Typically this magazine focuses on extraordinary work by established professionals, but even the most famous architects start somewhere. The new Studio Prize recognizes a quieter, yet equally significant force in architecture: the studio course. The bedrock of architecture education, studios allow future generations of architects to learn through action, explore the central issues of architectural practice, and take risks with relative impunity. Studios also serve as a research lab for instructors, who craft design problems for their students that will push conceptual boundaries and test pragmatic hypotheses.

This year’s Studio Prize jury comprised three noted practitioners with exceptional academic credentials: Jeanne Gang, FAIA; Jimenez Lai; and Bernard Tschumi, FAIA. After reviewing 152 submissions from more than 80 schools, the jurors chose six courses for recognition and a share of the $25,000 purse provided by the program’s sponsor, Sloan. One winner received the Sloan Award, which celebrates thoughtful takes on sustainability. The cash goes to those students whose work the instructors chose to submit; no more than five projects per course were admissible.

Overall, the work showcased in these pages reflects the innovation and foresight of seven educators and 47 students, and provides a glimpse into the formation of ideas that will define architecture in the coming decades.

Studio Prize

Good Grids
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
School of Architecture and Planning

Ottawa: You’re So Vanier
Carleton University
Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism

Hybrid Residential Infrastructures in Rio de Janeiro: Urban Occupations & Typological Corrections
Columbia University
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Graphic Novels/Novel Architecture
Kent State University
College of Architecture & Environmental Design

The Radical and The Preposterous: Mind the Gap
University of Michigan
A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

Sloan Award

School Without Classrooms: Micro-Weather Futures of Education Technology
Columbia University
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation

Judges

Jeanne Gang, FAIA, is the founder of Chicago-based Studio Gang Architects and a MacArthur Fellow. She has taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology and at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Rice, and Columbia universities.

Jimenez Lai is the founder of Bureau Spectacular in Los Angeles, a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Citizens of No Place: An Architectural Graphic Novel (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012).

Bernard Tschumi, FAIA, is the founder of his eponymous New York– and Paris-based firm. He was dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia from 1988 to 2003 and remains a professor there.