SelgasCano’s café pavilion and covered walkway in Bailuwan Town, China, is featured in the March 2024 issue of RECORD. Photo © Iwan Baan

Receiving Arts and Letters Awards for work that is “characterized by a strong personal direction,” is LEVENBETTS, a 2007 Design Vanguard led by David Leven and Stella Betts, both of whom presented their ongoing work with New York City’s public library systems including the East Flatbush Library at RECORD’s 2023 Innovation Conference. Also honored with the same award is Oberlander Prize–winning landscape architect Julie Bargmann, founder of Charlottesville, Virginia–based D.I.R.T. studio. Both Betts and Bargmann are also past Women in Architecture Design Leadership Award honorees. 

Also recognized with Arts and Letters Awards for “exploring ideas in architecture through any medium or expression” are Beatriz Colomina, a Spanish-born architectural historian, theorist, and curator who serves as founding director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University, and Krzysztof Wodiczko, a Polish visual artist and professor in Residence of Art, Design and the Public Domain, Emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The 2024 Architecture Awards recipients were chosen from a group of individuals and practices nominated by the members of Arts and Letters. Comprising the selection committee were chair Toshiko Mori, Deborah Berke, Marlon Blackwell, Merrill Elam, Steven Holl, Michael Maltzan, Nader Tehrani, and Billie Tsien.

The architecture awards will be presented alongside the art, literature, and music awards at a ceremony held in May. Last year’s awardees included, among others, Sean Canty, founder of Studio Sean Canty; Roberto de Leon and Ross Primmer, founding principals of 2010 Design Vanguard de Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop, and Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, co-founders of 2004 Design Vanguard WORKac.