Celebrated Catalan architect Carme Pinós; multihyphenate artist, architect, educator, and writer Anthony Titus; and the husband-wife founding principals of three architecture studios—Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of Johnston Marklee, Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu of SO–IL, and Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa of Ensamble Studio—are the winners of the 2022 Architecture Award bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The winners were selected from a group of 25 individuals and practices nominated by members of the Academy, a prestigious 122-year-old honor society based in New York City. The jurors for the 2022 Architecture Award were Toshiko Mori (chair), Marlon Blackwell, Peter Eisenman, Steven Holl, Annabelle Selldorf, Nader Tehrani, and Meejin Yoon.

The $20,000 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, the Academy’s flagship architecture award first presented to Gordon Bunshaft, is conferred to an architect of any nationality who has “made a significant contribution to architecture as an art.” Additionally, two (sometimes three) Arts and Letters Awards are presented to American architects whose collective work is “characterized as having a strong personal direction, while two (sometimes one) Arts and Letters Awards are given to “American who explore ideas in architecture through any medium of expression.” The Arts and Letters Awards, always four in total, are for $10,000.

The Academy’s inaugural Architecture Award was presented in 1955.

The winners of the 2022 Architecture Award, in full, are as follows:

Carme Pinós, founder and principal of Barcelona-based architecture and design firm Estudio Carme Pinós (Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize).

Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa, founding principals of Boston-based architecture firm Ensamble Studio (Arts and Letters Award for work characterized as having a strong personal direction).

Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, founding principals of Brooklyn-based architecture practice SO–IL (Arts and Letters Award for work characterized as having a strong personal direction).

Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, founding partners of Los Angeles– and Cambridge, Massachusetts–based architecture firm Johnston Marklee (Arts and Letters Award for work characterized as having a strong personal direction).

Anthony Titus, professor of architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and founder of New York City–based interdisciplinary art and architecture practice Anthony Titus Studio (Arts and Letters Award for exploring ideas in architecture through any medium of expression).

In 2021, the American Academy of Arts and Letters bestowed the Architecture Award to designer, educator, and urbanist Justin Garrett Moore; Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller, founders of El Paso–based interdisciplinary pratice AGENCY; Julie Eizenberg and Hank Koning, founding principals of Santa Monica-based architecture firm Koning Eizenberg Architecture; and Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu, founders of the L.A.-based architecture and design firm Oyler Wu Collaborative. Marina Tabassum, founder and principal of the Dhaka, Bangladesh-based Marina Tabassum Architects, was awarded the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize.

Last month, the Academy announced that 18 new members and three honorary members had been elected to its ranks, including three architects and one landscape architect: Deborah Berke, Thomas Phifer, Mabel O. Wilson, and Michael Van Valkenburgh. The new members will be inducted into the Academy during a ceremony on May 18. Membership in the Academy is limited to 300 architects, visual artists, composers, and writers; they are elected for life and pay no dues.