AIA California’s Urban Design Awards recognizes excellence in the creation, improvement, and sustainability of our physical environment by Architects and Landscape Architects. Sustainability, as applied to this category of Design Awards, can include reduction of reliance on the automobile, encouraged transit-oriented development, promoted district-wide energy and water management, and fostered biodiversity and cultural resilience.
Urban Design is defined for the Awards Program as “the realm of physical design encompassing master planning, landscape architecture, and conceptual architectural design.” This definition includes research and the design of spaces at all scales, from places between buildings to regional master plans. The program focuses on conception and expression of the idea following through to the many phases of a master plan.
The Urban Design Awards are open for Profession and Student submissions. Proof of enrollment is required within your submission package. Lack of proof of enrollment for students will lead to immediate disqualification.
The Urban Design Jury will look at a wide spectrum of design and work in the following areas:
Tina Chee is an architect, landscape architect, and a native of Los Angeles with over 30 years of experience in urban design, landscape, and architecture. She received her Master of Landscape Architecture and Bachelor of Architecture with honors from the University of Southern California. She practiced architecture with Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, and Renzo Piano on a diverse range of significant and complex projects that had a transformative impact on the environment. An astute observer and critical thinker deeply committed to the issues of urban cities and their future trajectories, she strives to find connection and poetic meaning that anticipates and furthers an environmental and social agenda with a formal and spatial one. She has been recognized for her work and is the recipient of awards from the AIA, ASLA and AIACA.
Tina Chee, AIA, ASLA
Frank Lanneau Fuller, FAIA, is an architect and urban designer who has practiced in the United States for over three decades. In addition to architectural commissions, he has helped to transform downtowns, town and campus centers into active, pedestrian-oriented places. He has lectured widely at national and international conferences and is a partner at Urban Field Studio.
Frank Lanneau Fuller, FAIA
Stephanie Reich, AIA, LEED AP, is the Design and Historic Preservation Planner (formerly Urban Designer) for the City of Santa Monica. She has managed design review and historic preservation systems for the cities of Glendale, Long Beach and West Hollywood, improving processes to enable architects to realize their best work.
Stephanie is a licensed architect and prior to 2003, she practiced architecture and urban design for almost 20 years with a variety of notable firms including Morphosis, Studio Libeskind, AECOM and NBBJ. Stephanie earned her Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University, and her Master of Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and has taught design and other topics at design and architecture schools in both LA and NY.
As part of her commitment to the broader design community, Stephanie has long-term involvement with AIA Los Angeles, AIA California (AIACA), and the Association for Women in Architecture and Design (AWA +D). She has also served as a founding member of the AIACA Resilient Design Committee, where she aims to advance resilience and social justice in architectural practice.
Stephanie Reich, AIA, LEED AP
Quilian Riano is the Dean of Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture, working across the school’s architecture, landscape, urban design, planning, and management programs. Quilian also serves as the Vice President for Architecture of the Architectural League of New York.
Quilian founded and leads DSGN AGNC, a design studio exploring new forms of cooperative design, processes, and engagements through architecture, urbanism, landscapes and art. Quilian and DSGN AGNC’s design work has been featured at the Venice Biennale, Queens Museum of Art, Harvard University, The Storefront for Art and Architecture, The New Museum, the Center for Architecture, the Architectural League of New York, among others.
Quilian Riano
As a Landscape Architect and Architect Katherine Spitz practiced Landscape Architecture for over 35 years; in 1993 she founded a ten person firm, Katherine Spitz Associates, Incin Los Angeles. The firm’s projects included civic and private projects of all scales - public streetscapes, parks, university campuses, historic restorations, and gardens. Clients included the Cities of Santa Monica, Los Angeles, West Hollywood; the County of Los Angeles; and the University of California. Since 2016 she has lived in the Monterey area, focusing on volunteer and professional projects which reflect her knowledge of California’s complex ecology.
In Southern California she served on numerous public commissions and boards, including Design Review Boards for both Los Angeles County Beaches and Harbor in Marina Del Rey, the City of Los Angeles’ Cultural Affairs commission, the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles and Monterey Bay, and was appointed to the State Landscape Architecture Technical Committee by Governor Brown. Katherine holds a Bachelors’ degree in Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Masters of Architecture degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. She taught architecture and landscape at the University of Southern California, Otis Institute, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. She has participated on panels and lectured on a broad range of topics related to the role of landscape in an increasingly urbanized and fragmented world. In 2021 she was a presenter and panelist on two AIA panels about designing fire resilient landscapes.
Since retirement in 2015 Katherine has been a docent and natural resource volunteer with California State Parks at Point Lobos Natural Reserve. As a State Park natural resource volunteer, she assists and leading restoration groups in the Point Lobos State Reserve, and works to train new docents in the ecologies of the Reserve. She is delighted to serve as a naturalist on the Del Monte Forest open space committee, is a director on the Pebble Beach Conservancy, and was a former director on the Del Monte Forest Property Owner’s board and the AIA Monterey Bay. Her efforts include marshalling volunteers to help restore habitats locally. She volunteers on the Chews Ridge lookout fire tower in the Los Padres National Forest, inspired by the six months she spent in 1974 manning the Thorn Point lookout tower in the same forest.
Katherine Spitz, ASLA
