The 2025 Best of Design Awards is well underway. The 13th annual awards program continues to celebrate the best built and unbuilt works from around the world. The robust program honors projects of all kinds, from temporary installations to adaptive reuse, civic buildings, preservation, and interiors.
An international and expansive program requires an equally vast jury. The 2025 cohort is AN‘s largest. Last week, the first round of jurors was announced, including architecture critic Alex Bozikovic; Neri&Hu’s Rossana Hu; Colloqate Design’s Bryan Lee Jr.; Reed Hilderbrand’s Beka Sturges; and Clive Wilkinson Architects’s Clive Wilkinson. Now, AN shares another round of additional jurors. Together this team will review entries based on the strength of the presentation, evidence of innovation, creative use of new technology, sustainability, and, most importantly, good design.
Ahead of the submission deadline on September 12, 2025, take a look at the latest jurors to join this year’s panel to inform submissions.
Barbara Bestor | Principal | Bestor Architecture
Barbara Bestor founded Bestor Architecture in Los Angeles in 1995. Bestor’s studio is recognized for the inventive integration of architecture, urbanism, infrastructure, and landscape at multiple scales. Bestor Architecture has designed a number of award-winning projects including headquarters for Beats by Dre, Snap, and Nike; Blackbirds, a small lot housing development in Echo Park; and a variety of experimental residences and commercial establishments. Bestor’s varied, creative, and aesthetically progressive body of work expands the territory of architecture into atmospheric urbanism. Signature projects include the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, which creates a vibrant musical haven by inserting an internal urban village within the shell of a classic Hollywood warehouse; Ashes & Diamonds, a new winery and event center in Napa; the new President’s Cottage at Sunnylands, and the Summaeverythang Community Center in Los Angeles. Barbara Bestor is the author of Bohemian Modern, Living in Silver Lake (Harper Collins, 2006), a book dedicated to the suppressed narrative of informal and eccentric modernism found in Silver Lake’s rich domestic architectural history. Bestor received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and her MArch from SCI-Arc.
Deborah Garcia | Residency Director | Institute for Public Architecture
Deborah Garcia was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She is an innovative architectural critic and spatial activator focused on transforming interactions with everyday spaces to reshape economic, cultural, and narrative structures. Her explorations have led her around the globe, examining the interplay between sensory experiences, communal narratives, and systemic feedback loops. She was the recipient of the Princeton University Butler Traveling Fellowship and has held residencies at MASS MoCA, ARTFarm Nebraska, and more. In 2019, she participated in the Arctic Circle Expedition in Svalbard, Norway, further expanding her international research scope. Garcia also held curatorial roles at A+D Architecture and Design Museum and One Night Stand for Art and Architecture-LA. She holds a BArch from the SCI-Arc and a MArch from Princeton University.
Her recent work at MIT as the 2021 Marion Mahony Emerging Practitioner Fellow involved radical integration of sound in architectural design, leading the SOUND STUDIO, and creating the RECORDAR system for spatial sound recording and broadcasting. Her work has been exhibited at the Harvard ArtLab, Lichen Design Incubator and Showroom, Exhibit Columbus, MIT Keller Gallery, and more. Her methods seek to reveal and influence underlying psychic and institutional spaces, fostering a continuous engagement with collective consciousness linked to our environments. She also teaches at the Yale School of Architecture.
Julie Snow | Founding Principal | Snow Kreilich Architects
Julie Snow is the founding principal of Snow Kreilich Architects in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The studio’s design strategies engage issues of how architecture performs within each project’s social, cultural, and economic contexts resulting in innovative designs that expand our understanding of architectural performance. The practice has been recognized with numerous awards, including the AIA’s 2018 Architecture Firm Award. Snow has held several visiting professor positions across the country, as well as teaching at the University of Minnesota College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture where she received the Rapson Award for Distinguished Teaching. She is an industry advisory board member to the U.S. Department of State Office of Building Overseas and a U.S. General Services Administration Peer Advisor.
Stephan Schütz | Executive Partner | gmp
Stephan Schütz studied architecture at TU Braunschweig, where he graduated in 1994.
Since that year, he has been working at the office of von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp), and since 2006 he has been doing so as a partner. He is the head of the gmp offices in Berlin, Beijing, and Shenzhen as well as the newly founded office in Munich.
Among his most renowned projects are the New Weimar Hall in Weimar, the New Tempodrom in Berlin, the Christian Church in Beijing, the CYTS Plaza in Beijing, the Grand Theaters in Qingdao and Tianjin, the National Museum of China in Beijing, the Universiade Sports Center in Shenzhen, the conversion and refurbishment of the Kulturpalast in Dresden and Gasteig HP8 Isarphilharmonie in Munich.
Since 2009, Schütz has regularly been leading workshops at the Academy for Architectural Culture, of which he is a co-initiator.
Richard Martin | Managing Editor | The Architect’s Newspaper
Richard Martin is managing editor of The Architect’s Newspaper and AN Interior, and a veteran architecture and design writer. Previously, he has edited magazines and websites including Modern Luxury’s Manhattan and Miami, Condé Nast’s La Cucina Italiana, and ILOVENY.com. At Complex, he co-conceived and launched the first-ever sneaker review section, and at Food Republic, he created the first web vertical devoted to restaurant architecture and design. He is co-author of four volumes of books about food preservation published by Hardie Grant. A graduate of American University in Washington, D.C., he also holds a certificate in Cours de Civilisation from La Sorbonne in Paris.
Kelly Pau | Design Editor | The Architect’s Newspaper
Kelly is the Design Editor at The Architect’s Newspaper and AN Interior where she focuses on covering interior architecture, product design, and AN’s awards program. Previously, she covered design and architecture across product, interior, and other typologies at COOL HUNTING. She’s been published in Vox, The Cut, Salon, and other national publications and had been awarded a Ceramics of Italy Journalism Award Honorable Mention for her coverage on trends in the ceramic tile industry. Recently, she was a fellow for the National Critics Institute’s 2025 cohort.
Learn more and submit to the 2025 Best of Design Awards is open for submissions before the deadline on September 12, 2025 here.
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