Looking Back on 2024

2024 marked a great year for Ayers Saint Gross, as we continued to work with mission-driven clients to create places for shared knowledge and culture around the world.

This year, we celebrated the completion of several noteworthy projects, including the National Aquarium Harbor Wetland, xučyun ruwway Graduate Student Housing at UC Berkeley, the Center for Media Arts, Computing, and Design at Clark University, and the Conway School of Nursing at The Catholic University of America. Learn more about all of our projects here.

As a firm, we took time to celebrate our accomplishments and strategize for the future during this fall’s Collaboration Day event in Baltimore. We also announced our new president Joel Fidler, who will lead the firm beginning in 2025.

Thought Leadership

We received significant press recognition for our work on National Aquarium’s Harbor Wetland, earning news mentions in The Architect’s Newspaper, Bloomberg CityLab, Azure, and more. Principal Amelle Schultz wrote about the extensive design process in Urban Land Magazine.

Our work at the Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center was also covered in the news, including a prominent feature in Metropolis Magazine.

Highlighting our extensive experience in campus planning and design, firm experts Cooper Melton, Dennis Lynch, and Allison Wilson were quoted prominently in a report from The Chronicle for Higher Education on Campus Housing for Tomorrow.

As a firm, we continued our long tradition of research with our 26th Comparing Campuses poster. This year’s poster explored the relationship between eight college and university campuses and their neighboring waterfronts to showcase how institutions can engage with various bodies of water, including wetlands, rivers, lakes, oceans, and bays. We also published new articles to our journal on successful engagement processes, emerging opportunities for higher ed design, human-centered lab design, and more.

In celebration of our 2023 ranking as a top museum architecture firm in the United States, we assembled a new portfolio of our cultural work, Designing for Cultural Experiences. We will continue to update this book with projects and stories about our work designing for cultural institutions in the months and years to come.

Individual and Team Accomplishment

The talents of our outstanding team members were recognized throughout the year in numerous ways:

Architect and planner Laura Wheaton was recognized with a 2024 AIA Young Architects Award, which honors individuals who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the architecture profession early in their careers.

Interior Designer Karen Bastidas was also recognized with an IIDA MAC Emerging Leader Champion Award for her work in the interior design field, as well as her time spent mentoring interior architecture students both locally and in her home country of Ecuador.

Amanda Hodgson, business development manager, was recognized internally for her talent, leadership, and mentorship abilities with a 2024 Lex Schwartz Legacy Award. Architect Kevin Miller was also recognized with our firm’s tenth annual Lex Schwartz Emerging Leader Award. Both awards are named in honor of a longtime Ayers Saint Gross employee known for his collaborative leadership style.

Ayers Saint Gross continued to share our firm’s work, research, and ideas with national audiences this year, as 15 of our team members participated in 40 speaking engagements at conferences around the country, including the annual SCUP Conference, AIA National in Washington, D.C., Greenbuild, AURP, ASLA National, International Placemaking Week and more. We all benefited from their experiences building relationships with clients and potential teaming partners, learning from our colleagues, and exhibiting our work.

Design Awards

Ayers Saint Gross was honored with 16 design awards this year for our work around the country. Projects honored included the following:

Frisco Landing at University of North Texas, Frisco

• IIDA Southwest Award of Merit in Education

Hayden Library Renovation at Arizona State University

• Arizona Forward environmental Excellence Awards for Site Development Award of Distinction
• AZ ASLA Honor Award for General Design

Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden

• IIDA Southwest Design Excellence in Public Facilities
• IIDA Southwest Best in Show
• Midwest Regional ENR Best Project Award, Cultural
• AIA Maryland Excellence in Design Honor Award
• AIA St. Louis Excellence in Design Honor Award
• AIA Baltimore Excellence in Design Award
• AIA Baltimore Grand Design Award
• Midwest Regional ENR Project of the Year Award

Cunniffe Commons at Ringling College of Art and Design

• AIA Baltimore Excellence in Design Award

Security Square Vision Plan

• APA and MPCA Sustainability and Transformation Award