ACADIA Awards of Excellence

Inaugurated in 1998, the ACADIA Awards of Excellence represent recognition, by colleagues worldwide, of consistent contributions and impact on the field of architectural computing. Through 2005, awards were given in three categories: Teaching, Service, and Research. In 2006 an award was added in Emerging Digital Practice, and the prior three were renamed Teaching Excellence, Innovative Research, and Society. In 2007, an additional award for an innovative academic program was added to recognize individual or collective efforts in the establishment of an innovative academic program that contributes to the education of students in the field of digital design. At most, one award is presented each year in each category to an individual or academic program that, in the eyes of the review committee, exhibits “evidence of exceptional and innovative achievement.”

ACADIA Design Excellence Award

This award is given to exceptional architects, designers, and researchers who have made significant, innovative, and impactful contributions to the fields of architecture and computational design. The jury specifically cited: “Philip Beesley’s interdisciplinary explorations integrate the environment, technology and craft of responsive systems into a radically inventive body of work. His pioneering work at the intersections of design, technology, and culture engages with several dimensions of thought and practice that we believe are relevant to the ethos of the ACADIA community.” Philip will join us for an awards talk in Banff for the conference!

Philip Beesley

Philip Beesley is one of the global pioneers in living architecture design and research, widely known for his immersive “sentient” physical environments. Since his first experimental presentations, he has worked within collaborative groups. His 2010 Hylozoic Ground project has become a fixture across contemporary international architecture curricula. His current research focuses on the architectural implications of dissipative adaptation and biogenesis at the boundary between mineral and organic realms, revealing fertile qualities. His installations were presented twice at the Venice Biennale for Architecture and are currently touring Europe and Oceania. A multi-year collaboration with TU Delft reaches across multiple departments and research groups. His collaborations with haute couture designer Iris van Herpen have resulted in 15 collections. These far-reaching integrative probes include poetic expressions, elemental kits and pattern languages that are providing paradigms, tools and frameworks for the emerging discipline of living architecture.

He has created an interdisciplinary organization in the Living Architecture Systems Group connecting sixty organizations and 150 member researchers. He has contributed multiple innovative curriculum frameworks across architectural education and professional practice. Recognizing the depth of his polymath research-creation contributions, the University of Waterloo awarded Beesley the singular title of University Professor in 2023.

ACADIA Innovative Research Award of Excellence

This award recognizes innovative research that contributes to the field of digital design in architecture. The award distinguishes research with the potential to transform contemporary architecture. From the jury’s citation: “This award recognizes the significant contribution of Matias del Campo to the field of computational design research. His rigorous and captivating work spanning the areas of expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in architecture and design.”

Matias del Campo

Matias del Campo is an architect, designer, and theorist, currently serving as Director of the MS ACT program (Architecture, Computational Technology) and Associate Professor at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT). He co-founded SPAN in Vienna in 2003 with Sandra Manninger, establishing a practice renowned for integrating contemporary technologies in architectural production. SPAN's award-winning designs are shaped by the intersection of computational methodologies and philosophical interrogations, a conceptual framework they describe as "design ecology." Matias del Campo's innovative contributions have been recognized through prestigious awards, including the Accelerate@CERN fellowship and the AIA Studio Prize. His work is included in the permanent collections of notable institutions such as the FRAC, the MAK in Vienna, the Benetton Collection, and the Albertina. He has authored several books on AI and Architecture, such as “Neural Architecture” (ORO), “Diffusions” (Wiley), “Machine Hallucinations” (Wiley), and “Artificial Intelligence and Architecture” (Wiley).

ACADIA Teaching Award of Excellence

This award recognizes innovative teaching in the field of digital design in architecture. Teaching approaches that can be adopted by other educators are recognized in particular. From the jury’s citation: “This award recognizes Larry Sass’s impact as an educator and developer of innovative pedagogical approaches that center digital fabrication and making as an integral part of the design process.”

Larry Sass

Larry is a professor of Design Computation, a designer, and a researcher in the Department of Architecture at MIT. He is a pioneer in digital fabrication for housing and the founder of the MIT Design Fabrication Group. He has developed innovative courses that explore the relationship between the hand, eye, and computation in design. Larry believes that computers should enable anyone to manufacture a design with robots. A grand challenge for all designers has been the rapid modeling, digital fabrication, and automated assembly of mega-size products. His research lab group applies these methods to digitally producing affordable furniture and housing with CAD/CAM technologies. His physical/visual language provides opportunities for students and professionals to leverage ways to decompose a 3D form into constructible interlocking elements. He has built and exhibited his work at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and Sweden. Larry was one of a few MIT professors who assisted in developing a new university startup, the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Larry was also awarded the MacVicar Faculty Fellowship, the highest teaching award at MIT, in 2022.

ACADIA Society Award for Leadership

This award recognizes extraordinary contributions and service to the ACADIA community. From the jury’s citation: “This award recognizes the significant role that Andrew Kudless has played in ACADIA's leadership, and as a voice in the computational design community. Andrew is an exceptionally dedicated scholar whose many years as Technology Officer served to advance the organization.”

Andrew Kudless

Andrew Kudless is a designer based in Houston, Texas where he is the Bill D. Kendall Professor at the University of Houston’s Hines College of Architecture & Design as well as the Director of the Construction Robotics and Fabrication Technologies Lab (CRAFT Lab). In 2004, he founded Matsys, a design studio that pursues a trans-disciplinary and trans-scalar practice that blends art, design, architecture, and engineering. He holds a Master of Arts in Emergent Technologies and Design from the Architectural Association and a Master of Architecture from Tulane University. Kudless was a Fulbright Fellow in Kyoto, Japan. Matsys is the recipient of several awards including the 2019 AIA Honor Award for Architecture and a AIA Top Ten COTE Award in 2023, both for Confluence Park with Lake|Flato Architects. Kudless' work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the FRAC Centre in Orleans, France. In 2019, Kudless became the first American designer to contribute to Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades furniture collection.

ACADIA Digital Practice Award of Excellence

This award recognizes creative design work that advances the discipline of architecture through development and use of digital media. From the jury’s citation: "This award honors Fologram's significant contributions and innovations in digital architectural practice. The team’s pioneering work in the realms of extended reality (XR), computational design, and fabrication has resulted in groundbreaking tools that have transformed how designers and educators employ XR technologies in design and construction processes."

Fologram

Gwyllim Jahn, Cameron Newnham and Nick van den Berg are the co-founders of Fologram, a design research practice and technology startup developing software for designing and making in mixed reality. Fologram was born from a desire to expand the creative possibilities of architectural construction by extending rather than automating human skill and craftsmanship, and this agenda is explored through both the creation of tools and the production of experimental architectural installations. This design practice has been internationally awarded, including for the design and construction of the 2019 Tallinn Architecture Biennial Installation Competition. Fologram’s clients and partners are leading universities, multinational architectural firms, industrial designers, engineers and artists who are inventing new mixed reality applications for full scale construction, public art, architectural fabrication and design visualization.

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