“Recognizing women design leaders is just one way we can shine a light on the remarkable but often overlooked achievements of women in the profession,” said RECORD editor in chief Cathleen McGuigan.

An independent jury including Rosalie Genevro, executive director of the Architectural League; architecture critic Sarah Williams Goldhagen; Jill Lerner, principal of KPF; Mark Regulinksi, managing director of SOM; and Dallas Morning News critic Mark Lamster, selected this year’s winners. They are:

Susan T. Rodriguez, Design Leader

In addition to being founding partner and design principal of New York-based Ennead Architects, Rodriguez serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council and Board of Trustees at Cornell University, where she received her Bachelor of Architecture.

Her work explores design at a wide variety of scales and typologies, from large-scale institutional and cultural buildings to intimate interiors.

Amale Andraos, New Generation Leader

Andraos is the Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and co-founder of the firm WORKac, a New York-based design practice focused on re-imagining architecture at the intersection of the urban, the rural, and the natural. The firm was named the AIA New York State Firm of the Year in 2015.

Jenny Sabin, Innovator

Jenny Sabin’s practice applies insights and theories from biology and mathematics to the design of material structures.  The founder of Jenny Sabin Studio, an experimental design studio based in Philadelphia, Sabin is also an assistant professor and director of the Sabin Design Lab at Cornell University’s school of Architecture Art Planning.

Donna Robertson, Educator/Mentor

A long time educator, architect Donna Robertson has served as dean at both the Tulane School of Architecture and the College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She has held numerous positions of leadership in the field of architecture education over the past three decades, and is committed to the political and social benefits of design excellence.

Roberta Feldman, Activist

Feldman is a co-founder of the City Design Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she is also a professor of architecture. Through her work, Feldman has sustained relationships with over 50 community organizations in Chicago’s low-income neighborhoods to address neighborhood revitalization. Feldman has been editor and curator of several publications and exhibitions focused on affordable housing; her expertise and commitment to socially just housing and urban design has been recognized with numerous awards and accolades. 

Past winners of Record’s Women in Architecture Awards include: Merrill Elam of Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects; Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang; Sheila Kennedy of Kennedy & Violich Architecture; Erin McGurn of SCALEAfrica; Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, former dean of the University of Miami’s School of Architecture; Billie Tsien of Tod Williams Billie Tsien, Meejin Yoon, head of the department of architecture at M.I.T. and co-founder of Höweler + Yoon Architecture; Anna Dyson, professor of design, technology, and theory at the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and founding director of the Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology (CASE); Pat Sapinsley, managing director of Cleantech Initiatives at New York University’s Urban Future Lab; and Marilyn Jordan Taylor, former dean of the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.