2023 Design Excellence Awards
2023 Design Excellence Awards
Submission deadline: Thursday, July 17, 2023
Montgomery Planning seeks to recognize exceptional architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism that makes a difference in people’s lives and represents the County’s highest quality of design to the region, state, and nation. This year, the Department will hold its sixth Design Excellence Award competition to honor this work.
This year, Montgomery Planning will honor projects with two Design Excellence Awards:
- Buildings, Urban Design and Landscapes
- Exceptional Housing
The top award recognizes an exceptional building, urban design and/or landscape that represents built excellence that enhances the public realm, promotes a stronger community through the physical design, and fosters social, environmental, and economic value to the owner, users, and greater community. A second top award will be given to honor extraordinary housing that exemplifies design excellence and makes lives better for those who live there. This building and its site enrich the surrounding neighborhood, promotes human connections, and brings a sense of pride to the residents and surrounding community. The winning designs help promote great urbanism and walkability no matter where their location is within the County.
Entries will be accepted starting Wednesday, May 10, 2023. The deadline for submission is Thursday, July 17, 2023. The selection of the two winners, one for buildings, sites, and/or urbanism and one for exceptional housing, will be made by an outside jury with expertise in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, planning and urban design selected by the Planning Department.
Criteria for project eligibility:
- Private or Public projects built within Montgomery County.
- Built within the last ten years.
- Exceptional high-quality design that has a clear relationship to its community context and enhances the public realm.
The two Award winners will be announced on Thursday October 19 at an awards celebration at the Montgomery County Planning Department’s Wheaton Headquarters, 2425 Reedie Drive, Wheaton, MD 20902. This event will be held in conjunction with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Potomac Valley Chapter annual design awards celebration.
For any questions or clarifications, please contact: Paul Mortensen, paul.mortensen@montgomeryplanning.org, 301-495-4523.
Review the 2021 Design Excellence Award winners and jury citations.
2023 Design Excellence Award Jury
Evan Goldman – Evan is the Vice President of Land Acquisitions and Development for EYA. He brings more than 20 years of mixed-use and multi-family development experience, not only in sourcing new deals but also shepherding projects through the development process. Prior to joining EYA, he was a Vice President of Development at Federal Realty Investment Trust in Rockville, MD, where he was primarily responsible for managing the development of Pike & Rose, a 24-acre, 3.4 million–square foot, award-winning, mixed-use neighborhood in North Bethesda. He was previously a partner at the Holladay Corporation, an urban infill mixed-use development company in Washington, DC, and an associate for Tishman Speyer Properties in New York City. Evan holds an MBA in Real Estate and Finance from the Wharton Business School and a B.S. in Design and Environmental Analysis from Cornell University. He has guest-lectured at Cornell University, Georgetown University, the Catholic University of America, and the University of Maryland College Park. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Urban Land Institute Washington and was a founding board member of Friends of White Flint. He received the 2012 Livable Communities Leadership Award from the Washington, DC–based Coalition for Smarter Growth.
Marina Khoury, RA, LEED AP, CNU – Marina is an expert in sustainable urban redevelopment, regional and master planning, transit-oriented developments, and form-based codes. As a partner at DPZ CoDesign, she has been Director of its Washington, DC–area office since 2007. A licensed architect and fluent in several languages, she has worked on the design and implementation of projects in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East, including ground-breaking new codes around the world to mandate resilient urbanism. She speaks widely on issues related to Smart Growth and to affordable, sustainable, and walkable communities, including at the United Nations. She co-led the development of the successful Miami21 code, the country’s first form-based zoning code, and her strong track-record of getting such codes adopted has created a predictable framework for resilient places. Marina is one of 20 members on the Expert Committee of Global Forum on Human Settlements (UNEP-GFHS) International Green Model City (IGMC) Initiative under the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She served as a board member of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) DC chapter from 2007 to 2012, and she was made a CNU fellow in 2022. She served as chair of the executive board of Smart Growth America’s Form-Based Code Institute (FBCI) from 2018 to 2021 and is a member of the Lambda Alpha International George Washington Chapter, a member of the Urban Guild, and a LEED Accredited professional.
Georgeanne Matthews, PhD – Georgeanne specializes in public design and her portfolio comprises the institutional architecture that fortifies a community’s identity and sense of place. She joined the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in 2022 as an assistant professor of architecture to focus on her research in spatializing memory, community development, and design of the public realm. Her passion for designing resilient communities is informed by a diverse professional and pedagogical resume, including having previously served as interim Director of Urban Practice at the Catholic University of America. She began her architecture career at Grimm and Parker Architects and later at Moody Nolan Architects, in both the Nashville and Washington, DC, offices, and has since managed several real estate development projects. In addition, Georgeanne is the founder and director of the City Lab Urban Design Collective in Washington, DC, a nonprofit group that assists neighborhood design projects to support underserved residents. Georgeanne is committed to research and architectural projects that focus on creating just and resilient communities for 21st century living, while preserving the history and character of place.
Mark McInturff, FAIA – Mark is a native of Washington, DC, and received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Maryland School of Architecture in 1972, as part of its first graduating class, and has taught at the University of Maryland since 1980. Currently an annual visiting critic with a focus on design competitions, he was a visiting critic at the Catholic University of America’s School of Architecture and Planning from 1995 to 2004, and he was elevated to the College of Fellows of the AIA in 2000 and made a University of Maryland Kea Professor in 2003. Today, his five-person firm McInturff Architects works on residential, commercial, and small institutional projects; its work has been frequently published, both locally and nationally, and received more than 200 regional and national design awards. It has been the subject of three monographs, Mark McInturff: House Design (2006), In House: McInturff Architects (2013), and HomeWork: New Houses | Changed Houses (2022).
Lee Quill, FAIA – Lee is a founding principal of Cunningham | Quill Architects in Washington, D.C. and has over 35 years of experience in urban design and master planning and in higher education, residential, infill mixed-use, commercial, and institutional architecture. A nationally recognized leader in community engagement and design, he has served on the DC Mayoral Task Force on Transit-Oriented Development, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s 2050 Initiative (Region Forward and Metropolitan Development Policy Committee), and the Urban Design Advisory Committee, and the Carlyle-East Eisenhower Design Review Board in the City of Alexandria, Virginia. He also served as the Design Team Lead for national AIA Sustainable Design Assessment Teams in Colorado (2011) and Washington (2012) and has been a juror for the EPA National Awards for Smart Growth Achievement, the URBAN LAB, and the 2022 APA National Capital Area Chapter Planning Awards, among others. Lee has received numerous design awards including from the AIA, the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Washington Architectural Foundation, and the APA Virginia.