American Academy of Arts and Letters announces 2026 Architecture Award winners

The American Academy of Arts and Letters introduced its 2026 Awards in Structure recipients. 

The Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize was awarded to Junya Ishigami. 4 different awards went to Hervé Descottes, Ultramoderne, Keller Easterling, and Ok. Michael Hays.

Individually, Mónica Ponce de León was named as a newly elected member of the historic New York Metropolis group based in 1898.

The Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize was established in 1955. It has since expanded to incorporate 4 Arts and Letters Awards annually to acknowledge “training architects and those that have contributed to the sector by means of different mediums of expression.”

The 2026 Brunner Memorial Prize winner has a various oeuvre. In 2019 Ishigami designed the Serpentine Pavilion and, extra just lately, the Zaishui Artwork Museum in China, wherein setting and structure are learn as one.

The Tokyo-based architect was awarded a money prize of $20,000, because the 2026 Brunner Memorial Prize recipient.

The opposite 4 winners—a roster composed of training designers, historians, and theorists—every acquired money prizes of $10,000.

The winners of the 2026 Structure Award are as follows:

Hervé Descottes is a New York-based lighting designer who served as a juror in AN’s 2026 Better of Follow Awards. Descottes based L’Observatoire Worldwide.

L’Observatoire Worldwide has contributed to the Frick Assortment; Museum of Advantageous Arts, Houston; British Galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork; and different giant cultural establishments. 

Aaron Forrest and Yasmin Vobis cofounded Ultramoderne, a Windfall, Rhode Island–primarily based structure and design follow, in 2013. The agency’s portfolio consists of Friendship, a Windfall duplex with a black corrugated metallic facade.

Along with housing, Ultramoderne has additionally labored on myriad cultural initiatives, together with gallery areas and pavilions. 

Keller Easterling  is a professor at Yale College of Structure, and is understood for her greatest promoting books reminiscent of Group Area and Extrastatecraft. Each works look at the politics of infrastructure. 

Ok. Michael Hays teaches architectural idea at Harvard GSD and has printed texts on Ludwig Hilberseimer, Mies van der Rohe, Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, and John Hejduk.

Meejin Yoon chaired the 2026 Awards in Structure jury. The committee included Marlon Blackwell, Elizabeth Diller, Steven Holl, Thom Mayne, Toshiko Mori, Laurie Olin, Annabelle Selldorf, and Nader Tehrani.

To rejoice the winners, awards can be offered at Arts and Letters’ annual ceremonial in Could, together with its artwork, literature, and music awards.

Final yr’s Brunner Memorial Prize winner was Farshid Moussavi, and the yr earlier than that it was SelgasCano.