Students win ACADIA Prize at national NOMA conference
OCTOBER 27, 2025
BY emily Capdeville
A team of six students from Tulane University participated in this year's Barbara G. Laurie Student Design Competition, the largest Tulane team in recent years. The team was organized by Nia Fletcher, now in her third year participating in the competition. The group, which included students Minh Hoang Dang, Diya Karthic, Kristina Hoang, Meghan Huang, Miguel Alvarez Gamez and Fletcher, began meeting during the spring semester and continued bi-weekly over the summer, coordinating across multiple time zones to prepare for the preliminary presentation in July. According to Huang, the team enjoyed juggling everyone's different schedules. From study abroad to personal travel, they never seemed to be in one place, but this challenge only helped focus them.
The student group developed their winning project, AXIS, with the support of Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment faculty members throughout the ideation and creation of the proposal. The steam describes AXIS as "a mixed-use project developed in the Strawberry Hill neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. Located on a major street, surrounded by a variety of buildings, and situated at the end of a key pedestrian path, this design aims to amplify the energy already present on the site. Generous public spaces, both indoors and outdoors, along with additional parks and vibrant mural walls, create an exciting and inviting place for the neighborhood to gather, interact, and celebrate."
The process, from team assembly to proposal conception through the presentations, was lengthy. After the initial idea development, over 40 teams presented their projects in the conceptual phase remotely via Zoom to a panel of judges. The Tulane group advanced to the top 16, earning an additional month to develop their design and create a physical model for an in-person presentation at the 2025 Annual NOMA Conference.
During this time, students Diya Karthic and Miguel Alvarez Gamez, with support from Fabrication Lab Director Nick LiCausi, developed the physical model. In late October, Professors Ruben Garcia Rubio and Vela Sonsoles attended a practice presentation, providing guidance and feedback. For the in-person presentation in Missouri, Diya Karthic and Minh Dang presented the project to a panel of 5–6 judges, including NOMA architects, local architects, and community stakeholders. About the experience, Dang remarked that "The competition allowed me to compete with other architecture students from different universities, and I have learned so much from being part of the team this year...I really appreciate the support our team received." Their presentation lasted approximately 20 minutes and judges, in their summative remarks, expressed appreciation for the project's sustainable strategies and its incorporation of culture and history through vibrant mural walls.
After all of this hard work, collaboration and presentations, Tulane NOMAS ultimately won first place in the ACADIA prize, also known as the Computational Design Award. This award is judged separately from the Barbara G. Laurie Award and is presented at the same ceremony as a sort of “sister award.” Inaugurated in 2020, this award recognizes work that demonstrates creative exploration with regard to the use of computational tools and methods.
This 2025 first-place ACADIA prize follows Tulane NOMAS’ first place win in the Barbara G. Laurie Competition in 2024. Congratulations!
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