Saying the winners of the 2021 AN Better of Design Awards

“The Amant Art Campus is a place where contemporary art and discourse live. It demanded a strong architecture, abstract in its context and cloaked with direct materials that have a sense of permanence. The poetry of the facades marks the passage of time each day with a treasury of shadows and light.”—Thomas Phifer

“This rec center has real charm and does real work. The undulating walls and roof squeeze the program onto a tight sight while maintaining heritage trees and opening clerestories on the interior, allowing lots of daylight into the basketball court.”—Aaron Seward

“Wouldn’t it be great if our urban furniture provided real necessities as opposed to saturating us with advertisements? Here’s a bus shelter that collects rainwater for irrigating plants, harvests solar energy for a charging station, and includes a community bulletin board and pantry in addition to furnishing shade and seating.”—Aaron Seward

“An unapologetic celebration of materials—raw industrial materials, timber, masonry, and stone—that are tied seamlessly throughout the new public and private spaces with abundant natural daylight.”—Jason Pugh

“This is the type of landscape project that is not looking for formal fireworks or ostentatious originality but defines—with controlled design ambitions—a sensitive and intelligent approach to a ubiquitous problem: the mowed-lawn-next-to-highway landscape.””—Wonne Ickx

“Often the architecture of infrastructure is at best an afterthought. This amazing District Energy Facility shows us both how and why design is essential to a livable environment.”—Carol Ross Barney

“The museum is a vessel of light—it contains and embodies the light of the day, amplifying the lyrical joining of art, place, and architecture. The facades capture and hold this ever-changing light. In the blink of an eye what was shadow becomes light, radically altering your physical relationship to the work.””—Thomas Phifer

“Nabi Boyd’s work is both precise and playful. The thoughtful approach to each project has a softness and ease with site while reimagining the terms of context and material.”—Anda French

“The displays reinforce the curatorial themes and beats, making fresh a graphic medium all but eclipsed by the cinematic success of its most tedious franchises.”—Samuel Medina

“The project has a beautifully eerie presence that seems to operate both on the level of visceral experience and conceptual clarity.”—Anda French

“This project offers both a compelling conceptual study in reassembled domestic organization and a set of thoughtful, cozy, real-life spaces.”—Anda French

“Plenty of tower projects pay lip service to addressing human and metropolitan scales without getting either right. This one seems to find the balance between big-city verticality and the comforts of home.”—Aaron Seward

“Balance is not the first thing about showrooms that comes to mind. Too often, these exhibition spaces bow to the pressures of saleability or, conversely, the consumer’s self-perception. ARO’s D.C. showroom gets its exactly right.”—Samuel Medina

“This is a big building, but it feels approachable and workable thanks to generous views and sunlight.”—Carol Ross Barney

“The playful, wonky massing admirably undercuts the severity of the revivalist architecture of its neighbor. But the best bits are to be found inside.”—Samuel Medina

“The Home Building at Taden School responds excellently to its context, and what a context: a Marlon Blackwell campus and nearby in the Ozarks the beautiful work of Fay Jones. The roof echoes the morphing sheds of Blackwell’s buildings, while the wooden slats on the facade and in the ceiling of the great hall recall Jones’s Thorncrown Chapel—a truly elevated rural vernacular.”—Aaron Seward

“Anchored by a spectacularly elegant stair surrounded by columnar supports that descend from a sculpted ceiling, the Waterline Club interior is a splendid display of design.”—Germane Barnes

“The vaulted forms, material detail, and framed views make this a stellar architectural proposal.”—Germane Barnes

“A laudatory solution to a tricky problem. The second-floor terrace and exposed circulation on the upper floors are particularly inspired.”—Samuel Medina

“The memorial, whose scheme appears slightly ponderous by day, really comes alive at night, thanks to the lighting design.”—Samuel Medina

“Masterful lighting that successfully accentuates program and space, both inside and out.”—Jason Pugh

“The vaulted forms, material detail, and framed views make this a stellar architectural proposal.”—Germane Barnes

“Although simple in their design, this house and accompanying ADU provided students with an excellent, mostly unparalleled opportunity. Not only did they engage with matters of construction, but also of zoning and sustainability.”—Samuel Medina

“[It shows] a way other than depression and anxiety to engage with the more terrifying aspects of the Anthropocene.”—Aaron Seward

“One of the great challenges of making theater buildings good neighbors is finding ways to wrap the program with an architectural expression that doesn’t overwhelm the surroundings with looming blank walls. This project does that admirably—the curved entryway and shifting planes of the envelope come together to create an eminently approachable and seductive building.”—Aaron Seward

“An endearing riff on the Chicago School, but form aside, the project’s underlying premise—to supply truly affordable housing in the heart of the Loop—deserves special attention.”—Germane Barnes

“Stark vertical geometries are a highlight of this very pink project, where the interior and exterior color palette provide a pleasant contrast with the natural scenery.”—Germane Barnes

“It’s impressive how this outré proposal conjures so many distinct atmospheres with so few materials. Whatever its eccentricities (the designer details the use of “water bladders”),  the project is a serious exploration in the life cycle of a building.”—Germane Barnes

“This study should be commended for its forward-thinking approach toward coastline development. One can imagine this scheme being repurposed as an affordable housing prototype.”—Samuel Medina

“Projects that dare to think beyond lot lines and that are willing to take on larger urban issues, codes and regulation, often sound a bit utopian or fantastical. On the contrary, ODA’s Beyond the Street brings a strong proposal to the table, backed up by a meticulous production and smart communication.”—Wonne Ickx