The tidying-up and transformation of domestic spaces during lockdown and the larger role that “keeping house” plays in systemic oppression based on gender, race, and class serves as the thematic pillars for the 40th cycle of The Architectural League of New York’s annual Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers. Announced today, the winners of the 2021 Architectural League Prize are ten architects and designers across six dynamic young practices who submitted projects responding to the Housekeeping theme in unique and potent ways: Tei Carpenter (Agency—Agency); Rodrigo Escandón Cesarman and Ricardo Roxo Matias (APRDELESP); Liz Gálvez (Office e.g.); Ilse Cárdenas, Regina de Hoyos, Diego Escamilla, and Juan Luis Rivera (Palma); Germane David Barnes (Studio Barnes), and Lindsey May (Studio Mayd).

The theme, as in League Prize’s past, was developed by the Young Architects + Designers Committee, a rotating group comprised of former League Prize winners—Ivi Diamantopoulou (2020), Cyrus Peñarroyo (2019), and Alison Von Glinow (2018) for the 2021 cycle—also charged with selecting the competition jury. This year, that was architect Tatiana Bilbao, architect and educator Peggy Deamer, artist Fritz Haeg, and Victor J. Jones, a designer, educator, and cultural activist based in Los Angeles.

In its prompt, the committee asked:

Architecture has been complicit in social, ecological, and economic crises that demand immediate attention. How should we think about the maintenance of our disciplinary home? What is it about the way designers work that we’re so desperate to maintain, preserve, and protect? Architecture is invested in appearances—how we present ourselves and our work—but for whom and why? Could we redirect our efforts toward caring for ourselves, one another, and the environment? How might we have more regard for the actors and agents whose care and labor manifest the appearances we strive for? Is now the appropriate time to housekeep how we housekeep? If and when the dust settles, how do we work together to clean up the mess?

The winners of this year’s prestigious portfolio competition, which is open to designers and architects who are ten years or less out of a bachelor’s or master’s degree program and full-time residents of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, “took the issue of housekeeping in an unexpected direction, and did so with focused provocation,” Deamer told AN. “While many of the submissions tucked work developed outside of the housekeeping context into this call, hoping that the oblique connection would excite our imaginations, these winners didn’t stretch the definition of housekeeping as much as locate the complexity of house/home in profound and revealing scales, components, and cultural contexts.”

As noted by Jones, the 2021 League Prize winners all “offer a rich and promising outlook as they break longstanding barriers in a profession still troubled by racial, social, and gender discrimination. “Each with their unique and exceptional vision of architecture, [they] mark a remarkable moment in time,” Jones added. “Here is to a brighter, more inclusive, and sustainable future.”

The winners will receive a cash prize of $2,000 and present their work as part of a virtual lecture series kicking off on June 15. In addition to the three-part lecture series, each part moderated by a member of the 2021 committee, recipients of the League Prize will also participate in a digital exhibition, also launching June 15, featuring original material. Per the League, the installations will either be created onsite at the winners’ respective locations or in wholly digital formats. (More details on the lecture series can be found at the bottom of this page.)

“Spending time with the projects by the six winners this year gave me a sense of hope for the future,” said Haeg. “From the women running half of the winning studios we see wild experiments with handmade soy wax bricks from Office e.g., questioning the permanence of our structures; to the refined designs of Agency—Agency spanning urban water infrastructure to thoughtful designs of the interior domestic realm; to the playful creations of Studio Mayd that celebrate the overlooked modest moments of our built environment. From Mexico, the dense energetic social realms cultivated by APRDELESP and the tactile contemplative civic creations of Palma, a feeling of the hand in every gesture. And perhaps with most excitement, from Studio Barnes, a feeling for a future of Black American space, reclaiming the throne and the social traditions of front porch steps, taking us all up to new places with him.”

Without further ado, here are images of past works by the winners of the 2021 League Prize along with brief practice profiles as provided by the League:

Tei Carpenter | Agency-Agency (Brooklyn, New York)

Agency—Agency was founded by Tei Carpenter. The practice “seeks out an expanded role for architecture by engaging buildings, objects, interiors, infrastructures, speculations, and environments,” according to its website. Agency—Agency was recognized as one of Architect Magazine‘s Next Progressives and Domus‘s 100 Best Architecture Firms in 2019 and by AIA New York’s New Practices New York competition in 2018. The studio’s work has been exhibited at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, Oslo Architecture Triennale, Venice Biennale, and Center for Architecture.

Rodrigo Escandón Cesarman and Ricardo Roxo Matias | APRDELESP (Mexico City)

Founded in 2012, APRDELESP focuses on “practice-as-research on space and its appropriation.” By envisioning its own office and projects as public sites of spatial research and experimentation, the firm aims to welcome unexpected encounters and discussions through the creation of self-managed “subspaces” such as cafes, galleries, and furniture stores. The studio has participated in the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the 2018 Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Liz Gálvez | Office e.g. (Houston)

Liz Gálvez founded Houston-based Office e.g. in 2018. As described in her League Prize entry, her work “focuses on the interface between architecture, theory, and environmentalism through an examination of building technologies.” Gálvez held the 2018 William Muschenheim Fellowship at Taubman College of Architecture & Planning, University of Michigan, and received the 2016 Seebacher Prize for the Fine Arts from The American Austrian Foundation. She is the winner of the Rice Design Alliance Houston Design Research Grant 2021.

Ilse Cárdenas, Regina de Hoyos, Diego Escamilla, and Juan Luis Rivera | Palma (Mexico City and Sayulita, Mexico)

Palma was founded in 2016 by Ilse Cárdenas, Regina de Hoyos, Diego Escamilla, and Juan Luis Rivera. Navigating between typologies in both urban and rural contexts, the practice aims to improve communities through inventive work. Their project Aros, a temporary installation transforming a fountain into a playground for children in a disadvantaged neighborhood in Mexico City, was the winner of the 2018 Concurso Juguetes Urbanos. Palma’s work has been exhibited at Museo de la ciudad de Mexico, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura.

Germane David Barnes | Studio Barnes (Miami)

Germane David Barnes founded his eponymous studio in 2016. According to Barnes, the studio “explores the many rituals and narratives associated with Blackness in America,” examining “underrepresented contributions and legacies while creating new architectural possibilities that emerge within investigations of Black domesticity.” Barnes’s work is included in the MoMA exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America. He is the 2021 winner of the Wheelwright Prize and will be a 2021–22 Rome Prize Fellow at The American Academy in Rome.

Lindsey May | Studio Mayd (Washington, D.C.)

Lindsey May founded Studio Mayd in 2017. The studio’s winning portfolio provided a holistic approach to the firm’s residential projects, conveying the “thinking, analysis, and productivity in the under-celebrated residential realms of young practice” to “offer a more inclusive, realistic, and representative narrative of the discipline.” May has received the inaugural Architect + Educator Award from the AIA|DC, as well as the Deans Award and the Outstanding Educator Award from the School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, University of Maryland.

The League Prize 2021 Lecture Series:

June 15: 
Germane David Barnes | Studio Barnes
Liz Gálvez | Office e.g.
Moderated by Ivi Diamantopoulou

June 22:
Tei Carpenter | Agency—Agency
Rodrigo Escandón Cesarman, Ricardo Roxo Matias | APRDELESP
Moderated by Cyrus Peñarroyo

June 29:
Ilse Cárdenas, Regina de Hoyos, Diego Escamilla, Juan Luis Rivera | Palma
Lindsey May | Studio Mayd
Moderated by Alison Von Glinow

All lectures begin at 6:00 p.m. EST and are held on Zoom.