Community Design Center Framework Plan Wins Green Good Design Award, Great Places Award

The Framework Plan for a Riverine Commons and Institute for the Watershed Conservation Resource Center has received both a 2023 Green Good Design Sustainability Award and an Honorable Mention for Place Planning in the 2023 Great Places Awards.

The framework plan was developed by the U of A Community Design Center and its partners and was based on the Watershed Conservation Resource Center's vision for a 98-acre property that was purchased for conservation and water quality protection. The Arkansas Archeological Survey, City of Fayetteville, an Osage Nation citizen and the NWA Black Heritage organization provided input for the plan.

This award-winning project is aimed at transforming a long-neglected corner of Fayetteville. Only minutes from the heart of the city, the site is composed of the West Fork of the White River, natural wetlands and historic prairie — key ecological and cultural resources present in the region's past.

The Green edition of Good Design, sponsored by the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, represents new international products, buildings, construction and planning projects that are leading the way globally to sustainable and compatible design. This year, hundreds of designs and projects were submitted from more than 42 nations. Throughout the more than 70 years of the award, the Good Design award has been given to everything from a NASA spaceship to a paper clip.

The EDRA Great Places Awards, sponsored by the Environmental Design Research Association and Project for Public Spaces, are unique among programs that honor professional and scholarly excellence in environmental design. The awards seek to recognize work that combines expertise in design, research and practice, and that contributes to the creation of dynamic, humane places that engage people's attention and imagination.

The U of A Community Design Center, directed by Steve Luoni since 2003, is an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Luoni is also Distinguished Professor of architecture and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies at the university. The center's staff also has written a book about watershed urbanism.

"This Framework Plan for a new river institute in Arkansas orchestrates watershed stewardship through a unique mix of educational, recreational and heritage experiences," Luoni said. "Our planning collaboration with the Watershed Conservation Resource Center and the Arkansas Archeological Survey foregrounds the emergent interest in food anthropology and other ways in which different populations civilized riparian systems. On-site river institutes beyond research centers are uncommon in the U.S. We are most fortunate in Northwest Arkansas to have the WCRC and their vision for a cultural offering in a river institute."

Under the Community Design Center plan, extensive remediation will undo decades of damage from urban encroachment, while new facilities and installations will create a unique interpretive landscape and reveal hidden layers of heritage. An elegant visitors center — including full-size reconstructions of settler, Native American and early African American housing types — will showcase the diverse social history of the Ozark waterways.

Elsewhere, winding paths will cut through dense patches of indigenous plants and gardens featuring traditional agriculture, recalling the area as it was before European settlement. A bird blind tower will loom on the water's edge, beckoning visitors onward to a first-hand encounter with Arkansas' winged wildlife.

In the schematic design portion of the work, the collaborators looked at the development of a boat livery and intercity water trail on the West Fork of the White River flowing through the site. The master plan incorporates a new spur of the nearly 40-mile Razorback Regional Greenway and secondary trails displaying information about Native American land-use practices through the design of outdoor exhibit assemblies.

The plan includes a celebration of food as technology through an array of gardens: the Rice Garden, the Native American Garden, the African American Garden and the Euro-American Garden. The site also will be a haven for plant species native to the Ozarks region, providing locals the opportunity to reimagine how they landscape their own properties.

Luoni and the Community Design Center staff collaborated on this project with Sandi Formica, co-founder and executive director of the Watershed Conservation Resource Center in Fayetteville, who is an authority on design-build restoration of river, wetland and riparian landscapes; Matthew Van Epps, co-founder and associate director of the resource center, who specializes in anthropogenic processes affecting watershed resources, river restoration design and implementation, and engineer landscape restoration strategies; and Jami Lockhart, Ph.D., archeologist at the Arkansas Archeological Survey and a prominent author on Arkansas history, who oversees the development of programmatic content on Indigenous and settler lifeways and agricultural practices for exhibit on the trail system.

"The WCRC's vision for the River Commons and Institute is to create a place where people can connect to the environment, cultural diversity and outdoor recreation through the site's riverine landscape and training center," Formica said. "Integrating the site's rich cultural history of Native American, African American and subsistence settler populations with the local ecology, river and wetlands can create a deeper understanding of the importance of our natural resources in our daily lives and our connection to each other. This effort is bringing together a 'River Coalition' of partners that will promote inclusiveness and diversity for this significant place. I'm grateful to Steve and his team at the UACDC, along with our partners, for creating an innovative framework plan for this vision to take root in Northwest Arkansas."

This project occurred over three years, Luoni said, and a robust group of Fay Jones School students in a fall 2022 design studio was involved in the preparation of the final master plan.

The Community Design Center was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant to support the creation of the master plan. The property is co-owned by the Watershed Conservation Resource Center and the City of Fayetteville.

Earlier this year, the Framework Plan received a citation in the 2023 Progressive Architecture Awards.

Winning projects for the 2023 Green Good Design Awards will be featured on the Chicago Athenaeum museum's website and published in European Centre's annual book on the awards.

The project was also exhibited and featured with other winners during EDRA54 Mexico City UNAM June 20-23. 

U of A Community Design Center's Framework Plan Honored in Progressive Architecture Awards

The Framework Plan for a Riverine Commons and Institute for the Watershed Conservation Resource Center has received a citation in the 2023 Progressive Architecture Awards. The plan was developed by the U of A Community Design Center and its partners.

The Framework Plan was one of 10 projects from the United States, Canada, Poland and Uganda recognized — through two awards, five merits and three citations — out of more than 100 submitted projects.

Now in its 70th year, the Progressive Architecture (P/A) Awards recognize unbuilt projects demonstrating overall design excellence and innovation. The P/A Awards are a gauge of design innovation and future trends in architecture and urbanism. Whether through reimagining housing, healthcare facilities or cultural spaces, the honorees reinforce the critical role architects play in making communities more vibrant, according to Architect Magazine. This year's winning projects were published in the March issue. 

The U of A Community Design Center, directed by Steve Luoni since 2003, is an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Luoni is also Distinguished Professor of architecture and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies at the university. The center's staff also has written a book about watershed urbanism.

"The Framework Plan operates at the intersection of anthropology, ecology and design in developing a lasting and robust riverine knowledge fund across space and time," Luoni said. "We are honored and thrilled that the work has won a P/A award — a much coveted industry award."

The Framework Plan is aimed at transforming a long-neglected corner of Fayetteville. Only minutes from the heart of the city, the site comprises 98 acres of threatened natural wetlands, a key ecological and cultural resource present in the region's past.

"The river institute is an emerging concept in environmental design, and we are fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with visionary ecologists and engineers at the Watershed Conservation Resource Center in conceiving this unique project," Luoni said. "We are doubly fortunate to have this kind of eco-cultural asset in our own backyard. River institutes integrate riparian ecology with culture, heritage and science in an accessible environment that promotes public education and watershed stewardship. Heritage landscapes with outdoor exhibitions will interpret the riparian lifeways of Native American, African American and Euro-American settler populations who foraged and cultivated food and fiber along the region's waterways."

Under the Community Design Center plan, extensive remediation will undo decades of damage from urban encroachment, while new facilities and installations will create a unique interpretive landscape and reveal hidden layers of heritage. An elegant visitors center — including full-size reconstructions of settler and early African American housing types — will showcase the diverse social history of the Ozark waterways.

Elsewhere, winding paths will cut through dense patches of indigenous plants and gardens featuring traditional agriculture, recalling the area as it was before European settlement. A bird blind tower will loom on the water's edge, beckoning visitors onward to a first-hand encounter with Arkansas' winged wildlife.

In the schematic design portion of the work, the collaborators looked at the development of an intercity water trail and a boat livery on the West Fork of the White River flowing through the site. The master plan incorporates a new spur of the nearly 40-mile Razorback Regional Greenway and secondary trails displaying information about Native American land-use practices through the design of outdoor exhibit assemblies.

The plan includes a celebration of food as technology through an array of gardens: the Rice Garden, the Native American Garden, the African American Garden and the Euro-American Garden. The site will also be a haven for plant species native to the Ozarks region, providing locals the opportunity to reimagine how they landscape their own properties.

The awards jury commended the plan's management of the property's natural features.  

"It has a strong environmental agenda, but it also includes a lot of public space. You rarely see [that combination] with these restorative projects," Lawrence Scarpa, jury member, said.

Luoni and the Community Design Center staff collaborated on this project with Sandi Formica, co-founder and executive director of the Watershed Conservation Resource Center (WCRC) in Fayetteville, who is an authority on design-build restoration of river, wetland and riparian landscapes; Matthew Van Epps, co-founder and associate director of the WCRC, who specializes in anthropogenic processes affecting watershed resources, river restoration design and implementation, and engineer landscape restoration strategies; and Jami Lockhart, Ph.D., archeologist at the Arkansas Archeological Survey and a prominent author on Arkansas history, who oversees the development of programmatic content on Indigenous and settler lifeways and agricultural practices for exhibit on the trail system.

This project occurred over three years, Luoni said, and a robust group of Fay Jones School students in a fall 2022 design studio was involved in the preparation of the final master plan.

The Community Design Center was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant to support the creation of the master plan. The property is co-owned by the Watershed Conservation Resource Center and the city of Fayetteville.

This year's Progressive Architecture Award jury members were Carrie Byles, FAIA, managing partner at SOM in San Francisco and Seattle; DK Osseo-Asare, co-founder and principal at Low Design Office in Austin, Texas, and Tema, Ghana; and Lawrence Scarpa, FAIA, co-founder at Brooks + Scarpa in Hawthorne, California.

Fay Jones School Faculty-Led Projects Net 2022 'Architect's Newspaper' Best of Design Awards

Several Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design faculty and their projects were recognized in the 2022 AN Best of Design Awards. The annual competition is sponsored by The Architect's Newspaper.

The honored projects were designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, the professional architecture practice of U of A professor Marlon Blackwell, and the U of A Community Design Center, an outreach program of the Fay Jones School directed by U of A professor Steve Luoni.

In addition, Somewhere Studio, the professional architecture practice of U of A professors Jessica Colangelo and Charles Sharpless, received an honorable mention for the Young Architects Award.

The AN Best of Design Awards is a premiere North American awards program open to design professionals for interiors, buildings, landscape, urbanism and installations in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

The Marygrove Early Education Center in Detroit, designed by Marlon Blackwell Architects, was the winner in the Education—Kindergarten, Primary, High School category and was also a finalist for the project of the year. The ARK: Rural Botanical Garden for Arkansas, designed by the Community Design Center, was the winner in the Unbuilt—Landscape, Urban Design and Master Plan category.

Blackwell, FAIA, Distinguished Professor and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture in the Fay Jones School, has taught at the U of A since 1992. He is the recipient of the 2020 AIA Gold Medal. Steve Luoni, Distinguished Professor, is also the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies in the Fay Jones School. Colangelo is an assistant professor of architecture, and Sharpless is an assistant professor of interior architecture and design, both in the Fay Jones School.

Marygrove Early Education Center

The Marygrove Early Education Center is a state-of-the-art early childhood education center located on the campus of the former Marygrove College in the Livernois-McNichols district of northwest Detroit. It is the first new building on the campus in decades, one specifically built to house early childhood programs to benefit the surrounding neighborhood, which has suffered from an array of economic and education problems related to the decline of Detroit.  

The center supports 150 students up to age 5 from local neighborhoods, which reflects the diversity of the community. The center extends the legacy of the now closed Marygrove College as a beacon of education and contributes to its ongoing efforts to revitalize the surrounding neighborhood.

"This project excels in all dimensions. The mat building strategy produces a low-slung, child-scaled building that forms a hinge between the existing built environment and the natural context," said Ron Stelmarski, jury member for the 2022 AN Best of Design Awards. "The porosity and subtle shaping of the broad form were defining characteristics that stood out to the jury. Pocket-park courtyards dropped into the mass appear very effective in providing safe and sheltered exposure to nature while allowing daylight to modify the quality of interior spaces."

The center serves families and provides a safe, nurturing and inspiring environment for children to grow socially, physically and intellectually. It also offers a place for children to experience the rhythm of the days and seasons, inspiring their imaginations, empowering them to learn through play and creativity. It imparts dignity, grace and joy to the children, families and community members whom the center serves.

"This was a great opportunity to imagine with Kresge and our community partners the impactful and empowering presence of an educational facility and sanctuary that equals the aspirations of its curriculum and mission," Blackwell said. "The Marygrove EEC is a befitting catalyst for life-long learning for the young students and families who attend and will attend the school over the years to come." 

The ARK: Rural Botanical Garden for Arkansas

The ARK: Rural Botanical Garden for Arkansas is the centerpiece of new hospitality and eco-tourism landscapes under development at Cherokee Village, a rural mid-century planned community in the Ozarks. Legacy woodland-wildflower prairie planting assemblages once dotting the managed pre-Columbian landscape of the region are recalled in this now woodland-only ecosystem. Clearings at the scale of urban blocks are created to house a series of botanical rooms carved into the dense forest cover. Inverted pyramidical rooms negotiate visitor passage along the steep terrain paralleling the drama of nearby Mississippian Mound Builder earthworks that landmark flatter terrain.

"The idea of outdoor rooms that harken back to their ecological history and purpose is artfully imagined in this assemblage," said James Burnett, jury member for the 2022 AN Best of Design Awards. "The backdrop of dense forest is used to great effect here, especially as the rooms are imagined at great height with hanging gardens and a zipline."

Perception of the wood-screened structures are constantly shifting between monumentality and transparency in accordance with the visitor's movement. Interactions among screened rooms, organic plant assemblages, steep slopes and forest cover create a parallax that simultaneously upholds and denies the garden's monumental scale. This place-based asset provides informal and formal event space presently missing in this bedroom community.

"As Cherokee Village re-envisions its future, a community exclusively structured around suburban residential land use, we are introducing place-based civic projects that amplify new kinds of living arrangements," Luoni said. "Camp meetings and summer resorts prevalent in early Ozark urban development hold key lessons for integrating work, leisure, heritage and sociable forms of living. Our expansion of John Cooper's vision for this forest-and-lake community includes development of botanical experiences as a connective network linking lakefront neighborhoods."

Young Architects Award

The Architect's Newspaper recognized Somewhere Studio with the Young Architects Award honorable mention for their focus on public space design projects that explore new strategies for space activation and material reutilization, including Salvage Swings (2019), The Shelter Project (2021) and Mix and Match (2022).

"We are honored that the jury recognized this series of small yet impactful projects that we have had the privilege of developing through conversations and making with the community of students, staff and faculty at the Fay Jones School," Colangelo and Sharpless said. "We look forward to continuing this design research in 2023 with a public space installation in Columbus, Indiana, as Exhibit Columbus University Design Research Fellows."

Colangelo and Sharpless' work provides opportunities for community engagement and conversation through their programming that seeks to activate urban spaces. In their past projects, some of these active elements include swing sets, pantries, rainwater harvesting, bus shelters, seating, musical performances and screen-printing presses.

Additionally, their work critically considers the built environment's material geography by demonstrating novel uses of building construction by-products or "waste" material in the project's fabrication, assembly and re-use. The projects presented for this awards jury used discarded shipping pallets, facilitator lumber and steelyard scrap metals in their construction.

By overlaying playful programming and experimental material strategies into temporary structures in the public realm, these designers' work aims to generate awareness, imagination and rethinking of the often-abstract lifecycles of material consumption and disposal that form the human relationships between the natural and built environments.

The Plan Award 2022 International Winners Include U of A Community Design Center Project

A U of A Community Design Center project has won in The Plan Award 2022, an international design awards program recognizing excellence in architecture, interior design and urban planning.

"Cultural Mappings of Cherokee Village, Arkansas" won the Special Projects category. Sponsored by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Our Town grant and the city of Cherokee Village, these mappings support a separate master plan commissioned by the 23-square-mile rural planned community developed in 1955 in north central Arkansas.

Design for the project was led by the U of A Community Design Center, an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the university. Steve Luoni, Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies, is the director of the center.

"Surprisingly, mapping revealed a far more diverse and complicated set of underlying influences than is evident in Cherokee Village's current environment," Luoni said. "These influences are helping us as urban designers to shape new development possibilities for a cultural landscape where decline has followed the passing of its first generation of property owners over 40 years ago. New insights into Cherokee Village's past gained from cultural mapping — like, there were no Cherokee in Cherokee Village — put designers in a better position to ask: What do we do with complex cultural issues? The mapping led us to focus on new kinds of hospitality landscapes as a planning approach to engage a wider range of development possibilities in the village."

Urban designers rarely get the opportunity to stage a deep dive into the cultural forces shaping a place before preparing plans, Luoni said. For this project, the U of A Community Design Center explored memory and heritage surrounding the development of Cherokee Village as a place through the discursivity, conversation and debate central to cultural mapping and its participatory-based forms of inquiry. The project moved beyond viewing the map simply as object or artwork to using mapping as a process that is aimed to make visual the cultural implications and impacts of community development seen, unseen and forgotten. Formulation of the content was a collective and collaborative inquiry among residents, community organizations, artists, folklorists, historians, architects, landscape architects and urban designers.

"It has been a pleasure working with Steve Luoni and the entire Community Design Center staff on this grant," said Jonathan Rhodes, community developer for Cherokee Village, Arkansas. "The center's team has done a remarkable job capturing the historic and cultural layers that shaped Cherokee Village's development. As one of the first of its kind in the nation, Cherokee Village became a model for many other communities across the state, region and nation. Cherokee Village has endeared itself to countless families who have been fortunate to claim it as their special place in the Ozarks. The center's mapping and design work is critical to helping us celebrate and understand our past while also informing future conversations about how we want to evolve as a community. Congratulations to the Community Design Center for being a true asset to Arkansas and for this well-deserved award."

The design team used a "deep map" to sketch a memoir of Cherokee Village. The project cuts across dominant and minor histories, shedding light on the diminishing returns in modern suburban approaches to land development. Influences from indigenous, camp and settler frontier traditions played a formative role in shaping at least the aspirations of John Cooper, who developed Cherokee Village in the mid-20th century.

The research describes the interconnectedness of landscapes, histories and social geographies of the Arkansas Ozarks surrounding one of America's first planned retirement‐based recreational communities. The series of 54 digital drawings integrates maps, folklore materials, archival sources and photographs with new drawings, outlining synchronic cultural frameworks that shaped Cherokee Village. The community elected to focus on the intersections among five cultural frameworks: Native American heritage, Ozark pioneer and folk heritage, camping and scouting, midcentury planned communities, and regional modernism in design and planning.

Cultural mapping is nearly absent in American planning, yet this critical cartography raises controversial public-interest issues such as cultural appropriation of Native American heritage and the absence of social diversity in midcentury modern communities. Cultural mapping unlocks lost potential in alternative land development and environmental stewardship traditions, intelligences smoothed over by late modernity.

There's also a Fay Jones connection at Cherokee Village. John Cooper was Jones' first big client, and there are several Jones-designed buildings in the community, including 10 townhomes, a city hall and a town center. Cooper commissioned Jones for buildings in all his subsequent developments, including Bella Vista's clubhouse.

Other finalists in this category of The Plan Award program were the Jian Mu Tower, designed by CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati (based in Turin, Italy, and New York City); the Blossom of Yinli, designed by Studio Link-Arc, LLC (based in New York City); and the Ad hoc Epidemic Prevention Hospital, designed by Hanchenping Studio in the School of Architecture and Design, China University of Mining and Technology (based in Xuzhou, China).

In its eighth year, The Plan Award program recognizes excellence in architecture, interior design and urban planning through 20 categories. This is the second year that this awards program has held a Special Projects category recognizing installations, exhibits and design research. The U of A Community Design Center has won the category both times. An international jury made up of leading figures in the architecture, design, real estate and academic fields selected winners. 

Link to complete article with graphics: Plan Award International Winners Include UACDC

The Plan Award International Finalists Include Two U of A Community Design Center Projects

Two U of A Community Design Center projects are finalists in The Plan Award 2022, an international design awards program recognizing excellence in architecture, interior design and urban planning.

"Cultural Mappings of Cherokee Village, Arkansas," is a project sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the city of Cherokee Village. It is a finalist in the Special Projects category, which includes exhibitions. The cultural mappings support an ongoing planning project for the 23-square-mile village.

"A Social Center for the Little Rock Air Force Base: The Shed" is a mass timber project sponsored by the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities in an education consortium with Clemson University and the University of Oregon. "The Shed" is a finalist in the Mixed-Use Future category.

Design for both projects was led by the U of A Community Design Center, an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the university. Steve Luoni, Distinguished Professor and the Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies, is the director of the center.

"We are particularly pleased to see these two public-interest projects as finalists in the international Plan Award program. Through design, both projects are advancing important policy concepts," Luoni said. "'The Shed' demonstrates the value of greater community-oriented planning on military bases and the role of mass timber toward biophilic building design for mental health and well-being. The Cherokee Village cultural mapping project was a new kind of project for us. Mappings equipped the project team and client to discover the important cultural and heritage influences behind a mid-century modern planned community — influences that would have otherwise been lost. Streamlining cultural mapping in our market-oriented urban design and planning processes would revolutionize how we currently plan or don't plan places."  

"Cultural Mappings of Cherokee Village, Arkansas" supports a separate master plan commissioned by Cherokee Village, a 23-square-mile rural planned community developed in 1955 in north central Arkansas. The research describes the interconnectedness of landscapes, histories and social geographies of the Arkansas Ozarks surrounding one of America's first planned retirement‐based recreational communities. The series of 54 digital drawings integrates maps, folklore materials, archival sources and photographs with new drawings, outlining synchronic cultural frameworks that shaped Cherokee Village.

Content development was a collaborative inquiry among residents, community organizations, artists, folklorists, historians, architects, landscape architects and urban designers. NEA "Our Town" funding gave the project team a special opportunity to explore memory and heritage surrounding place through the discursivity, conversation and debate central to cultural mapping and its participatory-based forms of inquiry.

"The Shed" was designed in an effort led by Clemson University and the Community Design Center in partnership with the Little Rock Air Force Base. The social center acts as a social anchor or third place for the Little Rock Air Force Base, home base of the Hercules C-130 and main training base for all international pilots and crew for the C-130. The term "third place," coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, refers to places that are neither work nor home. "The Shed" sustains military personnel's mission preparedness through the promotion of social connection and mental well-being.

The "mat building" hosts supporting spaces of diverse programs and scales. A central public concourse features a café, bar, art gallery, courtyard and recreation areas that serve as informal filters to large formal meeting areas and large logistics spaces, including a 10-bay hobby auto repair shop, wood and arts shops, and an outdoor recreation equipment center. The facility is mostly an open-plan arrangement of multiple circulation loops to promote good wayfinding and access to natural light.

The mixed-use complex is equally tasked with showcasing mass timber building technology and with exploring community planning approaches that facilitate greater sociability on military bases. The communal facilities of military bases offer critical respite, fellowship and restorative functions indispensable among soldiers, families and veterans engaged in stressful and often traumatizing service to their country.

In its eighth year, The Plan Award program recognizes excellence in architecture, interior design and urban planning through 20 categories. Categories are separated into completed and future projects. Winners are selected by an international jury made up of leading figures in the architecture, design, real estate and academic fields.

Winning projects in the annual awards program will be featured on The Plan's digital platforms and dedicated coverage. This year's winners will be announced Nov. 17.

Two additional projects by the Community Design Center have been recognized in other international design awards programs recently.

"A Rural Timberlands Neighborhood" won a 2022 Green Good Design Award, sponsored by The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design. The neighborhood, developed by Hopson Real Estate Holdings, features cross-sectional resilient design addressing wildfire risks, housing affordability and ecosystem regeneration.  

"Markham Square Housing District" was selected as a Special Mention in the Architizer A+ Awards for the Unbuilt—Multi-Unit Housing category. The project was developed in collaboration with the City of Conway and local stakeholders, and it was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The A+Awards is an international design awards program in architecture, urbanism, landscape architecture and interior architecture.