The Marker Design Challenge Jury Panel

Buildner is proud to announce the jury list for the The Marker Design Challenge Competition!

Mimi Zeiger, critic, editor, and curator
Gabrielle Bullock, Principal, Director of Global Diversity, Perkins&Will 
JulieSmith-Clementi, partner
Barbara Bestor, Principal and founder of Bestor Architecture
Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter,  Professor Woodbury School of Architecture, Principal, WROAD
Yolande Daniels, Associate Professor in Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sarah Lorenzen, principal at TOLO Architecture and an architecture professor at Cal Poly Pomona
Kian Goh, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Associate Faculty Director of the UCLA
Kate Diamond, HDR’s civic design director
Nina Briggs, educator and multidisciplinary designer, and founding principal of THE FABRIC

Mimi Zeiger is a Los Angeles-based critic, editor, and curator. She was co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, curator of Soft Schindler at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, and co-curator of the 2020-2021 Exhibit Columbus entitled New Middles: From Main Street to Megalopolis, What is the Future of the Middle City? She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Architectural Review, Metropolis, and Architect. She is an opinion columnist for Dezeen and former West Coast Editor of The Architects Newspaper.

Zeiger is the 2015 recipient of the Bradford Williams Medal for excellence in writing about landscape architecture. Zeiger is author of New Museums, Tiny Houses, Micro Green: Tiny Houses in Nature, and Tiny Houses in the City. In 1997, Zeiger founded loud paper, an influential zine and digital publication dedicated to increasing the volume of architectural discourse. She is visiting faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and teaches in the Media Design Practices MFA program at Art Center College of Design. She was co-president of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design and taught at the School of Visual Art, Art Center, Parsons New School of Design, and the California College of the Arts (CCA). She holds a Master of Architecture degree from SCI-Arc and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University.

Gabrielle Bullock, FAIA, NOMAC, IIDA, LEED AP, Principal, Director of Global Diversity, Perkins&Will. Gabrielle oversees Perkins&Will’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Engagement program, which works to support and strengthen a firmwide culture that embraces a diversity of people, colors, creeds, credos, talents, thoughts, and ideas. Her unique role as an award-winning principal and the firm’s Director of Global Diversity enables her to combine her passion for architecture and social justice to effect positive change at a micro and macro level. Gabrielle is regularly sought out around the world for her leadership and expertise in issues of social equity in architecture, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and physical and mental ability.

Julie Smith-Clementi NCARB,AIA,ULI,LEEDGA, partner. Julie Smith-Clementi leverages entrepreneurial experience and energetic leadership to guide complex teams to realize their shared vision. She ably traverses design boundaries across scales, from the urban to the intimate, revealing diverse approaches to a compelling designed experience. Julie works to make the mission clear and the associated results beautiful, and unites her passions for buildings, spaces, landscape and objects to create holistic environments. She is “disciplinary agnostic” and curates great teams with challenges across their expertise to create client specific experiences.

Julie has been integral to countless award-winning projects with 30 years at Rios Clementi Hale Studios. Pursing her agenda to popularize design through mass production, she led the formation of the product company notNeutral. As its President and CEO notNeutral quickly developed a national reputation with sales and distribution worldwide. Julie started smith-clementi with Frank Clementi to work directly with clients around the world crafting unique solutions using the power of beauty to imbue character that invites interaction.

Julie has taught at the University of Southern California and at UCLA Extension, and is regularly a visiting critic at several design schools, including Cal Poly Pomona where she and Frank gave the commencement address in 2019. She has lectured about design at all scales and has participated on design awards juries for the American Institute of Architects and for student competitions such as the Brooks Cavin Fellowship in 2020.

Barbara Bestor, FAIA is the Principal and founder of Bestor Architecture. Raised in Cambridge, MA, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture degree from SCI-Arc. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects and serves on the Board of SCI-Arc, the Los Angeles Conservancy, and the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. Barbara has consistently pursued experimental architecture that engages the city through design, art, and urbanism. The architectural form is explored through experiments in spatial arrangements, graphics, and color. Her varied and progressive body of work connects with people on many levels, often outside the boundaries traditionally delineated for architecture.

She believes that good design creates an engaged urban life and embraces the ‘strange beauty’ that enhances everyday life experience. Her 24-person architectural design practice was established in 1995. Known for the new headquarters for Beats By Dre (recipient of a National AIA Honor Award for Design), Snap, Inx., and Nasty Gal; Blackbirds, an innovative small lot housing complex in Echo Park, and a variety of custom residences and restaurants, Barbara spearheads a practice that fosters community, intimacy and joy.

Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, FAIA Professor, Woodbury School of Architecture, Principal, WROAD. Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter is an architect, educator, and Professor at the School of Architecture at Woodbury University where she served as Dean from 2016-2021. She has taught at Yale University, Cornell University, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture, and SCI- Arc over a twenty-year teaching career. In her role as Director of WUHO, the Woodbury University Hollywood gallery, she produced over 100 exhibitions. Ingalill has collaborated on multiple award-winning projects including as façade consultant on Bloom with DoSu Architects, the Portland Aerial Tramway with AGPS, the Centre Pompidou exhibition, Continuities of the Incomplete, with Morphosis, and as project architect for the Corning Museum of Glass with Smith-Miller + Hawkinson.

Ingalill has forged new pathways and launched programs that support her vision of education for all. In 2020, she was invited to present at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, for the 58th Session of the Commission for Social Development on affordable housing. Elevated to AIA’s College of Fellows in 2018, Ingalill is recipient the 2016 AIA California Council Educator Award, was honored in 2018 with the AIA|LA Presidential Educator of the Year Award, and has been recognized twice, in 2018 and 2019, by DesignIntelligence as one of the nation’s Most Admired Educators in Architecture and Design.

Yolande Daniels is an Associate Professor in Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture and a fellow of the Independent Study Program of the Whitney American Museum of Art in studio practice and cultural studies. Daniels is a co-founding principal of the architecture and design practice, studioSUMO with offices in New York and Los Angeles. Both the practice and individual projects have been recognized for design excellence by the Venice Biennale, Japan National Design Council, German National Design Council, Chicago Athenaeum, AIA New York City Chapter, AIA New York State, New York State Council on the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Emerging Voices, Design Vanguard, and the League Prize.

Sarah Lorenzen, AIA is principal at TOLO Architecture and an architecture professor at Cal Poly Pomona (where she was chair from 2012-2016). Sarah has practiced architecture for more than 20 years, working on a variety of building types including residential, institutional, and arts-related projects. Prior to TOLO Architecture, Sarah worked as a project architect at a number of award- winning firms in Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Sarah grew up in Mexico City and moved to the U.S. to attend college. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Drawing at Smith College and at the Atlanta College of Art, and has two Master of Architecture degrees, the first from Georgia Institute of Technology and a second Masters in Metropolitan Research and Design from Sci-Arc.

Sarah has published and edited numerous articles on architecture and urbanism, and she has received multiple design awards and grants including several Graham Foundation grants, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a six-week travel fellowship to China. From 2007-2020 Sarah was director of the Neutra VDL House overseeing the restoration of this National Landmark and developing cultural and arts programming.

Kian Goh is Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Associate Faculty Director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. She researches urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization. Dr. Goh’s current research investigates the spatial politics of urban climate change responses, with fieldwork sites in cities in North America, Southeast Asia, and Europe. As a professional architect, she cofounded design firm SUPER-INTERESTING! and has practiced with Weiss/Manfredi and MVRDV. She is a member of the board of directors of the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Dr. Goh received a PhD in Urban and Environmental Planning from MIT, and a Master of Architecture from Yale University. She is the author of Form and Flow: The Spatial Politics of Urban Resilience and Climate Justice (MIT Press 2021).

Kate Diamond, FAIA, LEED AP. Kate Diamond is HDR’s civic design director and a design principal based out of our Los Angeles studio. She brings a breadth of experience translating the aspirations of a diversity of public and private clients into beautiful, high performance projects serving federal, state and local government, industry, education and urban design. Kate believes passionately in the power of design to help clients address the triple bottom line of social, economic, and environmental responsibility while meeting all of the requirements of their unique missions. Recent key projects include two net-zero projects for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and a net zero embodied & operational carbon headquarters for the Orange County Sanitation District.

Recognized as a true advocate for design in the Los Angeles architecture community and beyond, Kate is respected by her for her commitment to elevating the profession through her work and engagement. She was the first woman president of the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles chapter and currently serves on the AIA-LA COTE Committee, the Board of USGBC, and has served on the National Peer Review Council for the U.S. General Services Administration Design Excellence Program since 1996. She was the lead designer for three major GSA Design Excellence completed projects, as well as the lead designer for a major GSA Design Build | Design Excellence competition. Committed to sharing with future generations, Kate has taught design studios at the USC School of Architecture and gives guest lectures at various schools of architecture across the country.

Nina Briggs, JURY CHAIR. The jury chair will ensure a fair and orderly process and negotiate through difficult situations and/or disagreements about entry selections. The chair may also ensure that entries have met the initial entry requirements and make recommendations for removal of ineligible projects or entries.

Nina Briggs is an educator and multidisciplinary designer, and founding principal of THE FABRIC. Nina seeks to elevate and redefine design to positively affect inhabitants psychologically, while solving spatial problems. Her interdisciplinary analysis of architecture and design in the context of culture, draws from anthropology, psychology and human geography, thinking beyond the traditional boundaries of space-making. Through ethnographic research, via cognitive and human behavioral mapping, Nina observes and analyzes the psychological responses to space, producing empirical data and theories, generating hypotheses that inform design more effectively and sensitively. As design becomes increasingly interdisciplinary, she explores how these shifts in paradigms transform design pedagogy and practice. 

The Marker Design Challenge "A dedicated recognition of women in architecture!" competition tasks its participants with designing a physical marker that will be placed next to a structure or landscape of their choice that was designed by a woman, anywhere in the world. The marker can come in any form - as a plaque, monument, mural, sculpture, symbol, piece of street art, or even physically embedded in a cornerstone.