AIA Louisiana Architecture Awards 2026

Tulane's Small Center for Collaborative Design - Growing Local Pavilion, Honor Award

This pavilion was designed to support an organization focused on urban farming, food policy, and improving fresh food access in New Orleans' Central City neighborhood and beyond. The structure serves multiple functions: an outdoor classroom, a farm support space, and a venue for a weekly farmers market.

The design is guided by the organization's mission to bring people together around food. Water management, repurposed materials, and low carbon impacts weren't just practical choices — they reflect the values of the community the pavilion serves and reinforce what gets taught there. The architectural language draws from the surrounding neighborhood vernacular so the structure feels at home in its context rather than dropped into it. Additonal details incporporate the local foodscape into the project, not just in raised beds but in subtle material choices like oyster-crete.

The result is a comfortable, flexible outdoor space that makes it easier for New Orleanians to learn about food systems, access fresh produce, and connect with one another.

View project summary.

Atelier Mey - Georgia Forestry Commission Learning Lab + Maintenance Shed, Award of Merit

Southern State contains approximately 24 million acres of forestland supporting a vast timber economy that produces pulp, paper, biomaterials, engineered wood products, and structural-grade lumber. Yet nearly 90 percent of the state’s structural lumber is exported beyond its borders. The center for field works responds to this imbalance by reconnecting construction to the regional forest landscape using locally sourced and manufactured mass timber systems. Positioned within the working forest, the building establishes a direct relationship between resource stewardship, material extraction, and construction. Exposed timber surfaces bring the warmth and tactile qualities of wood into the daily workspace, while the structure directly connects the organization's work to the buildings they inhabit. The program required an innovative long-span enclosure, leading the design team to develop a 60-foot clear-span roof system utilizing 5-ply Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) panels paired with bowstring tension members. The resulting structure forms a thin and materially efficient roof plane that maximizes openness, daylight, and flexibility. The exposed CLT panels simultaneously serve as primary structure, interior finish, and thermal enclosure, reducing material redundancy, construction complexity, and embodied carbon.

The project positions mass timber as both a renewable structural system and a catalyst for regional economies, environmental stewardship, and an architecture grounded in place.

View project summary.

John Stubbs, Louisiana Architecture Foundation Patron of Architecture award

John Stubbs, an accomplished advocate for preserving and promoting Louisiana’s architectural heritage for more than five decades, has been selected by the Louisiana Architecture Foundation for its Patron of Architecture award. Stubbs, of Monroe and formerly of New Orleans, received the award at the AIA Louisiana 2026 Conference on Architecture awards presentation on October 2 in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

The award is given in recognition of an individual who has shown significant leadership in promoting the merits and quality of architecture in Louisiana. 

As a young LSU faculty member, Stubbs produced the original three-volume inventory, history and preservation plan for Laurel Valley Plantation, the most intact surviving sugar complex in the South. 

Stubbs led the World Monuments Fund, directing restoration projects around the globe, for 20 years, then came back to Louisiana as Director of the Master of Preservation Studies program for Tulane University in 2011. In that role, he helped save historic buildings including the 1855 Carrollton Courthouse, and created the New Orleans Preservation timeline, an interactive database that documents the city’s preservation history. He also did field studies on French Quarter building restorations. 

He has guided restorations of historic homes and buildings across the state; and as a preservation advocate, he has waged campaigns to save the World Trade Center, Four Seasons Hotel, the Phillis Wheatley School, all in New Orleans, and Poverty Point, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He has written four landmark preservation books and done countless lectures across the globe on Louisiana’s built heritage.

He has also volunteered to advance numerous preservation projects and has led international delegations on tours of New Orleans to try to spark investment from international groups in the city’s historic sites. He has served on the board of the La. Trust for Historic Preservation and continues to teach about the necessity of historic preservation.