The New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is its oldest and largest, with more than 5,500 members. Every year it celebrates outstanding work in New York City or by New York-based architects with the AIANY Design Awards, with the 2019 edition awarding projects ranging from living urban installations to mind-bending interiors.
To be eligible for the awards, the architects needed to either be based in New York or based elsewhere with projects in New York. The winners of the 2019 AIANY Design Awards earned their accolades across five categories: architecture, interiors, projects, urban design and sustainability. Beyond that, the jury made up of independent architects, critics, planners and educators also crowned one project Best in Competition.
Taking top honors was a technology campus for Tata Consultancy Services on a wooded site in Mumbai, India. The project by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners is made up of 12 individual buildings linked by shaded passageways to offer shelter from the relentless Mumbai heat and monsoon rains.
One particularly interesting project is an installation in New York City designed to explore the diverse ecosystems within cities that go largely unseen. Subculture: Microbial Metrics and the Multi-Species City by firm The Living is a project consisting of a building facade that hosts microbes, a biology lab for sequencing DNA from the facade and a visualization that compares the resulting biome to other urban biomes in New York City.
One of the more eye-catching projects comes from New York firm FXCollaborative, whose 35XV project is made up of a huge granite cubic base serving as education space for an adjacent high school, with a 19-story angular glass volume on top containing 55 luxury residential units.
The jury has awarded 27 projects in all, each receiving either an "Honor" or a "Merit." Jump on into the gallery to see them all.
Source: AIANY