Design Awards
The AIA Houston Design Awards program recognizes design excellence in:
- Architecture greater than 50,000 SF
- Architecture less than 50,000 SF
- Residential architecture
- Interior architecture
- Restoration/renovation
- Divine detail
- Urban design
- On the boards
- Conceptual
Criteria to be used by the jury include quality of design, resolution of the program idea, sustainable responsibility, innovation, thoughtfulness, and technique.
2026 Jurors
Stephanie Davidson
DAVIDSON RAFAILIDIS
Stephanie Davidson is an assistant professor at The Knowlton School of Architecture, OSU. She has taught at schools in Germany, the US and Canada. Davidson works with Georg Rafailidis as DAVIDSON RAFAILIDIS. Through drawings, photographs, texts, teaching and built studies, they investigate architectural space, with a particular interest in how spaces are appropriated and changed over time. Davidson obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts with distinction from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada, before studying architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, UK, and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where she obtained her M.Arch. Davidson's invited commentary on the work of contemporary Portuguese architecture was published as part of Ceci N'est Pas Un Portrait (Circo de Ideias, 2024). More recently, Davidson was interviewed by Idoine Édition about the entanglement of work and life (Idoine + Stephanie Davidson / Shaque d'amour, 2025) . She has served on juries for The Architectural League of New York, The Architectural Review House Award, Azure magazine's AZ Award, among others.
Blair Payson, AIA, LEED AP
Principal/Owner, Olson Kundig
Blair Payson is a principal/owner at Olson Kundig, whose office locations include Seattle, New York, and Chicago. He has worked on both architectural and exhibit design projects, including the Century Project at the Space Needle, the Moody Center Complex for Student Life at Rice University, the Bill and Melinda Gates Visitor Center, and [storefront] Olson Kundig, as well as residential and cultural projects across the United States and Mexico. A maker at heart, Blair is an architect who revels in the details, able to distill large, complex projects into distinct culminating moments. His current and recent work spans cultural, residential, urban revitalization and civic projects, including a new museum in Hawaii and the reimagination of Seattle Center’s Armory building. Blair holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Rice University and is the recipient of multiple design awards, as well as a frequent speaker at architectural and design conferences.
Kyle Miller
Associate Dean, Syracuse University School of Architecture
Kyle Miller is Associate Dean and Associate Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Architecture, Co-Founder of Possible Mediums, and Fellow (’19) of MacDowell. His design research has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and Syracuse University, and has been included in the AIA Emerging Professionals Exhibition and shown at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Yale School of Architecture. In addition to co-authoring Possible Mediums and Building Practice, Miller’s writing has been published in Log, Monu, Constructs, Pidgin, Project, Offramp, PLAT, Room One Thousand, and the Journal for Architectural Education. Miller was Architecture Program Director at Syracuse University in Florence (2016-2018), previously taught at the University of Kentucky College of Design (2009-2013), and worked professionally in Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and for Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos with UNStudio in Amsterdam. Miller is a graduate of the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the University of California Los Angeles Department of Architecture and Urban Design, where he earned his professional degree and was awarded the AIA Henry Adams Medal and Certificate.
