Jury Alumni

• 

  Alda Ly

  Principal, Alda Ly Architecture PLLC

  2021 Built Environment Jury Captain

  Alda Ly is founder and principal of Alda Ly Architecture (ALA), a New York-based architecture and interior design firm that specializes in using biophilic principles to transform how healthcare, commercial, and cultural spaces work, look and, more importantly, feel. ALA was founded in 2017 when groundbreaking co-working platform The Wing tapped Alda to design its East Coast and California locations. ALA now works with a growing number of entrepreneurs, startups, and established organizations looking to overhaul traditional work, care, and retail models. Clients have ranged from Bloomberg and functional medicine provider Parsley Health to women’s loungewear company ThirdLove and social-action technology firm Blue State.
  
  Alda was born in New Zealand and raised in a working-class suburb of Los Angeles, where she watched her cabinetmaker father draw kitchen elevations and accompanied him to open houses to see how people shaped their spaces. From the moment she studied freehand drawing as a UC Berkeley undergrad, Alda knew she wanted to become an architect, and went on to earn a master’s in the field from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Before opening ALA, Alda worked at Rafael Viñoly Architects, 212box, HWKN, and Leong Leong. Alda is a Registered Architect in New York.

• 

  Dani Arps

  Interior Designer, Dani Arps LLC / Artisan

  2021 Built Environment Jury Member

  Opening her eponymous firm Dani Arps LLC in 2014; Arps is an interior designer who designs office spaces for top startup companies throughout NYC. She has worked with the Founders and CEO’s from buzzy startups like Daily Harvest, SeatGeek, Codecademy, and General Assembly; to create over 250K sqft of striking and of the moment designs that cater to their unique needs. She will be launching her new business venture, Artisan, which combines design, brokerage, and project management, this year.
  
  Featured in many publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, and Interior Design Magazine; She was named by top design publication, House Beautiful, as 2019’s ‘Next Wave Interior Designer’ and awarded as 2017’s ‘Star on the Rise’ by the renowned Decoration and Design Building.

• 

  Nina Etnier

  Co-founder, Float Studio

  2021 Built Environment Jury Member

  Nina Etnier is the co-founder of Float Studio, a design firm focusing on workplaces since 2013. She studied graphic design, marketing, and psychology at American University, then moved to London and shifted her focus towards interiors, completing her graduate degree in Interior Spatial Design at Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2009. Along with her business partner, she was named Contract Magazine’s 2019 Designer of the Year, and her history managing large scale projects and developing specific architectural details and custom furniture allows her to create spaces that are faithful extensions of brands.

• 

  Victor Ermoli

  Dean of the School of Design, Savannah College of Art and Design

  2020 Built Environment Jury Captain

  Victor Ermoli is currently the Executive Director of eLearning and Dean for the School of Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, a member of the Industrial Design Society of America and the Design Futures Council. He is currently responsible for the Industrial Design, Design Management, Service Design, Design for Sustainability, Interaction Design, Marine Design, User Experience (UX) Design, and Creative Business Leadership programs at SCAD. He has created with his team more than ten academic programs, including Service Design (Only one in the United States), Industrial Design, Design Management, Design for Sustainability, User Experience (UX) Design, Accessory Design, and Luxury Fashion Management; just to mention few. In addition, he is responsible for the management and direction of the eLearning Department for the whole University. This department develops and administers all the online courses and degrees offered by SCAD

• 

  Lesley Braxton

  Principal, Perkins & Will

  2020 Built Environment Jury Member

  Having moved 8 times to 8 different states before the age of 17, Lesley learned at a young age to embrace change, optimism and the cultures of many. This influenced her path as an architect and interior designer to take a wide angle view and operate as generalist in a seemingly very specific world. She designs across higher education, science & technology and corporate markets, ultimately blending influences of each sector into the next. This blurring helps her bring clients bold ideas deeply rooted in place and project understanding. Lesley is the glue that holds complex teams together by bringing nationally recognized, award winning design leadership, and an empathetic, hands on approach.
  
  Lesley is a frequent guest speaker and critic at local universities. She is also a dedicated mentor to many young women, helping them develop careers while giving her a deeper look into their cultures. Lesley also has a deep love for art and travels the world with her family drawing and painting; Both of her children held paint brushes before the ever holding a pencil.

• 

  Jim Cramer

  Founder, The Design Futures Council

  2020 Built Environment Jury Member

  Jim Cramer is the founder of The Design Futures Council. He also founded the journal Design Intelligence. He is the author of six books on design management including Small Firm Success and Lessons From The Future both released earlier this year, 2020. His best seller book, How Firms Succeed is now in its 6th Edition. Cramer is the past CEO of The American Institute of Architects and recipient of over 80 design awards and honors.

• 

  Hsu-Jen Huang

  Professor of Architecture, Savannah College of Art and Design

  2020 Built Environment Jury Member

  Professor of Architecture Hsu-Jen Huang, originally from Taipei, Taiwan, received his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Architecture from the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow University, Scotland. He has been teaching at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Savannah since 1998. Huang’s experience includes urban design, architecture design, and electronic design and simulation. His academic expertise includes architecture design and presentation, urban design and planning, digital representation, traditional rendering methods, and hybrid media presentation.

• 

  Dong-Ping Wong

  Founder, Food New York

  2019 Built Environment Jury Captain

  Before starting FOOD in 2018, Dong was a founding partner of Family New York with Oana Stanescu, which led the designs of contemporary art museums in Mantaa, Finland and Maribor, Slovenia, stand-alone stores for Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh in New York, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong, the stage design for Kanye West’s Yeezus Tour, and residential projects for him and his family in Paris and Los Angeles.
  
  Dong's work has been featured in publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Complex and Wired and has been awarded the Diamond Award for Engineering Excellence, the New York Design Award for Best Young Practice and was nominated for the INDEX Awards in Copenhagen. Prior to starting his own practice, Dong worked as a designer at OMA and REX in New York and EHDD in San Francisco, specializing in public, cultural, and hi-density mixed-use buildings.
  
  Dong earned his Masters of Architecture from Columbia University and his Bachelor’s from UC Berkeley.
  

• 

  Archie LEE Coates IV

  Co-Director, PLAYLAB, INC.

  2019 Built Environment Jury Member

  Archie Lee Coates IV is a co-founder and partner at PLAYLAB, INC., a New York based creative studio that uses art, architecture, and graphic design to initiate ideas around themes that interest them. Past projects include 30' inflatable flowers for Midtown Manhattan, a re-brand of America for SFMOMA and a compilation of all the times Joaquin Phoenix has walked in his films, titled Walking Phoenix. In 2011, he co-founded the quarterly publication CLOG, and in 2010 he co-founded + POOL, an initiative to build the world’s first water-filtering floating pool in New York with Family New York. Archie is also a thesis faculty at School of Visual Arts’ Design for Social Innovation program, where he teaches how to bring ideas to life.

• 

  Jeffrey Franklin

  Co-Director, PLAYLAB, INC.

  2019 Built Environment Jury Member

• 

  Alice Hines

  Writer

  2019 Built Environment Jury Member

  Alice is a writer in New York City. She contributes essays, criticism, features, and interviews to the New York Times, Bloomberg, and New York Magazine, and other publications. Alice also copywrites for fashion brands and startups.

• 

  Cass Nakashima

  Associate, FOOD New York

  2019 Built Environment Jury Member

  Cass Nakashima is an associate at Food New York working as a Project Lead for a renovation of a 2500sf residence in Soho, new galleries for Milk Studios, renovation of Need Supply Co. flagship, residences for Kanye and Kim Kardashian West in Los Angeles and the Services Building of + POOL.

• 

  Hassan Rahim

  Art Director / Designer, 12:01

  2019 Built Environment Jury Member

  Hassan Rahim is an artist and art director originally from Los Angeles, now working out of New York.

• 

  Jesse Tylor

  Architectural Designer, FOOD New York

  2019 Built Environment Jury Member

  Jesse is and Architectural Designer. He was worked at Food (Formerly Family) since 2015 and has been the Project Lead on Off-White stores in Tokyo, Singapore and New York, a new community church in the Sydhavnen neighborhood of Copenhagen and the new Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany. Prior to Food, Jesse worked with DFA Architects, Huff+Gooden, and was a designer at Hassell Studio in Perth, Australia. Jesse earned a Master’s in Architecture at the University of Western Australia and University of Arizona, and a Bachelor’s of Environmental Design at UWA. Jesse is from Perth, Australia.

• 

  Dror Benshetrit

  Principal, Studio Dror

  2018 Built Environment Jury Captain

  Dror Benshetrit is a designer, thinker, dreamer and futurist. He began his career as an artist and has since amassed an award-winning portfolio of product design, interiors, architecture, master planning and city planning—all before the age of 40. Together with his team of designers, artists, architects, researchers and communicators, he tackles ambitious pursuits to foster authentic connections and improve people’s well-being.
  
  His holistic practice—named one of the most innovative companies in design by Fast Company—intentionally works across all scales, blurring boundaries with each project.
  
  Studio Dror is one of the only practices to bridge Architecture, Design, and Art, and the results are always avant-garde: current endeavors include an innovation lab for the future of nature and humanity, large site-specific installations, a book entitled ‘Dror Dreams’, and The Lookback, an immersive entertainment venture replicating an astronaut’s experience standing on the Moon looking back at Earth.
  
  Collaboration is the cornerstone of his approach: he partners with best-in-class specialists and brands and organizations that share the same spirit of innovation to test the limits of convention and bring profound ideas to life. As a result, Dror’s connections and network includes highly influential people in the worlds of Art, Real Estate Development, Fashion, Design, Academia and Politics.
  

• 

  Charlie Gepp

  Founder, INTENTIONALLY BLANK

  2018 Built Environment Jury Member

  Charlie Gepp is a patron and avid collector of Art and Design, mainly modern and contemporary. He is co-founder of Melissa Shoes USA, the leading global manufacturer of jelly shoes and a pioneer in forging design collaborations with Architects, Artists and Designers such as Zaha Hadid, Mariko Mori, Sebastian Errazuriz and Muti Randolph. Charlie Gepp is also founder of INTENTIONALLY BLANK, which acts as agent and provides coaching and strategic advice to a stable of artists and designers. He is also actively involved with Creative Time, Mariko Mori’s FAOU Foundation and the Storefront for Art and Architecture.