For the third annual Groundbreakers Awards, Curbed taps some of architecture?s most respected players One of the goals we?ve set for our annual Groundbreakers competition is variegation: diversity in terms of location, types of built work, how the practice operates, and certainly not least, identity and representation. We want to award architects who show uniqueness of thought and execution?and our jury reflects that same approach.
This year, we have seven jurors who represent the top of their respective fields. The group includes four practicing architects?one who focuses on landscape design, one with a renowned teaching position, another who?s pioneered a prefab housing prototype, and one more who recently designed one of the nation?s highest-profile new museums. Joining them are three tireless advocates for the built world: the president of the Ford Foundation, the director of an influential nonprofit in New York, and a longtime curator who just founded a design magazine. In this company, you?ll find two National Design Award winners, one of TIME?s 100 Most Influential People, and an impressive panoply of awards and accolades.
I am so immensely pleased that Marlon Blackwell, Susan Chin, Andrea Cochran, Philip Freelon, Dung Ngo, Linda Taalman, and Darren Walker have agreed to gauge the merits of our incoming Groundbreakers winners for 2017. You can read more about their dynamic careers below, and nominate a potential winner for the competition here.

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