NCARB Award

Since 2001, the Council has awarded more than $800,000 to architecture programs that find innovative ways to bridge the gap between education and practice. The NCARB Award, formerly known as the NCARB Grant, has helped transform the way students and faculty approach the path to licensure by recognizing new programming that:

● Integrates practice and education

● Raises awareness of the architect’s responsibilities for the public health, safety, and welfare; and

● Brings non-faculty practitioners into the academy.

2012 NCARB Award Recipients

Last year, the Council received a record-breaking number of submissions from 42 schools. A total of $75,000 was distributed to three schools, and three additional schools were recognized with honorable mentions. “There are very few opportunities for architecture programs to apply for funding for exploration, experimentation, and improvement of the curriculum,” said Robin Abrams, Head of the School of Architecture, North Carolina State University. “The NCARB Award is one of only a handful of such sources. Good ideas can also inspire and provide validation for changes to the curricula of schools that haven’t received such funding—thus, the Awards have a further reach than just the schools that receive them.”

Award Jury

The 2012 NCARB Award Jury rigorously and impartially evaluated proposals against a published set of criteria. The jury was comprised of seven architects who volunteered extensive time and expertise to fulfill their charge. Led by Daniel D. Bennett, FAIA, chair of the 2012 NCARB Award Jury, members of the jury included: Michael J. Andrejasich, AIA, Champaign, IL; David M. Biagi, NCARB, Lexington, KY; James R. Boyd, AIA, Charlottesville, VA; Chris E. Brasier, FAIA, Raleigh, NC; Creed W. Brierre, FAIA, NCARB, New Orleans, LA; Denis A. Henmi, FAIA, NCARB, San Francisco, CA. Award Jury members with any connection or potential conflict of interest abstained from voting on that school’s proposal.

NCARB Prize and NCARB Grant

The NCARB Grant and the NCARB Prize were initiated in response to Building Community: A New Future for Architectural Education, a report that drew attention to the divide between architecture schools and real-world practice.

NCARB Grant

The NCARB Grant was launched in 2006 and was built upon the success of the NCARB Prize. It provided funding for new initiatives and concepts to integrate practice and education in the academy—the inspiration for the NCARB Award.

NCARB Prize

The NCARB Prize was initiated in 2001 in response to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s report, Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice (The Boyer Report). The Prize was designed to showcase and reward diverse programs and initiatives in academic settings. NCARB celebrated the 10th and final year of the NCARB Prize in 2011.

Honorable Mentions

The NCARB Award Jury also recognized three additional programs that demonstrated a commitment to uniquely integrating practice and education.

Program: University of Kansas School of Architecture, Design & Planning—Lawrence, KS

Proposal: "Integrating Specialized Knowledge in Architectural Curricula"

Program: University of Minnesota, School of Architecture—Minneapolis, MN

Proposal: "A Model for Licensure Upon Graduation: An Advanced Degree in Research Practice"

Program: University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), School of Architecture—Las Vegas, NV

Proposal: "The New School, Interdisciplinary Research & Design Investigation of the Contemporary Learning Environment"

Savannah College of Art and Design

Auburn University

University of Southern California

Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) – Savannah, GA

"Disentanglement and Gates: An Interactive Game of Architecture Practice"

Total Award: $40,000

SCAD architecture and game design students are developing interactive games that simulate practice environments, placing students in architects’ roles to face critical issues and make real-time judgment calls. Collaborative and competitive aspects will allow students to interact with architects and further simulate practice settings by factoring in issues such as multidisciplinary teams, time management, client relations, and economic factors. Using the concepts of entanglement and gating, the games will simulate conditions that students currently experience only hypothetically through textbooks or case studies. Uniquely suited for today’s generation, learning games have the potential to revolutionize architecture education, making a range of subjects more approachable and placing students in previously inaccessible situations.

During the 2013 NCARB Annual Meeting, Professor of Architecture Carole Pacheco, along with a current architecture student and former game design student, shared an update on their Award-funded project. Six months into the project, Pacheco “realized how much games give to students in terms of experiential opportunity,” noting that she “will never approach the way I teach a class in the same way again.”

Auburn University, School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape Architecture (APLA) – Auburn, AL

"Studio: Urban Healthcare"

Total Award: $20,000

Through a series of workshops, practitioners with specialized expertise in healthcare architecture provide critique and direction to fourth year students as they design an urban healthcare clinic. Students have the opportunity to focus on practice areas not traditionally found in studio courses, including project budget management, marketing and communications, and contract negotiations. By modeling the ongoing collaborative nature of practice, the proposal also addresses financial and management considerations—especially those driven by construction and consultant fees, codes, structure, and energy performance. The project—which was incorporated into fall 2013 coursework—has the potential to serve as a model for other schools looking to incorporate specialty knowledge into their curriculum.

With the fall semester well underway, students are beginning to realize how healthcare design has the power to transform communities. By placing emphasis on real-life economic issues, faculty have designed a course that prepares students for work beyond the classroom. “Our students understand that healthcare design is an incredibly complex area of specialization, but they’ve never had the chance to tackle that problem in the studio,” said Professor and Head of APLA David Hinson. “The practitioners bring a lot of assets to the studio that are hard to replicate, and their ability to speak directly to that experience brings the assignment alive in a way that a traditional design studio cannot.”

University of Southern California (USC) School of Architecture – Los Angeles, CA

"Performance as a Design Driver: Creating a Framework to Integrate Practitioner Knowledge
in the Design Studio"

Total Award: $15,000

Working closely with practitioners from local architecture firms, faculty have developed a framework that integrates professional knowledge and expertise into design studios. In doing so, the project has established clear guidelines for communication, responsibility, and accountability among students, practitioners, and the studio instructor. By synthesizing a broad range of evaluation techniques, the framework engages students in facing real-life trade-offs and compromises.

This innovative model, called the Performance Framework, has already been adopted by USC design studios and serves as the foundation for the program’s new website, Performance and Form. Through the site, students engage with practitioners by sharing workflows, case studies, and tools that address specific environmental design problems. “We’re trying to integrate sustainability performance objectives into students' design workflows so they can test their ideas and refine their projects iteratively using feedback on performance,” said Assistant Professor Kyle Konis, AIA, Ph.D. “The online community facilitates the application of our framework, promoting cross-pollination among students, educators, and practitioners.”