation to the progression of experiments in form, material, and technology.” The firm’s work consists of both commissions and experimental research, as they seek to engage “with contemporary cultural issues that influence and are influenced by our environment.” Recent projects include the competition scheme of an opera house in Busan, South Korea, and a conceptual master plan for the Aalto University Campus Center in Helsinki, Finland."

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Brooklyn Claus Benjamin Freyinger and Andrew Holder, The LADG, Los Angeles

"Established in 2004, The Los Angeles Design Group (The LADG), is led by principals Claus Benjamin Freyinger and Andrew Holder. The firm works at all scales, and has completed projects in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and the United Kingdom. The founders see their work as contributing to a “longer history of ideas,” and draw on this history to craft unexpected solutions to conventional problems. Recent projects include installations at the Taubman College Gallery at the University of Michigan, and several commercial interior renovations in New York and Santa Monica."

For further info about the winners, click here.

Adam Fure, SIFT Studio, Ann Arbor

"Adam Fure and his Ann Arbor design practice, SIFT Studio, enliven, in his words, 'old substances through new treatments; composing new aesthetic mixtures from the matter at [one’s] fingertips.' Through these experiments, SIFT Studio 'promotes architecture’s unique capacity to shape experience, which is neither essentialized nor thought to be static and singular.' Recent work includes a multimedia installation in Stuttgart, Germany, that transforms space, sound, and light into variable dimensions, and a conceptual mirror house that was a finalist for BOFFO Building Fashion’s Linda Farrow competition in 2013."

For further info about the winner, click here.

Thomas Kelley and Carrie Norman, Norman Kelley, Brooklyn and Chicago

"Thomas Kelley and Carrie Norman founded the Brooklyn- and Chicago-based design collaborative Norman Kelley in 2012. Through their work Kelley and Norman seek to 'vulgarize, satirize, and reposition (lofty) material to elevate the ordinary.' Recent projects include Wrong Chairs, in which they 'purposefully disrupt the notion of ‘correctness’ with stylized abstractions of the iconic Windsor Chair, and Shape Shape Evolution, an interior playhouse for the Early Learning Play Foundation in Chicago. Norman Kelley’s drawings for Ignacio Gonzalez will be exhibited at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale."

For further info about the winners, click here.

Jenny E. Sabin, Jenny Sabin Studio, Philadelphia

"Jenny E. Sabin, Principal and Founder of Philadelphia-based Jenny Sabin Studio, is an architectural designer, artist, and educator. Her work, in her own words, “investigates the intersection of architecture and science, and applies insights and theories from biology and mathematics to the design of material structures.” Past projects include Branching Morphogenesis, a three-dimensional “datascape” made up of 75,000 zip ties; Polymorph, a project exploring digital fabrication of ceramic form; and myThread Pavilion, a work commissioned by Nike Flyknit Collective. Last year Jenny Sabin Studio, in collaboration with ISA Architects, worked on a new 31-unit housing development in Francisville, Philadelphia."

For further info about the winner, click here.

Geoffrey von Oeyen, Geoffrey von Oeyen Design, Los Angeles

"Geoffrey von Oeyen is Founder and Principal of Los Angeles-based Geoffrey von Oeyen Design. His work, as he describes it, “mediate[s] between the existing and the new with the aim of reframing and redirecting existing views, patterns, and orientations.” Von Oeyen characterizes the relationship within each project as: “a dialogue that seeks to reveal essential geometric paradigms.” The practice has several projects in development across California, Texas, Georgia, and Puerto Rico. Two located in Malibu, California, the Horizon House and the Case Room, a private study for two attorneys, are due to begin construction this summer."

For further info about the winner, click here.

Each of the Prize winners will lecture and present their work in an exhibition this coming June. Their work will also be featured in a catalogue published by Princeton Architectural Press by spring 2015.