The Facade Tectonics Institute’s Vitruvian Honors & Awards program celebrates outstanding achievements in the field of facade design and delivery. The program recognizes outstanding projects, as well as project teams and individuals, that have made extraordinary contributions to facade design, engineering, fabrication, installation and lifecycle performance. The program, winners, and honorees demonstrate the goals of the Institute in advancing the art, science, and technology of designing and constructing building facades to the benefit of people and planet.
The biennial program celebrates both outstanding projects and people. Evaluation criteria encompasses creative expression, innovation, collaboration, excellence and achievement within the building industry. In addition, the program, the award categories, the evaluation criteria, and the award winners and honorees reflect the Institute's passionate pursuit of resilience and sustainability in buildings and urban habitat.
The program concludes with a ceremony during which an award recipient or honoree is announced in each of the following categories.
Prepare your submissions and pass the word!
Award Categories
To learn more about submission requirements and project guidelines, explore the award categories linked in the dropdown sections following:
Eligibility and Submission Requirements for Project Awards
Projects must have been completed in the last five years and have been in place and functional for at least one calendar year.
All participants of the project team—owner, architect, and key consultants, contractors, fabricators and material and systems suppliers—must be credited.
Members of the jury credited in an entry, or whose organization of employment is credited in an entry, will be recused from judging that submission.
Submission form and deliverables must be completed by the submission deadline.
See general submission guidelines for project awards here. Refer to the individual award categories (links above) for possible additional submission requirements.
Eligibility and Submission Requirements for People Awards
Anyone can nominate an individual, anyone is eligible for jury consideration regardless of affiliation with the Facade Tectonics Institute.
Members of the jury with affiliations to the entrant, or whose organization of employment is affiliated with the entrant, will be recused from judging that submission.
Submission form and deliverables must be completed by the submission deadline.
Refer to the individual award categories for submission requirements (use links above for people award categories).
Important Dates
- Monday, Jan 13th, 2025
Call for Entries - Monday, June 16th, 2025
Entry Submission deadline - Monday, July 14th, 2025
Notification of Finalists - Tuesday, July 15th, 2025
Announcement and publication of the nominees - Thursday, September 18th, 2025 — Live Honors & Awards Event
Reception and awards presentation at the Center for Architecture in New York City
FTI 2025 Vitruvian Honors & Awards Ceremony - Tuesday, October 2, 2025 — Virtual Honors & Awards Event
Program Details TB
Judges are thought-leaders from a cross section of the building industry, in keeping with the FTI mission. Members of the jury credited in an entry, or whose organization of employment is otherwise related to the entry, will be recused from judging that submission.
Celebration of Honorees and Project Award Finalists
Winners will be honored at the Vitruvian Honors & Awards Ceremony. Finalists will have the opportunity to present their project at the virtual FTI Vitruvian Honors & Awards on October 7, 2025.
Background
Our climate is in crisis, representing nothing short of an existential threat to humanity. We are chagrined to acknowledge that buildings—our business—are a major part of the problem. Yet this awareness has failed to drive corrective action. We continue to move in the wrong direction, carbon ppm continues to rise along with species extinction and environmental destruction. We recognize the building skin as the lynchpin to achieving resilience and sustainability goals in buildings and urban habitat; nothing in architecture combines attributes of both performance and appearance as does the building facade. You, today’s project teams, are building our future. We must drive change; in thinking, in regulations, in practices, in tools and techniques. We hereby challenge building teams—utilizing the building skin as a mechanism of whole-building integration—to disrupt the conversation, to move the building arts and sciences from a big part of the problem to a leading component of the global solution.
It is our hope that the Vitruvian Honors program will significantly contribute to the following:
New processes for designing, testing, modeling, procuring, fabricating and assembling deeply integrated buildings and facade systems.
A deeper understanding of the lifecycle performance of facade system materials and assemblies.
Formal and performative design practices based on anticipated climate change and predicted climate data as opposed to historical data.
Adaptive facade designs that optimize passive strategies first but integrate carbon neutral or carbon positive strategies as appropriate to realize lifecycle health and environmental goals.
Utilization of the facade system as the key to a deeper level of building systems integration with the aim of achieving lifecycle and environmental goals.
The utilization of empirical over modeling methods, wherever possible, in exploring design alternatives, and the use of empirical evidence to calibrate modeling processes.
Accelerate the transformation to truly resilient and sustainable built environments.
The Vitruvian Honors & Awards program will be held live in NYC on September 18th at the Center for Architecture, followed by a comprehensive virtual program on October 7th where finalists will present their entries. The deadline for submissions is Monday, June 16th, 2025.
Please pass the word and prepare your submissions!