The Buoyant Ecologies Float Lab, a project designed by AEL directors Adam Marcus, Margaret Ikeda, and Evan Jones in collaboration with partners at the Benthic Lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and Kreysler & Associates, has been recognized by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) with a Faculty Design Award as part of the 2020 Architectural Education Awards program. The Float Lab is a pilot for a floating breakwater, recently launched in San Francisco Bay for a three-year deployment as a floating research laboratory developing new material approaches to resilience and climate adaptation.
Each year, ACSA honors architectural educators for exemplary work in areas such as building design, community collaborations, scholarship, and service. Award winners inspire and challenge students, contribute to the profession’s knowledge base, and extend their work beyond the borders of academy into practice and the public sector. The Faculty Design Awards provide a venue for work that advances the reflective nature of practice and teaching by recognizing and encouraging outstanding work in architecture and related environmental design fields as a critical endeavor.
Jurors for this year’s Faculty Design Awards were Rania Ghosn (MIT Architecture), Courtney Crosson (University of Arizona), and Jennifer Bonner (Harvard University).
Previous recognition of the Float Lab includes a 2019 AIA Innovation Award, an Editor’s Choice in the 2019 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Awards, the 2019 CCA Impact Award, the 2019-2020 GSAPP Incubator Prize, a 2018 Architect magazine R+D Award, and selection for the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s Catalyst Program in 2017.