Since 1981, The Architectural League of New York has showcased the latest emerging design talent in the annual Architectural League Prize. Every year, the Architectural League selects three previous winners for the League Prize committee, who are tasked to develop the competition theme that engages certain aspects of architectural form and practice that are most relevant to their fellow young practitioners.

The 2014 edition took an intrinsic approach with the theme "Overlay", which had entrants contemplate how the interactive, incremental processes inform and direct their work. Participants examined their own creative processes and presented how their developed techniques are activated over time with additional layers of meaning as they further explore architectural concepts.

Earlier this month, the Architectural League published the winning entries from this competition in Young Architects 16: Overlay. The book highlights six American firms: Young & Ayata (Brooklyn), The LADG (Los Angeles), SIFT Studio (Ann Arbor), Norman Kelley (Brooklyn + Chicago), Jenny Sabin Studio (Philadelphia), and Geoffrey von Oeyen Design (Los Angeles).

Interested in reading more about their Prize-winning projects? Archinect is giving away five copies of Young Architects 16: Overlay!

TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY: Fill out this survey by the deadline on July 23, 2015. Five winners will be selected. Good luck!

Anne Rieselbach, the Architectural League's Program Director, shared more details about the book and the competition with Archinect:

ARCHINECT: How do the entries in Young Architects 16 stand out from previous editions of the book?

ANNE RIESELBACH: "Every year, and this is very much on my mind since we just opened the 2015 exhibition of winning work, the winning entries for the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers never cease to impress us all by their formal and tectonic invention and skill.  A number of qualities set apart some of the work in Overlay. Foremost is a new kind of relationship with history that insightfully mines underlying principles, proportions, and narratives to inform designs with an embedded rather than superficial reference to form and place.

Material experimentation continues to drive some of the work at increasingly sophisticated levels that also more specifically target pragmatic design solutions.  Finally, as is evident in the publication, the winners’ skillful means of presentation — in their entries, as well as the site-specific pieces for the exhibition that is part of the program — reflect the growing sophistication of their use of the wealth of design tools available even to young practices."

ARCHINECT: What is consistently the biggest challenge in selecting the winning entries in every Prize competition? 

AR: "There are challenges that the jury faces every year, mostly related to presentation and content. We receive upwards of 100 entries, and each jury member first reviews every portfolio, then the jury as a whole considers the entries that have received favorable reviews. The emphasis is on portfolios that respond to the competition theme with a clear, original narrative, both through the work as well as the required accompanying text. Sometimes, especially given the strong presentation skills of a majority of the entrants, a second, more critical look reveals that there is less than meets the eye, the work may be beautifully presented but inconsistent or derivative."

ARCHINECT: What architectural trends do you predict will emerge in the near future? What current trends should young architects pay attention to?

AR: "In all honesty I am surprised every year by the winning work, and find it difficult to predict what will come next. Certainly, gauging from the work in Overlay in combination with the most recent competition, whose theme was Authenticity, younger architects and designers are testing their ideas at every scale. There is a much more organic relationship between digital and analogue — in production and expression— and a renewed interest in reevaluating, reappropriating, and reinterpreting history."

TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY: Fill out this survey by the deadline on July 23, 2015. Five winners will be selected. Good luck!