Modernism in America Awards

Nominations open March 5

2025 Modernism in America Awards


Now in its 12th year, the Awards celebrate the documentation, preservation and reuse of modern buildings, structures and landscapes built in the United States or on U.S. territory. The Awards recognize those building owners, design teams, advocacy and preservation organizations that have made significant efforts to retain, restore, and advocate for the aesthetic and cultural value of such places.

Nominations open Wednesday, March 5, for the 2025 Modernism in America Awards.

Early nomination deadline: Friday, April 25, 2025, at 11:59pm Eastern
Nominations close: Friday, May 30, 2025, at 11:59pm Eastern


Review the nomination guidelines carefully before submitting and contact awards@docomomo-us.org with any questions.

Award Categories  

Design

This juried award recognizes informed, thoughtful, and creative design efforts to preserve, restore, or adapt a modern building, structure, or landscape of local, regional, or national significance, securing its presence for future generations. Design Awards are recognized in the following subcategories:

  • Residential
  • Commercial
  • Civic/Institutional


Documentation

This juried award recognizes exceptional efforts to document modern buildings, structures, landscapes, or neighborhoods of local, regional or national significance. Documentation efforts can also include significant individuals within the Modern Movement such as architects, designers, landscape architects, artists, photographers, and more. Nominations may be submitted in the form of a website, book, publication, or exhibition. 

 

New this year: Book submissions and student research projects will be considered as their own subcategories within the Documentation category.


Advocacy

Presented by the Docomomo US Board of Directors, this award recognizes outstanding efforts to preserve and advocate for threatened modern buildings, structures, or landscapes of local, regional, or national significance through advocacy efforts. This award seeks to recognize preservation and advocacy organizations and other groups (including Docomomo US chapters) who have gone above and beyond to work collectively and collaboratively to advocate for a modern site or structure. 

Students who have been involved in research or advocacy are encouraged to nominate their projects in the appropriate category.

Thank you to all of our sponsors who help to make the Awards program possible. 

Lead Sponsor

Design Within Reach

Design Within Reach makes authentic modern design accessible. When the company was founded in 1998, the classics were very difficult to find. DWR changed that, making innovative works by iconic designers accessible for the first time and continuing to offer the best in modern design – past, present and future – ever since.

Learn more

2025 Awards Committee

The Awards Committee helps shape the annual program by reviewing nomination and eligibility guidelines, selecting jury members, and providing guidance on submissions on a case by case basis. A sincere thank you to this year's committee members: Meredith Bzdak (committee chair), Theodore Prudon, Tonia Moy, Ruth Mills, and Eric Vogel. 

Theodore Prudon

Theodore Prudon is a leading expert on the preservation of modern architecture and a practicing architect in New York City. Dr. Prudon has worked on the terra cotta restoration of the Woolworth Building, the exterior restoration of the Chrysler Building, and of a 1941 Lescaze townhouse in Manhattan. Dr. Prudon teaches preservation at Columbia University and Pratt Institute. He is the recipient of a Graham Foundation Individual grant for his book “Preservation of Modern Architecture.” He is the founding President of Docomomo US and a board member of Docomomo International.

Meredith Arms Bzdak

Meredith Arms Bzdak, an architectural historian, is a Partner in the Princeton, NJ firm Mills + Schnoering Architects, LLC. She has over twenty years of experience in the field of historic preservation, and has produced numerous documents pertaining to historic architecture. As Associate Graduate Faculty at Rutgers University in the Art History Department, she teaches classes on the development of the modern city (specifically New York and Los Angeles), the preservation of the recent past, and modern Italian architecture. 

Tonia Moy

Tonia Moy is the vice president and director of preservation at FAI. She leads all historic and residential projects. Prior to joining FAI in 2004, she served as architectural branch chief for the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) and was a trustee at Historic Hawaii Foundation. Her dedication to preservation extends beyond FAI, as she helped establish Docomomo US/Hawaii. Her achievements have been widely recognized within and outside the industry. In 2022, she was awarded the prestigious Frank Haines Lifetime Achievement for her contribution to Hawaii’s preservation community. 

 

Eric Vogel

Eric Vogel is currently scholar-in-residence at the Taliesin Institute in Scottsdale, AZ. He is a designer, educator, architectural historian, and former Chair of the 3D Design Department at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He holds a degree in art history from Harvard University, a master’s in architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture and is currently pursuing a mid-career PhD at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UW-Milwaukee. As board president of the Wisconsin chapter of Docomomo US, Eric is currently leading a research and film project about Milwaukee's 20th century architectural history titled Milwaukee Moderns. Concurrently, he is working with the Museum of Wisconsin Art on two new architecture and design-related exhibitions: the evolution of Frank Lloyd Wright’s early modern furniture, from Taliesin to Usonia, and the photographic work of mid-century Wisconsin architectural photographer Richard H. Bills.

About


The Modernism in America Awards is the only national program that celebrates the people and projects working to preserve, restore and rehabilitate our modern heritage sensitively and productively. The program seeks to advance those preservation efforts; to increase appreciation for the period and to raise awareness of the on-going threats against modern architecture and design while acknowledging the substantial contribution preservation in general and the postwar heritage in particular makes to the economic and cultural life of our communities.

 

Previous Award Winners

2014 Award Winners

2015 Award Winners

2016 Award Winners

2017 Award Winners

2018 Award Winners

2019 Award Winners

2020 Award Winners

2021 Award Winners

2022 Award Winners

2023 Award Winners

2024 Award Winners