Groundbreakers Awards: Meet the jury

Last week, we opened the nominations for Curbed’s second annual Groundbreakers Awards. This week, take a gander at the illustrious panel of judges who will be reviewing the entries. Reminder that nominations close on September 7, so don’t sleep on sending in those nominations for your favorite architect working today.

Frances Anderton

Host of ”DnA: Design and Architecture” on KCRW

@francesanderton (Twitter)

Since 2002, Frances Anderton has hosted “DnA: Design and Architecture,” exploring pressing design issues with users, critics, and design luminaries. Anderton writes on architecture and design for publications including Dwell, The New York Times, and KCET’s Artbound.

She’s a frequently published author, with books including Grand Illusion: A Story of Ambition, and its Limits, on LA’s Bunker Hill, based on a studio she co-taught with Frank Gehry at USC School of Architecture. Others include L.A. Now, with architect Thom Mayne, and two co-written books on architecture in Las Vegas.

Deborah Berke, FAIA, LEED AP

Dean, Yale School of Architecture

Principal, Deborah Berke Partners

@deborahberke (Twitter)

@deborahberkepartners (Instagram)

Deborah is the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, the first woman to hold the position. Berke is the founder of New York-based Deborah Berke Partners: Among the firm’s most significant works are the Marianne Boesky Gallery building in New York, the Irwin Union Bank in Columbus, Indiana, the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, the interior architecture and design of 432 Park Avenue in New York, and the 21c Museum Hotels across the South and Midwest.

Berke has won numerous design awards, like the inaugural Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Prize by the University of California, Berkeley, which is given to an architect who has advanced the position of women in the profession and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and the community. She was a founder and vice president of DesignNYC, a founding trustee of the Design Trust for Public Space, a trustee of the National Building Museum, chair of the board of advisors of the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, and vice president of the AIA New York Chapter.

Courtesy of Vishaan Chakrabarti

Vishaan Chakrabarti

Founder, PAU

@vishaannyc (Twitter)

Vishaan Chakrabarti founded PAU, a studio dedicated to the advancement of cities through cosmopolitan architecture and strategic urban planning, in 2015. Simultaneously, Chakrabarti is an Associate Professor of Practice at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation (GSAPP), where he teaches architectural design studios and seminars on urbanism.

His highly acclaimed book, A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America, argues that a more urban United States would result in a more prosperous, sustainable, joyous, and socially mobile nation. From 2012 to 2015, Vishaan was a principal at SHoP Architects where he co-led major architecture and urban design projects including the master plan and first building at the Domino Sugar site in Williamsburg, a new form of mixed-use, mixed-income urbanism.

Tom Kundig, FAIA

Principal, Olson Kundig

@olsonkundig (Twitter)

@olsonkundig (Instagram)

Over the past three decades, architect Tom Kundig has received some of the world’s highest design honors, from a National Design Award from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum to an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In addition to having received scores of design awards—including ten National Design Awards from the American institute of Architects—his work has appeared in hundreds of publications worldwide.

Kundig’s current and past work as part of Seattle-based design practice Olson Kundig can be found on five continents, including a World Heritage site in Dachstein, Austria. He has held numerous distinguished chairs and quest critic positions at the University of Southern California, Syracuse University, and Harvard University among others, and served as the John G. Williams distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture at the University of Arkansas.

Courtesy of Alexandra Lange

Alexandra Lange

Architecture critic, Curbed

@LangeAlexandra (Twitter)

@langealexandra (Instagram)

Alexandra Lange is an architecture and design critic whose essays, reviews, and features have appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times, T magazine, Dwell, Metropolis, and New York magazine. She taught architecture criticism in the Design Criticism Program at the School of Visual Arts and the Urban Design & Architecture Studies Program at New York University.

During academic year 2013–2014 she was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. For Curbed, she’s written about Ray Eames, population in cities, the wooden bleachers trend, architecture video games, her family’s design history, architecture in New Zealand, Jane Jacobs onstage, Dutch playground design, and much more.

Courtesy of Peter Marx

Peter Marx

Digital Director, Predix, GE Digital

Peter Marx comes to GE from his recent post as the first-ever Chief Innovation Technology officer for the city of Los Angeles, appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti. Under his tenure the City implemented the open data portal (#1 in the US), cyber intrusion command center (CICC), CityLinkLA (broadband), significant improvements in fire dispatch and control, partnerships with numerous technology providers, and the nation’s largest deployment of body-worn cameras for police officers.

LA was recognized as the #1 digital large city in 2014 and #2 in 2015 by GovTech / League of Cities. In positions at Qualcomm Labs, Mattel, and Universal Studios, Marx has spent his career writing software, working with technologies and technologists, and driving the state-of-the-art forward. Marx also holds the position of Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California.

Courtesy of Mabel O. Wilson

Mabel O. Wilson

Principal, Studio &

Professor, Columbia GSAPP

With an innate understanding that architecture doesn’t exist in a vacuum, Mabel O. Wilson navigates the fields of architecture, art, and cultural history in her multidisciplinary practice. Wilson is a Professor of Architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). She is the author of Begin with the Past: Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016) and Negro Building: African Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums (2012). Exhibitions of her work have been featured at the Art Institute of Chicago, Istanbul Design Biennale, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s Triennial. She was recently named a YBCA 100, an annual list of inspirational creative minds by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.