The Awards for Emerging Excellence are a suite of prizes that recognize exceptional talent exhibited by young professionals in architecture, landscape, and craftsmanship. The Awards seek to highlight emerging talent that engages with classical design, demonstrating a thoughtful use of precedents from the past in projects that are forward-looking, creative, and holistically demonstrate their talents.
The relevance and importance of these skills grows each year, as the rise of homogeneous standardization threatens our individual cultures, vernacular design traditions, and historic crafts and trades. Additionally, classical design offers singularly impactful solutions to the most pressing issues facing our built environment at this current moment, from sustainability to preservation, from housing equity to community walkability. The Awards for Emerging Excellence aim to shine a light on exceptional talent and reward young people excelling in their chosen fields.
Eligibility
The Awards for Emerging Excellence are open to applicants from around the world aged 35 or under working in the building crafts, urban design and planning, architecture, landscape architecture, garden design, or any allied arts. Launched in 2017, The Awards began as a collaboration between the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA), The King’s Foundation (KF), and the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU). It has grown to include multiple prize categories and partners, including the Bunny Mellon Prize in Garden Design, The Maker’s Prize for craftsmanship, and The Architect’s Prize given with INTBAU and KF.
Sponsors
The Awards for Emerging Excellence in the Classical Tradition are made possible with the generous support of the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation.
The ICAA is very grateful to Betty and Robert Balentine for their generous support of the Bunny Mellon Curricula Garden Design prize, along with the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation’s support of the Bunny Mellon Curricula and Kathryn M. Herman for her support of the Bunny Mellon Garden Symposium.
The ICAA is grateful to Sarah Magness for her support of The Maker’s Prize for Excellence in Craftsmanship.
The Architect’s Prize For Excellence in Architecture
The Architect’s Prize For Excellence in Architecture, given with the King’s Foundation and INTBAU, is awarded to an emerging architect whose work exhibits a holistic understanding of the principles of classical design, and whose projects show a demonstrable excellence in their design. Awardees’ portfolios will have a clear, individual vision of the role classical design can play in the creation or preservation of our current built environment.
The Bunny Mellon Prize For Excellence in Garden Design
The Bunny Mellon Prize For Excellence in Garden Design is awarded to an emerging designer whose work furthers the ICAA’s mission that design and craftsmanship are vital to lasting and meaningful places. Further, the prize honors emerging professionals that demonstrate skilled knowledge of horticulture in a design that holistically considers the symbiosis between outdoor environments and physical structures and is in the spirit of Bunny Mellon’s “ceaseless interest, passion, and pleasure” in gardens, horticulture, and design.
The Maker’s Prize for Excellence in Craftsmanship
The Maker’s Prize for Excellence in Craftsmanship is awarded to the emerging craftsperson, artist, or tradesperson whose work demonstrates a wealth of knowledge and excellence in a traditional building art, such as ornamental plaster, decorative painting and finishing, furniture design, masonry, blacksmithing, or any other allied art. Awardees work will demonstrate a care and thoughtfulness about the intersection between the built environment and their work, and their work will demonstrate a thorough understanding of the precedent of their medium and a creative approach to its current day applications.
About the ICAA
The Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA) is a nonprofit membership organization committed to promoting and preserving the practice, understanding, and appreciation of classical design. To do so, the ICAA offers a broad range of educational programs. These include intensives for architecture and design students, introductory programs for middle school students, lectures and walking tours for the public, continuing education courses for professionals and enthusiasts, travel programs to visit classical masterpieces, the publishing of original and reprinted books, and an annual journal entitled the Classicist. Through the annual Arthur Ross Awards, as well as other national and regional award programs, the ICAA also honors contemporary leaders of classical design and the related fields.