The Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers is an annual portfolio competition for early-career practitioners in North America. Established in 1981, the competition is entered around a yearly theme. This year, the 2024 Young Architects + Designers Committee proposed the theme “Dirty,” prompting designers to “look beyond their presentations of professionalism, respectability, and expertise” and reject the sanitized ways of working.
The original work of the six winners of the 2024 League Prize for Young Architects + Designers is now on view in an online exhibition. The installations created for this occasion showcase the wide variety of responses and interpretations of the overarching theme. The projects presented online and in some instances also locally on-site, challenge traditional architectural practices and offer an immersive introduction to the works of the winners. In addition to the installations, a diverse program of lectures has been scheduled to develop the theme further.
Read on to discover the profiles of the 6 winners.
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The 2023 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers Announces the WinnersLola Ben-Alon of the Natural Materials Lab
The Natural Materials Lab, led by Lola Ben-Alon at Columbia University GSAPP, explores raw, earth, and fiber-based building materials. Combining experimental research with teaching, the Lab integrates new technologies and historical techniques to envision socially and ecologically sustainable futures through material experimentation, design/build projects, policy investigations, and installations. Developed for the Architecture League’s Dirty-themed 2024 exhibition, “Material Kitchens for Medicinal Bricks” presents a brick-making method using raw earth, plants, human hands, tools, and machines.
Erik Carranza of Anonima
Based in Mexico City and Oaxaca City, Erik Carranza founded Anonima with Sindy Martínez Lortia in 2007. The studio undertakes design and research projects, exploring urban spatial practices from street-level interventions to institutional work, maintaining a playful character throughout. For this digital exhibition, “The Architect’s New Dream” asks whether the architect’s work is true architecture or a blend of various spatial practices. Linked to urban, industrial, graphic, and other design fields, the work of design reflects social dynamics. "Urban Life Saver for New Dreamers" is an evolving project for future city dwellers. This installation, focusing on children, aims to reimagine public space and architecture. It includes templates, stickers, measuring tools, game boards, comics, and drawing materials, inviting playful engagement with urban design and fostering new perspectives on city life.
Strat Coffman
Architect Strat Coffman's work investigates the "embodied subject as an agitator of design," in the designer’s own words. Operating from Ann Arbor and Los Angeles, Coffman creates installations, set pieces, performances, and wearable art. These provocative works engage the live body, challenging conventional design systems and encouraging "misinterpretation, readjustment, and misuse." In the 2024 League Prize digital exhibition, “The Railings” installation features a three-walled room with off-white, slightly askew tiles and faux stone walls. Inside, cushioned and stapped railings hint at the structure’s multiple uses, like a play bench, stretching bar, or resting lounge. Housed in a former Detroit tool and die business, now the Body Zone private club, this installation echoes the club's multifaceted space, blending lounge, theater, and gym elements.
Chase Galis, Christina Moushoul, Sonia Sobrino Ralston of Office Party
Founded in 2021, the research and design collective Office Party is led by Chase Galis, Christina Moushoul, and Sonia Sobrino Ralston. The studio is involved in organizing temporary events, installations, and exhibitions that investigate the complex social and material networks of urban and political spaces. For the Dirt Exhibition, the office creates the installation “Door Policy.” In the context of parties and social gatherings, the door becomes one of the few points of control determining the selection of attendees. The installation looks at this entrance apparatus, prompting visitors to consider how materiality reinforces regulation, often leading to exclusion.
Rayshad Dorsey, Joseph James, Diego Zubizarreta Otero, Julian Owens, and Michael Urueta of Partners of Place
The office Partners of Place was established in 2023 by its five core members: Rayshad Dorsey, Joseph James, Diego Zubizarreta Otero, Julian Owens, and Michael Urueta. Through their projects and research initiatives, the design collective focuses on issues of social and environmental equity, employing speculative designs to envision a more inclusive future. As one of the six installations in the digital exhibition, Partners of Placce proposes "Unbounded Protests," a protest toolkit designed to support activists. Protests span civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women's suffrage, anti-war, environmental, and political causes. Each protest is unique, involving key players: the authority, protestor, anti-protestor, and bystander. The project examines spaces of protest and offers support to enhance visibility, amplify voices, and provide accessible information.
Leah Wulfman
Located in Salt Lake City, Leah Wulfman works with spatial technologies across the physical and digital realm. Wulfman’s installations often use digital tools such as AI and video game engines combined with physical elements of plastic, foam, weeds, or dirt. For the Dirt Exhibition, Wulfman developed an installation configured as a playable inflatable deconstructed bounce house. Titled “Young Architects Project (YAP)”, the project aims to develop a mixed-reality video game that becomes an “architectural drawing board played out on a kit-of-(play)-parts bounce house.
