2025 Honor Awards

Collective power of design.

Online Gallery

The Call for Submissions closed on September 24, 2025 at 5pm PT. Check out the Online Gallery to view all 109 submissions to the Built, Conceptual, and Research & Innovation categories for the 2025 Honor Awards!

Live Event on November 3 at Town Hall Seattle

The Honor Awards for Washington Architecture is AIA Seattle’s annual marquee program, drawing hundreds of attendees to a lecture-style event of unique rigor and breadth. This nationally-recognized program provides an important opportunity for the design community to share and celebrate its achievements, both among practitioners and with the community at-large. The awarded projects will be announced on stage at the live event. Like last year, the Honor Awards will be livestreamed virtually, providing multiple access points and enabling us to extend these celebrations to broader audiences.

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The Jury Process

Every year, jurors praise submissions that clearly communicate the project story. What concepts and considerations drove the design? How did the design team creatively address the project parameters and client goals? What benefit or impact does the project create for its occupants and for the larger context? Ultimately, what makes this an award winning project? Submitters were encouraged to use the project narrative, captions, and inclusion of diagrams and process work as opportunities to tell a design story.

In addition to the jury’s own criteria, the AIA Seattle community has identified four considerations for the submission review process: Inspiration, Problem-Solving, Environmental Sensitivity, Social Impact. The integration of the Common App into the submission process also raises awareness of the Framework for Design Excellence.

Jury Deliberations will occur during Jury Weekend in Seattle, October 31 – November 3, 2025:

Friday, October 24 | The jury completes their initial review of all submitted projects.
- Site Visit Contacts must be reachable on Saturday, November 1 and authorized to organize a hosted site visit on Sunday, November 2.
- SITE VISITS ARE ANONYMOUS. The project design team shall not be present nor notified. Reference the Project Tour Guidelines for a full process overview.
Friday, October 31 | The jury arrives in Seattle
Saturday, November 1 | The jury deliberates and determines a shortlist of projects and prepares for project tours the next day.
Sunday, November 2 | Project tours occur, followed by the jury finalizing their selection of this year’s award recipients for all award categories.
Monday, November 3 | The jury will discuss and present their official award selections for the first time on-stage at the Live Event at Town Hall Seattle.

Awards are the final determination of the jury.

Alan Organschi | GOA Architecture | New Haven, CT | Alan Organschi is partner and principal at GOA, an architectural practice in New Haven, Connecticut recognized internationally for its integration of building design, construction, and environmental research. In 2021, Alan was appointed Director of Global Labs at the Bauhaus Earth in Berlin, Germany, an interdisciplinary initiative in regenerative building research and experimentation. He is a Senior Critic at the Yale School of Architecture where he teaches architectural design and building science and directs the Yale Building Lab. He has written and lectured extensively on the carbon storage benefits of biogenic material substitution and circular economic strategies in urban building. He is a co-author of CARBON: A Field Manual for Building Designers (Wiley 2022) and “Buildings As a Global Carbon Sink” published in Nature Sustainability in 2020. Alan was honored in 2012 for his design practice with an Architecture Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Armida Fernández | Estudio ALA | Guadalajara, MX | Armida is a Mexican architect and designer, co-founder of estudio ALA (est. 2012) with Luis Enrique Flores, based in Guadalajara. She holds a Master in Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a concentration in Risk and Resilience, and a background in Industrial Design from Tecnológico de Monterrey, with studies at Linköping University in Sweden. She has taught at Tecnológico de Monterrey and Wentworth Institute of Technology. Often designing for industrial and agricultural contexts, the firm, in its own words, seeks to “honor culture and tradition while still questioning the significance of programs, methodologies, and materialities.” Through built work and research, estudio ALA explores migrant spaces and pathways, emerging dwelling typologies, environmental sustainability, and reuse and reprogramming. Their work has been featured in the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018, 2021), nominated for the MCHAP.emerge Prize (2016, 2022), and recognized with the Jalisco Architecture Prize (2023) and Obra Award (2024) at the BIAU. In 2024, Fernández and Flores were named Emerging Voices by the Architectural League of New York. She has lectured at Harvard GSD, MIT, IIT, CCA San Francisco, Chiao Tung University (Taiwan), Veritas University (Costa Rica), and others.

Nader Tehrani | NADAAA | Boston, MA | For his “contributions to architecture as an art”, Nader Tehrani is the recipient of The American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the United States. With nineteen Progressive Architecture Awards, he is also an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Design, and recipient of the Design Visionary Award from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Tehrani is the Founding Principal of NADAAA, an interdisciplinary practice with works in infrastructure, urbanism, architecture, and installations. The former Head of the Department of Architecture at MIT (2010-14), Tehrani was also Dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union (2015-22). His work is featured in the permanent collections of the CCA and Nasher Museum, and NADAAA has been widely exhibited at MOMA, LA MOCA and the Venice Biennale.

Meet the Moderator

Moderator: Lauren Gallow | Independent Design Journalist, Editorial Advisor for ARCADE | Seattle, WA Lauren Gallow is a Seattle-based design journalist, editor, and educator. With a background in architectural history and a keen interest in how people live with design, she covers stories about art, design, and architecture for outlets around the world. A regular contributor to the Art & Design section of The New York Times, Lauren is also a columnist for Dwell and Luxe Magazine and has bylines in Architectural Digest, Interior Design, Metropolis, Wallpaper*, The Architect’s Newspaper, and more. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including first place in the Best of the West Journalism Contest. Lauren serves as Editorial Advisor for ARCADE, a local non-profit design platform founded in 1981, and she is a lecturer at the University of Washington’s Department of Architecture, where she teaches courses on writing and storytelling in the built environment. Currently, she is working on a book on contemporary Seattle homes which will be released Fall 2026.

Young Voices Selection

The Young Voices Selection (YVS) program aims to elevate and engage the voices of young designers through direct participation and representation in AIA Seattle’s Honor Awards for Washington Architecture. Three young designers (30 years of age or younger and/or have less than 5 years experience in the profession), endorsed by firm/industry leaders and selected by the Honor Awards Committee, will be given the opportunity to review, deliberate, and then select ONE Built project submission recognized as the “Young Voices Selection” at the Live Event.

WHO IS A ‘YOUNG’ VOICE?
The YVS program aims to reinforce the value of young perspectives considering both career experience and generational/lived experience. After leaving the creative hub and intellectual rigor of university, young people often find themselves without clear and direct avenues to participate in serious design discourse, though they are appreciated for their technical expertise. The Young Voices Selection program elevates young designers for their unique perspectives, and the YVS program establishes a sanctioned platform for these perspectives to be widely shared.

ELIGIBILITY + NOMINATION
Nominees for the Young Voices Selection Panel must be 30 years of age or younger and/or have less than 5 years experience in the profession and may not currently be enrolled in any undergraduate or graduate education programs.