The 2026 Student Merit Award Winners

The Association of Licensed Architects has selected the winners of the 2026 ALA Student Merit Awards. Submissions came from architecture programs across the country, and each project was judged on design, technical skill, and creativity. The six projects below stood out for the clarity of their ideas and the confidence of their execution.

Gold: Theseus: A New Housing Typology. Joe Russell and Emma Sheffer, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, M.Arch I.

Theseus takes decommissioned steel cargo holds from dry bulk carriers and reuses them as five superstructures that carry a 150-bed housing complex next to the Port of Chelsea in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Floor plates, walls, and circulation hang from a grid of steel tension members, which opens the ground plane and lifts the living spaces above it. That single move answers three pressures at once: rising flood risk, the scarcity of building material, and households whose needs change over time. Because none of the interior walls carry load, operable party walls let residents combine or divide units as families grow or shrink. It is adaptive reuse at the scale of a ship, and it treats marine steel as a structural resource rather than scrap.

Silver: Oyate Heritage Center. Lorentz Lankoande, Illinois Institute of Technology, B.Arch.

Oyate Heritage Center sits along the Mississippi River in Saint Paul, near Watergate Marina, and takes its form from Indigenous spatial traditions. Rather than close a full circle, the plan breaks into a series of open arcs that gather visitors while opening toward the river and the landscape. A grounded shell anchors the building to the earth, and a lighter system of trusses and cables branches above it to carry a perforated copper screen that filters light and will weather over time. Elevated catwalks and a small number of structural points let the ground continue beneath the building, so the architecture rests on the site lightly.

Bronze: Crystal Canopy. Aidan Callow & Zakariya, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, B.Arch.

Crystal Canopy is a dance and community center for South Boston, built on the idea that a shared activity can bring strangers together. Its signature is a large fan of steel trusses that span more than 100 feet, paired with a support diaphragm that keeps those long spans stable. Floors hang from steel cables so that almost the entire interior can be given to people, whether they are dancing or watching. Thin concrete strips open the courtyard to the street while framing attention on the performance stage, and the fan itself screens out heavy traffic and harsh sun. The result reads as both a civic gesture and a piece of structural bravado.

Honorable Mention: Amusement! Without Rides. Ruiqiao Wang, University of Southern California, B.Arch.

Amusement! Without Rides replaces the aging Oakwood Recreation Center in Venice, California with a 245,000 square foot civic hub where play comes from watching other people move. Three glulam timber volumes shift across the site and collide in places to open views between spaces. At the center, two basketball courts frame a sunken stage that works as playground, theater, and gathering space in turn. Climbing walls, theatrical stairs, ramps, and changing floor levels turn ordinary circulation into something closer to exploration.

Honorable Mention: Open Book. Camden Michalek, Savannah College of Art and Design, BFA in Architecture.

Open Book anchors the end of Broughton Street in downtown Savannah, Georgia with a public library, cafe, and exhibition space. The street facade is composed and symmetrical, with pedimented gables and deep-set windows that hold their own next to the historic district. Visitors enter through a monumental zaguan that opens onto a central courtyard, then step into a double-height reading room lined with deeply fluted columns, a wraparound mezzanine, and a coffered ceiling. Because Savannah is flat, the project finds its vertical drama by carving down into a sunken courtyard and a below-grade amphitheater for performances and events.

Honorable Mention: The Plot: A Chicago Public Library Branch Proposal. Masooda Mariyam, Illinois Institute of Technology, B.Arch.

The Plot turns an existing CVS in Little Italy, Chicago into a neighborhood library with room to grow food. A new second floor sits on top of the original building and twists toward the University of Illinois Chicago campus, and its channel glass facade pulls diffused daylight deep into the plan. Cubic atrium spaces cut through both levels to light the center of the old building and to hold an interior community garden, with an outdoor garden that extends the nearby Maxwell garden. On the upper floor, program platforms step up to follow the twist of the atrium, connected by a perimeter ramp that keeps every part of the library accessible. By keeping most of the original structure, the project makes a clear case for adaptive reuse as a response to carbon and climate.

Congratulations to all six winners, and thank you to every student who entered this year. The strength of the field made the judging difficult, which is a good sign for the profession these students are about to join. Every winning board and all 40 entries are in the Student Merit Awards archive, and the requirements and awards for the next cycle are on the Student Merit Awards page. For the professional awards cycle, readers can turn to the ALA Design Awards program.