Architizer Vision Awards

The ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Campus is honored as a Finalist in the 2025 Architizer Vision Awards. The Vision Awards recognize forward-looking architectural concepts that leverage design to imagine more equitable, resilient, and culturally grounded futures. The program highlights projects that expand the role of architecture as a catalyst for broader social impact and meaningful global change.
 
September, 2025

ACSA Diversity Achievement Award

An Action-Based Framework to Expand Understanding through Design is honored with an ACSA 2025 Diversity Achievement Award. The Diversity Achievement Award recognizes the work of faculty, administrators, or students in creating effective methods and models to achieve greater diversity in curricula, school personnel, and student bodies, specifically to incorporate the participation and contributions of historically under-represented groups or contexts.
 
January, 2025

The Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Awards

The ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi Campus project was selected as one of 51 “Best of the Best" winners representing the Unbuilt-Education category in AN’s 2024 Best of Design Awards. The 12th edition of these awards was open to projects worldwide for the first time and received a record amount of applications. This project was highlighted as “culturally important and architecturally compelling” by the distinguished jury.
 
December, 2024

Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards 2024

Selected amongst 2,000+ applicants, Hawai'i Housing Lab's Holistic Housing Design Toolkit was honored in Fast Company's Innovation by Design Awards in the Social Justice category. This category honors products, services, and platforms that help underserved communities or developing countries.
 
July, 2024

AIA24 Conference on Architecture & Design

Hawai‘i Housing Lab’s Holistic Housing Design Toolkit was presented during a 2.5-hour Interactive Workshop at the 2024 AIA National Conference on Architecture and Design held June 5-8 in Washington, DC.

June, 2024

112th ACSA Annual Meeting: Disrupters on the Edge

The ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi Campus project was presented in the “Society+Community: Practices of Decolonization” session at the ACSA’s annual meeting moderated by David Fortin from Waterloo University alongside colleagues from the University of Colorado Boulder, the New York Institute of Technology and Texas Tech University.

March, 2024

Housing Works Symposium at Taubman College

Karla participated as a panelist in the “Enabling Equitable Housing: Examples from the Field” presentations and panel discussion event at the “Housing Works: Turning Research to Action for Equitable Housing Winter Symposium” at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Other panelists included Dana Cuff of cityLAB, UCLA, and Martha Galvez of Housing Solutions Lab, NYU Furman Center, together with a keynote by Karen Chapple, Director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto.
 
March, 2024

2024 ACSA Collaborative Practice Award

The ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi Campus project is recognized with the Collaborative Practice Award at the 2024 ACSA Architectural Education Awards. This award recognizes “community partnerships in which faculty, students, and neighborhood citizens are valued equally and that aim to address issues of social injustice through design.”

February, 2024

Arquitectura es Femenino

Karla is invited to participate in the “10x10 Arquitectura es Femenino” panel, showcasing the work and experiences of ten Venezuelan female architects. Arquitectura es Femenino is a platform and collective effort based in Caracas that seeks plural, inclusive, and more complex architectures.
December, 2023

2023 Good Design Award

Beyond Wayfinding, co-designed with Sig Zane Kaiao / Sig Zane Designs, received the prestigious Good Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies in the Installation category. “Founded in Chicago in 1950 by Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames, GOOD DESIGN remains the oldest and the world’s most recognized program for design excellence worldwide.”
 
December, 2023

Society for Experiential Graphic Design
2023 Global Design Award

Beyond Wayfinding, co-designed with Sig Zane Kaiao / Sig Zane Designs, recognized with the Honor Award in the Wayfinding category at the 2023 SEGD Global Design Awards. This is the top recognition for wayfinding in the world. The Society for Experiential Graphic Design Awards “recognize the most influential and impactful contributions to experience design.”
 
August, 2023

Fast Company’s
Innovation by Design Awards 2023

The ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi Campus project was honored in Fast Company's Innovation by Design Awards for 2023 in the Social Justice category. Fellow honorees in this category include Google, Kohler, Procter & Gamble, Mailchimp, and Delta Airlines.
 
August, 2023

2023 AIA Honolulu Award of Excellence

The ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi Campus project was honored with an Award of Excellence in the unbuilt category at AIA Honolulu’s 65th Annual Design Awards. “This highest honor recognizes projects which are deemed to exemplify excellence of architectural design on all levels of analysis, and exemplify the highest standards to which AIA members aspire.”
 
July, 2023

2023 AIA Honolulu Distinctive Detail Award

Beyond Wayfinding, co-designed with Sig Zane Kaiao / Sig Zane Designs, was honored with the Distinctive Detail Award, celebrating craftsmanship, attention to detail, and spirit of innovation at AIA Honolulu’s 65th Annual Design Awards.
 
July, 2023

Graphic Design USA’s
2023 American Digital Design Award

Beyond Wayfinding, co-designed with Sig Zane Kaiao / Sig Zane Designs, was selected as a winner from more than 2,400 entries in the 2023 GDUSA Digital Design Awards. “The 23rd Annual Digital Design Awards amplify the power of design excellence to enhance online and interactive experiences.”
 
June, 2023

Fast Company’s
World Changing Ideas Awards 2023

Beyond Wayfinding recognized with top honor in Art & Design category. Designed with Kūha'o Zane, Nalani Kanaka‘ole and Sig Zane of Sig Zane Kaiao / Sig Zane Designs. “Fast Company’s annual World Changing Ideas Awards honor the businesses and organizations that are developing creative solutions to the most pressing issues of our time.”
 
May, 2023

111th ACSA Annual Meeting: In Commons

Karla serves on the Reviews Committee and moderates the “Home, Housing & Equity of Place” panel at ACSA’s annual meeting inviting “scholars, practitioners, and thinkers to examine how architectural research, design, and pedagogy can expand the pluriversal nature of cooperativism and commoning.”

March, 2023

Chicago Design Summit

Karla and Brian participate in the “Chicago Design Summit: Future Real Conditional” as facilitators of the “Rehearsing Production” panel. “The Summit served as a catalyst for collaboration and partnership by offering a platform for participants to share and respond to ideas related to the upcoming CAB 5 titled, This is a Rehearsal. Led by the CAB 5 artistic team, Floating Museum.” - CAB

November, 2022

110th ACSA Annual Meeting: Empower

The “Future of Hawai‘i’s Housing, A Bottom-Up Exploratory Research Collaboration” was presented in the “Design: Critical Positions, Design In Situ”, session at the ACSA’s annual meeting alongside colleagues from Texas A&M, California College of the Arts, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, and Carleton University.

May, 2022

Ciudades Brillantes

Karla participates in the “Ciudades Brillantes” (brilliant cities)” panel by Fundación Espacio in Caracas. Ciudades Brillantes is a call for ideas for seven of the most populous cities in Venezuela in collaboration with Fulbright alumni and supported by the National Network of American Spaces, Universidad Simón Bolívar and Universidad Central de Venezuela on the occasion of Fulbright’s 75th anniversary in Venezuela and celebrating 68 years of cultural and academic exchange between Venezuela and the Unites States.

March, 2022

2022 ACSA Collaborative Practice Award

The “Future of Hawai‘i’s Housing” project is recognized with the Collaborative Practice Award at the 2022 ACSA Architectural Education Awards. “Established in 1997 by Thomas Dutton and Anthony Schuman to recognize ACSA’s commitment to community partnerships in which faculty, students and neighborhood citizens are valued equally and that aim to address issues of social injustice through design.”

January, 2022

Wall Street Journal

Base Conditions project featured in an expansive Wall Street Journal article about the historic towers and its role in the major motion picture “Candyman”.

November, 2021

Financial Times

Ruth Bloomfield’s Financial Times includes Ski On Home in article outlining trends in modern mountain living, alongside designs located in Lillehammer, Norway; Niseko, Japan; Golden, British Columbia; and Mont-Noble, Switzerland.

October, 2021

Dezeen

Ski On Home, located in the Truckee, California, is included in Dezeen article presenting a curated selection of homes, alongside designs located in Suffolk, UK; New South Wales, Australia; and Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan.

September, 2021

Candyman by Universal Pictures

Base Conditions project serves as a film set for the major motion picture Candyman directed by Nia DaCosta and co-written and produced by the Oscar-winning Jordan Peele.

August, 2021

UIA World Congress of Architects

Lawn Loungers was featured at the 27th World Congress of Architects was organized by the Institute of Architects of Brazil (IAB), under the auspices of the International Union of Architects (UIA). The international congress explored the theme “All the worlds. Just one world. Architecture 21”.

July, 2021

National Endowment for the Arts Grant

Our team was awarded a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts grant for aiding Hawai‘i counties in resiliency efforts.

February, 2021

Mayors’ Institute on City Design

As part of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design (MICD) initiative, we developed STRIPE the Strips for a design charrette that brought together five teams from the UH Community Design Center, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, and the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design in collaboration with the City and County of Honolulu and Kauai County to respond to specific urban challenges that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic.

January, 2021

2021 ACSA Course Development Prize

“Just Play”, a project centered on developing equity-focused educational games, was awarded the 2021 Course Development Prize in Architecture, Climate Change, and Society presented by Columbia University’s Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). Just Play is a project in collaboration with University of Hawai’i educators Priyam Das, Cathi Ho Schar, and Phoebe White.

January, 2021

2020 AIA Honolulu Award

Lawn Loungers was awarded the 2020 AIA Honolulu Award - Honorable Mention, Institutional. These portable spaces for community engagement allow citizens to slow down and interact with one another while sharing their thoughts on the future of housing in Hawai‘i.

November, 2020

2020 AIA Honolulu Distinctive Detail Award

A full-scale Phase One Clinical Trials 'Ohana Suite was designed and built as a research tool for a strategic planning and design project for the University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center.

November, 2020

108th ACSA Annual Meeting: Open

The “Hawai‘I Housing Lab” paper, included in the “Domesticity Re-imagined” session, presents an overview of the first phase of the” Future of Hawai‘i’s Housing” research project conducted in partnership with the Hawai‘i Public Housing Authority.

June, 2020

EPIC 2019: Agency

A peer-reviewed, three-part toolkit was presented to and tested on attendees to the annual Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, in Providence, Rhode Island at the Rhode Island School of Design. These community engagement tools are outputs from the Future of Hawai‘i’s Housing project for the Hawai‘i Public Housing Authority.

November, 2019

2019 International Interior Design Association Award

Recipient of the IIDA Hawai‘i Ho‘ohuli “Maker” Award, the A-Frames are mobile display units with non-repeating patterns of linear openings that allow for the precise tuning, organization, curation, and editing of creative work. The A-Frames were commissioned to celebrate the unique identity of the only accredited school of architecture in the South Pacific Region.

October, 2019

2019 Building Voices: Housing for All

Building Voices: Housing for All assembled talented individuals, work and discussions under the research focus of affordable housing. Karla Sierralta, Brian Strawn, and Cathi Ho Schar co-curated two days of conversations at the Hawai‘i Convention Center and the UHM School of Architecture for the third iteration of Building Voices with thought leaders that culminated in a round table discussion gathering government agency representatives, designers, developers, and community partners to talk about the tools needed to advance the next generation of housing in Hawai‘i.

September, 2019

Honolulu Parking Day 2019

A digital/physical research platform and toolkit for community engagement designed for the Hawai‘i Public Housing Authority as an output of the Future of Hawai‘i’s Housing project was deployed during Parking Day at SALT in Kaka‘ako.

September, 2019

2019 AIA Honolulu Award

Plural Territories was awarded the 2019 AIA Honolulu Award - Honorable Mention, Unbuilt. A colorful array of quickly deployable constructs operate together as a public forum claiming public space without permission. Plural Territories reimagines the role of the architectural pavilion as a political agent.

September, 2019

Hawai‘i Housing Lab’s Web App Launches with KPF UI

Plan Your Neighborhood was developed in collaboration with KPF Urban Interface and tailored for Hawai‘i’s unique environment for the Future of Hawai‘i’s Housing project. The web-based, urban design tool allows the public to explore thousands of metrics-based, design possibilities in real-time.

August, 2019

Collaboration with Allison Arieff: Density Done Right

Allison Arieff spotlights people, projects, ideas, and technologies that will help us get to density done right in Hawai‘i, as part of the 2019 Sakamaki Extraordinary Lecture Series. Strawn co-chairs the endowed lecture series and deploys a pop-up exhibit of her writing with the Outreach College at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

May, 2019

107th ACSA Annual Meeting: Black Box

Strawn Sierralta presents their peer-reviewed manifesto, “Architecture is Competition” at the 107th ACSA Annual Meeting in the “Competitions II” session, proposing architecture competitions as an equitable practice for public projects.

March, 2019

Carnegie Museum of Art

“Draw Story”, a pedagogical project featuring exemplary student work, is included in the “Drawing for the Design Imaginary” exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art Music Hall Foyer and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on the occasion of the 107th ACSA Annual Meeting: Black Box. Curated by Jeremy Ficca, Carnegie Mellon; Amy Kulper, RISD; Grace La, Harvard GSD.

March, 2019

35th National Conference on the Beginning Design Student

“Design Exchange: Space for Peace” was included in the 35th NCBDS: Constructing Context, Situating Design in Denver, Colorado, presented a pedagogical project centered on exploring the potential of design to promote world peace.

March, 2019

Proof of Concept: Public - Public Partnerships at Work

Hawai‘i state senator, Donovan M. Dela Cruz leads panel discussion, “Proof of Concept: Public - Public Partnerships at Work”, at the Hawai‘i State Capitol. University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center Director, Dr. Randall Holcomb and Brian Strawn included in a panel discussion focused on collaborations between the university and state agencies on public interest design projects.

February, 2019

BVDC 2018 Winners announced by Honolulu Mayor

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, Karla Sierralta, and Brian Strawn present the “Building Voices 2018 Student Design Competition: Honolulu Connects” in conversation with winning entries at the Hawai‘i Convention Center during AIA Honolulu’s annual symposium.

November, 2018

Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum

Plural Territories featured in the “PLAY (things)” exhibit at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum and UWM SARUP in Milwaukee, WI on the occasion of the ACSA Fall Conference: Play with the Rules.

October 18, 2018, through January 27, 2018

2018 ACSA Fall Conference: Play with the Rules

“Draw Story” paper included in the “Clue (-d in or out)” session, presents a framework for drawing as a method for research and critical thinking.

October, 2018

EPIC 2018: Evidence

The “P1CT Infusion Suite Mock-Up” project for he University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center was exhibited at the annual Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference held in Honolulu.

October, 2018

2018 Building Voices Student Design Competition

A student design competition, co-chaired by Karla Sierralta and Brian Strawn, aims to define new models of community connectivity from mauka to makai and marks the second iteration of Building Voices. This open call for the design of a new culture and performing arts corridor surrounding the city's oldest park is presented in partnership with AIAS Hawai‘i and the City and County of Honolulu.

September, 2018

AIA Honolulu Film Night

Following six short films by legendary designers Charles and Ray Eames, Strawn Sierralta discusses the Eames practice, legacy, and significance in a contemporary context, moderated by UHM SoA Dean Daniel Friedman.

August, 2018

Nanotourism Honolulu

A one-day symposium and two-week workshop explores the potential of design as an alternative to mass tourism in Hawai‘i from both local and global perspectives held at the Cooke Street Pop-up Studio in Kaka‘ako. The public symposium kicks off the two-week 2018 Architectural Association Nanotourism Visiting School co-curated by Karla Sierralta, Brian Strawn, Aljoša Dekleva, and Jakob Travnik.

July, 2018

ACSA “Play with the Rules” Large Pavilion Shortlist

Plural Territories is one of nine ACSA Play with the Rules: Large Pavilion Design Call finalists. A scale model will be exhibited in Milwaukee during the annual ACSA Fall Conference.

June, 2018

Dezeen

Ski On Home article by James Brillon, “Californian ski chalet by Strawn Sierralta draws inspiration from the slopes” published on Dezeen, the world'‘s most popular online design magazine.

December, 2017

World Design Summit

The Design Framework for Hawaii’s Built Environment was presented under the “Design for Participation” theme at the  International Council of Design’s World Design Summit Congress at the Palais de Congres in Montreal, Canada. 

October, 2017

2017 ACSA Fall Conference: Crossing Between the Proximate and the Remote

“Global Vernacular” featuring Design Islands was presented during the “Boundary Crossing: Politics, Barriers + Landscapes” session at the 2017 ACSA Fall Conference: Crossings between the Proximate and the Remote in Marfa, Texas.

October, 2017

2017 AIA Honolulu Design Award

Design Islands was awarded the 2017 AIA Honolulu Award - Honorable Mention, Institutional. Design Islands were commissioned for the inaugural Building Voices Design Festival.The project was supported in part by the UHM School of Architecture Advancement Fund and Haigo and Irene Shen Architecture Gallery.

September, 2017

Hawai‘i Business Magazine Cover Story

The “Vertical School” research project was featured in Hawaii Business Magazine’s September 2017 Issue in the article “Architects are planning Hawaii’s first vertical school, which might be as tall as 10 stories, in the middle of Kaka‘ako” by Brittany Lyte.

September, 2017

Planning for Higher Education Journal

“Crafting and Innovation Landscape” co-authored by Brian Strawn and Shirley Dugdale, is published in the Planning for Higher Education Journal Volume 45 Number 2, January-March 2017, a publication of the Society for College and University Planning, an association of professionals devoted to planning at academic institutions.  

March, 2017

50 Designers, 50 Ideas, 50 Wards

Inside/Outside, a mobile skills-training platform and traveling stage for the Goodman Theater in collaboration with Susan Conger Austin, was featured in the “50 Designers, 50 Ideas, 50 Wards” exhibit by UrbanLab. The exhibit was on display at the Chicago Architecture Center in the atrium of the historic Santa Fe Building from May 2016 - January 2017.

May, 2016

University of Chicago’s Place Lab & Chicago Architecture Biennial

Sierralta was invited to moderate the "Forms of Imagination: Intentions & Provocations in Design" discussion at Place Lab, part of the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life initiative directed by artist Theaster Gates, and partner program of the Inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial.

October, 2015

The Shining Maze Finalist

Strawn Sierralta’s Shining Maze was selected as 1 of 7 finalists from 329 entries to design a hedge maze for Colorado’s historic Stanley Hotel, inspired by Stanley Kubrick's movie, "The Shining".

February, 2015

National Geographic

National Geographic publishes "A Place of Remembrance: Official Book of the 9/11 Memorial” with an introduction by Michael R. Bloomberg and including Strawn Sierralta's award-winning design, Dual Memory.

August, 2015