Thomas Phifer and Partners has also completed the United States Courthouse in Salt Lake City, the Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion at Rice University in Houston, the Moody Amphitheater in Austin, Texas, two campus buildings for Indiana University, and houses across the United States, several of which were honored as Record Houses.

As part of the inaugural Architectural Record Awards, two other prizes for individual achievement go to Caitlin Mueller and Carlos Cerezo Davila. Mueller, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been named Innovator of the Year, commending her outstanding contributions to the built environment that push disciplinary boundaries. Cerezo Davila, who serves as global director of sustainability at Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), is Rising Professional, acknowledging the impact he is making on the profession.

The awardees will be recognized in a ceremony following Architectural Record’s Innovation Conference on October 30. At the ceremony, additional awards will be handed out for built and unbuilt projects in a number of categories. Further information regarding the conference agenda, and registration information can be found here.

More information on the awardees below:

Architect of RECORD
Thomas Phifer | Founder, Thomas Phifer and Partners

Thomas Phifer and Partners has received multiple awards from the American Institute of Architects, and numerous national and international citations. Personal recognitions include the 2004 Medal of Honor from the New York chapter of the AIA; Phifer later received AIANY’s President’s Award in 2016. He was elected as an Academician of the National Academy of Design in 2011, followed by an Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2013. In 2022, Phifer was elected as a lifetime member of the American Academy. Additional accolades include the Rome Prize in Architecture (1995) and the National Design Award in Architectural Design from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum (2019).

In 2022, Clemson University’s School of Architecture announced the Thomas Phifer Fellowship, a newly endowed fellowship for historically underserved and underrepresented students. Phifer has been appointed the William Henry Bishop Visiting Professor of Architectural Design and the Louis I Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design, both at the Yale School of Architecture. In 2025, he was awarded the Portman Prize Critic at the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech.

Caitlin Mueller is Innovator of the Year. Photo © Anna Olivella

Innovator of the Year
Caitlin Mueller | Associate Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Caitlin Mueller is an associate professor at MIT, with appointments in Architecture and in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She leads the Digital Structures research group, directs the Building Technology program, and serves as associate director of the MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium. Trained in architecture, structural engineering, computation, and building technology at MIT and Stanford, she joined the faculty in 2014. She presented her work at Record’s inaugural Sustainability in Practice conference at MIT in 2023.

Her work at MIT advances a vision for building design and construction that unites these disciplines with computation to create structures that are sustainable, high performing, and delightful. Her group develops computational design and digital fabrication methods that integrate efficiency, performance, material circularity, and architectural expression. This work spans robotic assembly of optimized trusses, fabrication of low-cost earthen and concrete systems, and algorithmic strategies for reusing salvaged wood and reassembled concrete parts. Through the ODDS & MODS program with architect Sheila Kennedy, she engages students in climate-focused design pedagogy centered on material circularity.

Mueller’s work has been widely recognized, with accolades from the Association for Computer Aided Design In Architecture (ACADIA) and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ASCA). It has also been realized in practice through the Sueños con Tierra y Concreto pavilion in Mexico City (2022), four installations at the 2025 Venice Biennale, and Remembering the Future, a tensile sculpture by artist Janet Echelman enabled by software from Mueller’s team (2025). She is co-founder of two startups: Forma Systems, which develops software for shape-optimized structural components, and Pixelframe, which advances a reconfigurable circular concrete kit of parts. 

Carlos Cerezo Davila is Rising Professional. Photo © KPF

Rising Professional
Carlos Cerezo Davila | Global Director of Sustainability, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

Carlos Cerezo Davila is an internationally recognized building scientist and sustainable design authority; he leads KPF’s Environmental Performance team. Davila leverages an evidence-based approach grounded in digital modeling of energy use, thermal comfort, daylight, and other inputs, to collaborate closely with the firm’s design teams and external consultants. His notable contributions to the firm’s body of work include leading the sustainability vision and resiliency plan of the 267-acre Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; developing the decarbonization strategy for the all-electric Vagelos Innovation Laboratories at Columbia University; and the Comcentre Redevelopment, which aims to be Singapore’s first end-to-end carbon-neutral development.

Davila teaches at the MIT Center for Real Estate (he formerly instructed for the university’s Sustainable Design Lab) and guest lectures at Columbia University GSAPP. Beyond academia, Carlos is involved with numerous organizations that work to further sustainability in the built environment including the Randall Lewis Center at the Urban Land Institute, the Waterfront Alliance, and the AIA New York Committee on the Environment’s Decarbonization subcommittee. He serves on the New York City Energy Conservation Code Advisory Committee, and he regularly presents research and design work at Greenbuild, AIA National, IBPSA, and ASHRAE conferences.