14th Annual R+D Awards

Society is confronting no shortage of crises, with climate change and housing access among the most critical. But the design community, undaunted, is responding with no shortage of thought-provoking ideas and new technologies, as evidenced by the 90 submissions to ARCHITECT’s 14th annual R+D Awards. Jurors Steve McDowell, FAIA, K.P. Reddy, and Ming Thompson, AIA, evaluated each entry’s potential to have a lasting, positive impact on the built environment and beyond—and its ability to, as Reddy put it, “iterate to something special.”

The resulting seven award winners have room to grow and scale while also “taking on fairly important and ordinary problems that the world is facing, or using data to help make better decisions for humanity,” McDowell says. Despite the challenges we face, Thompson says, “these projects are all hopeful about the future.”

JURY

Steve McDowell, FAIA, is director of design at BNIM, based in Kansas City, Mo. McDowell maintains that good design promotes the health and productivity of people and lifts the human spirit. His work is setting new standards in high performance design with projects such as the Omega Center for Sustainable Living, in Rhinebeck, N.Y; the Pacific Center Campus Development in San Diego, Calif. Under his leadership, BNIM received the AIA Firm Award in 2011.

K.P. Reddy is the CEO and founder of Shadow Ventures, a seed-stage tech investment firm based in Atlanta. An experienced entrepreneur, Reddy is a globally recognized authority in AEC, artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation. He is the author of two books, the most recent of which is What You Know About Startups Is Wrong (Lioncrest Publishing, 2018). Reddy is passionate about launching startups, raising investments, and leading exits.

Ming Thompson, AIA, is co-founder of Atelier Cho Thompson, a bicoastal multidisciplinary practice working between architecture, interiors, graphics, and strategy. A recipient of the AIA Young Architect Award in 2020, Thompson and her firm design beautiful and functional projects around the globe, build community around design, and promote equity within architecture.

• 14th Annual R+D Awards

  From 90 submissions, the jury picked seven entries that are scalable, thought-provoking, and promising in achieving a more equitable and healthy built environment.

  

• Award: ADUniverse, an App to Increase Housing Access

  University of Washington associate professor Rick Mohler and the city of Seattle senior planner Nick Welch created a prototype app to help local homeowners increase housing density by building accessory dwelling units.

  

• Award: Empathic Design Process Aims to Identify Successful Environments Through Data

  A bike trip across the Netherlands inspired lead engineer Mike Sewell and Gresham Smith's Studio X Innovation Incubator to improve design by quantifying emotional response.

  

• Award: InVert Self-Shading Windows Flip Energy Efficiency On Its Head

  TBM Designs, co-founded by thermobimetal innovator Doris Sung, is tucking a self-powered, kinetic solution within insulated glass units to reduce solar heat gain and glare into buildings.

  

• Award: Pathfinder, an App to Reduce Embodied Carbon in Landscape Design

  Designed and developed by CMG Landscape Architecture, the mobile app enables designers to approximate the impact of their projects' materials and maintenance on carbon emissions.

  

• Award: Stereoform Slab’s Optimized Structure Reduces Embodied Concrete

  Skidmore, Owings & Merrill developed an undulating "smart band beam" to support a concrete slab at half the thickness of a typical flat plate.

  

• Award: Walking Assembly Is Poetry and Structure in Motion

  Matter Design and cement producer CEMEX converted their shared fascination with "embedding intelligence into objects" into megalith units that are surprisingly maneuverable.

  

• Award: Zippered Wood Twists the Standard 2×4 to Craft New Forms

  Researchers at the University of British Columbia's HiLo Lab, University of Colorado, Denver's LoDo Lab, and HouMinn Practice push the potential of the ubiquitous wood member.