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 Jury will look at a wide spectrum of design and work in the following areas:

• Environments between and among buildings.
• Built and landscape environments around and on top of structures.
• Realms in time between idea and construction, and of long or short duration.
• The natural environment, the human constructed environment, and combinations and junctures of the two. Raises the question of “how does the work support environmental sustainability?”
• Public works, private works, and mixed use projects.
• Information and design for and by the public sector and the developmental sector.
• Design, research, built work, and publications.
• Projects small and large.
• Span of time from thought and concept to built or partially built.
• The personal experience in conjunction with the time of day and season.