The Year of Meh: It’s the 2024 Architecture and Design Awards
By Mark Lamster, Alexandra Lange & Carolina A. Miranda
Better late than never? By now you’ve scrolled through a dozen annual awards with tasteful, oh-so-thoughtful selections. Another fancy house? Boooring. Another chic boutique. Snooze. Another monochromatic gridded curtain wall. Yadda yadda yadda. Not us! We know what you really want, and for the fifteenth consecutive year (in starchitect time, that’s four monographs, three marriages, and two me-too scandals) we bring you our own no-holds-barred scorecard of all that made us happy and sad in 2024. You might think, in a year in which two of the biggest Oscar-bait films were about architects (listen to our podcast about them here or here!), that the IRL architecture itself would be scene-stealing, dramatic, *magnetic* and yet — not so much.
And now, the fake awards:
Best Legislation: Despite some of the worst governance, at every level, New York has seen in a regrettably short time — Congestion pricing lives!
They Are a Monument Lifetime Achievement Award: In Stardust, Jim Venturi tells the story of his parents, Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, showing what a genuine architectural partnership looks like.
Your Junk Is Our Treasure Prize: Speaking of films on architectural duos, don’t miss We Start with the Things We Find on Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano of LO-TEK, the only architects we trust with shipping containers.
Design Obsolescence Award: To Charli XCX’s brat album cover, which set off a worldwide cascade of memes and imitations with nothing more than lowercase Arial and Pantone 3507C.
Regionalism Returns Trophy: Airports have long been shorthand for no-place. Portland (OR)’s new airport terminal, by ZGF, puts all the PNW cliches in a blender and returns with a space that is actually a joy to arrive at.
I 🖤 Brutalism Award: Boston will landmark not one but two of its brutalist treasures: Kallmann & McKinnell’s City Hall and Paul Rudolph’s Blue Cross Blue Shield tower. Bravo.
Unfulfilled Promise Cup: In other Rudolph news, the Met’s overhyped exhibition on the architect had nice drawings (how could it not?) but was a major disappointment.
Hands Off the Merchandise Plaque: Praying NYC landmarks the interior of one of The Brutalist’s inspirations, the former Whitney Museum by Marcel Breuer, before it becomes a Sotheby’s showroom.
Call it a Comeback Spire: The reopening of Notre Dame in Paris, which not only looks glorious, but through its restoration helped keep medieval building techniques alive.
Arthur Fonzarelli Keeping It Cool Prize: Nicola Twilley’s Frostbite showed how the world is shaped by refrigeration.
Least Exciting Erection: Foster + Partners’s 270 Park, a late 20th century High Tech, high awkward retread that should have been left in the past.
Rice-a-Roni Bowl: Better: their chic-ification of William Perreira’s Transamerica Pyramid San Francisco.
Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cup: Jean-Louis Cohen on Paulo Mendes da Rocha: two (sadly departed) great tastes that taste great together.
Making the Most out of Nothing Trophy: LOHA’s Isla Intersections, took a dire triangle of unused municipal land near a massive freeway intersection and turned it into a 54-unit supportive housing complex. Extra environmental points for transforming a grimy access road into a pleasant bike lane.
Gift That Keeps Giving: Why should performing arts centers and museums have all the fun? The latest sparkly box is Snohetta’s Far Rockaway branch library in Queens, which packs a lot of pizzazz onto a small site.
Stick with Your Bullshit Booby Prize: Morphosis claimed its new museum at UT Dallas was modelled on the Texas landscape. A year later, the same design was inspired by Asian art. Keep to your story, even if it’s nonsense.
The Flaming Dumpster Commemorative Plaque: The fucking Cybertruck.
The Flaming Dumpster Commemorative Plaque, (Dis)Honorable Mention: Jaguars used to be cool and distinctive. Now they look like everything else, and the company’s new identity is an Internet joke. Also, this is America and we say “Jag-Waar,” not “Jag-You-Are,” you pompous gits.
Good for Women in Architecture Award: Yale Architecture dean and TenBerke founder Deborah Berke wins the AIA Gold Medal.
Monument of the Eternal Flame: Alissa Walker’s essential newsletter, Torched, is about everything urban planning-related that L.A. is getting right and wrong (mostly wrong) in the run up to the ’28 Olympics.
X-Acto of Doom: Thom Mayne and L.A.’s A+D Museum launched “Of the Moment,” a design publication that gives air to single family houses and oodles of form-making. Instead of articles, you’ll find “conversations,” because pesky critics have a habit of getting in the way.
New Media Award: To comedian Dan Rosen, whose Reels / TikToks skewering Architectural Digest’s cover girls are much more fun than the magazine.
Good Neighbor Seal of Approval: Leers Weinzapfel’s net-zero Davis Center at Williams College deftly fits into a tricky site, and its striking asymmetric profiles look great.
Sorority Sister Twister Chalice: Destinee Wilson, who breaks down the designers — and price tags — of every look sported during Bama Rush. This is community service.
Forever Young Prize: To Kansas City’s The Rabbit Hole, the first museum of children’s books, so wildly fun who even needs a screen.
Capitalism Happened Here Memorial Trophy: MIN Design took an intriguingly light touch in their redo of a Late Modern bank branch for the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco. Walls remain unfinished and the vault untouched, but you’ll still find stylish touches like plywood modular furniture that lets the wood grain pop.
Mark Twain Quill: To Jeremy Markovich’s newsletter North Carolina Rabbit Hole, where he tracks down 1970s skater girls, explains what’s up with Cook Out, and other things of a fascinating hyperlocal nature.
Ding Dong It’s Dead Decoration: The ridiculous $1 billion people mover that would have moved riders less than two miles from LA Metro to SoFi Stadium — destroying parts of Inglewood in the process — has been mercifully shelved. Hint to Inglewood City Council: Dedicated bus lanes.
Metro Station That Coulda Been a Set on Dune Prophecy Parchment: Zaha Hadid Architects’ King Abdullah Financial District metro stop in Riyadh.
The Henry Clay Frick Gilded Revolver for Terrible Labor Conditions: NEOM, in Saudi Arabia, home to suicide, gang rape, death.
Donald Judd Jug: Urban waterfront parks have thankfully become something of a cliche. But the crisp, minimalist and generous Promenade Champlain in Quebec City, by Daoust Lestage, shows there are still some new tricks.
Active Mobility Ribbon: Chilean president Gabriel Boric rolling up to La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago on his bicycle.
Leave that one off the Resume Prize: Kenzo Tange’s palace for the Assads of Syria, now a looted ruin. Good riddance?
Charles Garnier Stairs are for Climbing Prix d’Honneur: The scalloped glass facade of SOM’s Schwarzman College of Computing at MIT is swanky, but we really appreciated Colin Koop’s inventive alternative to the over-done bleacher stair.
The Year’s Most Devastating Infographic: Forensic Architecture captures the destruction of Gaza in a single animated graphic.
Ready for My Glow Up Memorial Palette: With their renovation of the Hilbert Museum, Johnston Marklee have made a great art space out of what was once a pair of unremarkable tilt-up concrete buildings. Bonus: a new courtyard framed by a rescued mosaic mural by Millard Sheets.
Spiderwoman Commemorative Plaque: Janet Echelman’s installation of suspended fiber webs brought color and fluttery movement to a new park in the Dallas ‘burbs.
The Lizzo It’s About Damn Time Award: After years as a ruin porn icon, Michigan Central Station in Detroit roars back to glorious life.
Most Memorable Interior: The Monrovia motel room that the narrator of Miranda July’s best-selling All Fours has redecorated — dramatizing how personal, sexual and psychological decor can be.
Don’t Trust the Process Prize: Philadelphia decides not to landmark its modernist Roundhouse Police HQ. Boo.
Best Home Movies: Amie Siegel’s mesmerizing meditation on the politics of wallpaper and PIN-UP’s moving portrait of queer domesticities in the Smithsonian Design Triennial.
Anni Albers Memorial Medal: To the top-notch textile shows, including Weaving Abstraction at the Met, Woven Histories at the National Gallery, Melissa Cody at PS1, and Wall Power! at the Clark that finally (you can do it!) put the whole art-vs-craft debate to rest.
The Ducking Stool Award: To MoMA, for its simplistic Crafting Modernity exhibition, which purported to tell the story of design in Latin America through a collection of bougie chairs.
Golden Level for Most Impressive Installation Design: The de Young’s Tamara de Lempicka exhibition, which uses fabric and textured wooden paneling to give museum galleries a glamorous Deco vibe.
Buzzer Beater: To the Paris Summer Olympics, shocking the (design) world with speedy transportation planning, punchy color choices, and championship-level use of historic architecture.
The Monolith of Urban Decay: Downtown L.A.’s Oceanwide Plaza, an unfinished $1 billion megadevelopment, is now the city’s most prominent fame wall for graffiti artists.
Arise Ye Workers Sash of Utopia: The exhibition “How to Design a Revolution” resurfaced fascinating design history from Chile’s socialist era, including a computational command room that looked straight out of Star Trek. Plus, the smart catalog is available in English!
Most Unexpected Dating Guru: Christopher Alexander. Or maybe not — there is a whole pattern (187) for the marriage bed.
Never Too Much Democracy Ballot: The Salon des Refusees for the Illinois State Flag competition is, as always, greater than whatever Lincoln-stars-sun combo the commission finally chooses. There’s Frank Lloyd Wright! There’s a hot dog with a symbolic 21 poppyseeds! There’s type-only that should have been more brat.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Award: After an uncertain future, Albert Frey’s Aluminaire House has found a permanent home at the Palm Springs Art Museum. But you can’t go in it. And don’t even think about touching its metal suface in the scorching desert sun.
Eat the Rich Award: Dallas billionaire Andy Beal demolished a historic mansion to build an even bigger mansion — for the second time.
Worst Hero Worship: Megalopolis, The Brutalist, AND 99 Percent Invisible’s Year of The Power Broker. Guys, just put the tortured genius to rest.
IN MEMORIAM
Elizabeth Felicella, Fredric Jameson, Patricia Johanson, Victor Lundy, James Magee, Fumihiko Maki, Gaetano Pesce, Antoine Predock, Joseph Rykwert, Richard Serra, Janice Shimizu, Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, Yoshio Taniguchi, Sim Van der Ryn
Yours truly,
Mark Lamster is the architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News and author of The Man in the Glass House. You can find him on Instagram and Bluesky.
Alexandra Lange is a design critic and author of Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall. She can be found @langealexandra on Instagram and Bluesky.
Carolina A. Miranda is an independent culture writer based in Los Angeles. She is @cmonstah on Bluesky and Instagram.