2020 is an interesting year to run a design awards event. This became clear when the AIA Vermont Board of Directors met for their annual retreat on March 12th. Much of the day was to be focused on planning an AIA New England Design Awards conference style event. Amid much uncertainty about whether or not an event could even be held, the board outlined the key elements of the event, one of which was to take a new approach to recruiting a jury. AIA Vermont's Board President, Taryn Barrett, had returned from AIA's Grass Roots conference inspired by her conversations with members of the AIA New England Council, who advised her that, as the hosting chapter, it was completely up to AIA Vermont to decide how to go about putting together the design awards jury. From the start, Taryn envisioned pulling together a diverse jury, made up of a variety of individuals with a broad range of backgrounds and expertise.

Soon after that meeting, it became very clear that this year's jury was not going to be able to meet to review entries and deliberate in person. Rather than seeing this as a negative, AIA Vermont's Board of Directors recognized this as an opportunity to recruit jurors without the typical challenges faced by geographic location. Organizations were identified that could help the awards committee in their search for individuals, including NOMA, COTE, ASLA, as well as women in architecture, and representatives from the academic realm of architecture. After some considerable research and legwork, AIAVT's Awards Committee, Chaired by Jeff Stetter, AIA, has put together a fantastic group of highly qualified individuals.  

AIAVT's Board of Directors are pleased to announce the following individuals will be making up this year's AIA New England Design Awards Jury.

Catherine Miller, ASLA

Catherine Miller is a Principal with Hargreaves Jones Landscape Architecture and is a Registered Landscape Architect. She has been with Hargreaves Jones for over 25 years and has worked on the Clinton Presidential Park, the 911 Competition with Studio Libeskind, and the Louisville Waterfront Park, an early project which utilized parkland to allow a river to expand and slow in flood. Catherine brings her education and work experience in architecture to her work, with a BS-Architecture from UW-Milwaukee and a MArch from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She has studied and worked in Washington DC, Paris, Berlin, San Francisco, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

H. Killion Mokwete, RIBA Chartered Architect

Co-Founder at Adaptiv, H. Killion Mokwete is UK trained and registered Architect (RIBA chartered Architect) with international experience in urban design from London where he worked on urban development projects in New Barnet while at the international firm Building Design Partnership (BDP). Killion also worked in Botswana, Africa where he led urban design projects in Kumasi, Ghana, and is currently leading a community master planning project in Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti at Build Health International (BHI). Before Co-Founding Adaptiv, he worked at, Build Health International (BHI) and also Shepley Bulfinch in Boston as part of the University of Global Equity (UGHE) campus development team in Rwanda. Killion is an adjunct lecturer at Northeastern University, MassArt, and Boston Architectural College (BAC) where he teaches design studios focused on emerging markets (Haiti) and is especially interested on how participatory design processes can be a catalyst for local community development.

Julie Hiromoto, AIA 

Julie Hiromoto is a Principal at HKS and the firmwide Director of Integration. Her experience in managing a diverse portfolio of large and complex projects to boutique installations transforms the built environment by synergizing research, systems thinking, and inclusive best practices. She balances business, design excellence, and technical expertise while instilling her passion for socially and environmentally responsible design to our next generation of leaders through mentoring. A recognized national leader in the sustainable design community, Julie drives positive change through various organizations. Her work launching the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE), chairing the AIA Large Firm Roundtable Sustainability Group, contributing as a WELL Community Working Group member, volunteering as a Living Future Ambassador, and as the 2020 AIA COTE® Advisory Group Chair collectively leverages the impact of designers, owners, and operators on high-performance design and equity.

Julie Snow, FAIA

Julie Snow leads Snow Kreilich Architects, a studio-based practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The studio’s interest in pragmatic and critical programmatic reflection results in innovative designs that expand our understanding of architectural performance. Design strategies engage issues of how architecture performs within each project’s, social, cultural, and economic context. The practice has been recognized with numerous awards including the AIA’s 2018 Architecture Firm Award, an honor that recognizes a practice that consistently has produced distinguished architecture for at least 10 years. Projects have been recognized with several AIA Honor Awards, a Holcim North American Bronze Award, a Progressive Architecture Design Award, the Chicago Athenaeum’s American and International Architecture Awards, Architect Magazine Annual Design Review, the Design Distinction Award from I.D. magazine, several Business Week/Architectural Record Awards and several US General Services Administration's Design Excellence Awards. The work of the studio was exhibited at the Chicago Architectural Foundation. Julie Snow has held several visiting professor positions including the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, USC, and Washington University, St. Louis, as well as teaching at the University of Minnesota College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture where she received the Ralph Rapson Award for Distinguished Teaching. She was selected as an “Emerging Voice” by the New York Architectural League in 1998. In 2005, Princeton Architectural Press published the first monograph on the studio’s work in its series on emerging designers from around the world. In 2011 she was awarded the Architecture Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Michael MacPhail 

Michael Mac Phail is an architect and educator who enjoys helping aspiring architects succeed in practice. He also has years of experience helping mission-driven organizations define their strategic vision. His accomplishments include building, organizing, and leading a successful design program as Chair of Architecture at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. He was also Director of Design at the Cambridge Innovation Center in Boston and has served as Director of Administration at the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, a research center focused on net-zero energy building technologies. Michael is a registered architect in the state of Massachusetts and currently serves as Director of Production at dEmios Architects.