League Prize 2025: Plot

COMPETITION SUBMISSION DEADLINE
January 30, 2025, 11:59pm ET
All entries must be submitted through the League’s online competition portal. 

CALL FOR ENTRIES
Young architects and designers are invited to submit work to the 2025 Architectural League Prize competition. Projects of all types, executed in any medium, are welcome. The jury will select work for presentation in lectures, digital media, and installations in June 2025. Winners will receive a cash prize of $2,000. 

Established in 1981 to recognize visionary and innovative work by young practitioners, The Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers is a competition organized by The Architectural League and its Young Architects + Designers Committee. Learn more about The Architectural League Prize’s past winners.

THE YOUNG ARCHITECTS + DESIGNERS COMMITTEE
Rayshad Dorsey
Liz Gálvez
Miles Gertler

JURY
Behnaz Assadi
Mario Gooden
Jia Yi Gu
William O’Brien Jr.
And the Young Architects + Designers Committee

Download the call for entries poster designed by Pentagram.

THEME: PLOT
Whatever the narrative, architecture can’t help but engage with plot. This is an open call for designers with a story to tell.

Every building has its lore, and plots are known to thicken. Which dramas are shaping architecture’s arc today? The truth may be stranger than fiction. Despite the best-laid plans, design so often deals in circumstance. That is, while architects may endeavor to write their own stories, projects always present twists.

The 2025 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers competition asks entrants to interrogate Plot and map out the throughlines that shape their work.

How is architecture informed by considerations of plot, whether as land, drawing, or scheme? We invite young designers to chronicle that which bookends their practices and to demonstrate plot’s persistent role as main character.

TEMA: TRAMA
Cualquiera sea la narrativa, la arquitectura no puede evitar involucrarse con la trama. Esta es una convocatoria abierta para diseñadores con una historia que contar.

Cada edificio tiene su propia historia, y las tramas tienden a complicarse. ¿Qué dramas forman el arco de la arquitectura hoy en día? A veces la realidad es más extraña que la ficción. A pesar de los planes más cuidadosamente elaborados, el diseño a menudo se enfrenta a circunstancias imprevistas. Es decir, mientras los arquitectos pueden esforzarse por escribir sus propias historias, los proyectos siempre presentan giros inesperados.

El concurso del Premio de la Liga Arquitectónica 2025 para Jóvenes Arquitectos + Diseñadores invita a los participantes a interrogar la trama y a mapear las líneas que dan forma a su trabajo.

¿Cómo se informa la arquitectura a partir de consideraciones de trama, ya sea como terreno, dibujo o esquema? Invitamos a los jóvenes diseñadores a documentar lo que enmarca sus prácticas y a demostrar el papel persistente de la trama como personaje principal.

ELIGIBILITY
The competition is open only to current full-time residents (who need not be citizens) of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. 

Entrants must be ten years or less out of a bachelor’s or master’s degree program, not a PhD program or other advanced degrees. Current students are ineligible. If you graduated in 2015, please specify the month of your graduation in the competition portal.

No student work completed for any academic program or degree is eligible for submission. Educators may not include work done in their studios or for their teaching. 

Entrants may submit individually or as a group. Entrants must submit work done independently; no work done as an employee of a firm where the entrant is not a principal or partner is eligible for submission. 

No current Architectural League board or staff members are eligible to participate in the competition. With the exception listed below, no employees of firms or immediate family (spouse/partner; children; siblings) of current board members, staff members, or jury members are eligible to participate in the competition. Individuals who work for the firms of League board members may enter the competition if they are submitting independent work carried out without connection to the firm. Past League Prize winners are ineligible.

PARTNERSHIP AND COLLABORATION
If only one partner of a firm is eligible, the eligible partner can enter as an individual. The entrant must upload a signed document from all other partners that briefly describes the entrant’s role within the practice. If the entrant’s portfolio is selected, the individual, not the firm, will be listed as a recipient of the prize. 

Projects realized in collaboration with other practices or individuals may be included in the competition portfolio. All collaborative work must be clearly identified as such either in the project title or on the page (ex. House in Suburbs – Collaborative Project). Do not include the names of collaborators in the portfolio. Projects of this type must be accompanied by signed documents from all non-entrant collaborators describing their contribution to the work and approving the project’s inclusion in the entrant’s competition portfolio. These documents only apply to collaborators who had a substantive role in the design process, not consultants or employees. 

League staff will review these documents before the jury convenes and will inform the jury about the collaborations and project credits when relevant. Collaborative work will be considered within the context of an individual’s complete portfolio.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
A single digital portfolio in PDF format, with a file size no larger than 60MB and page dimensions not to exceed 11×14”. It may not contain more than 30 pages in total, excluding the cover page. Please note that a spread of two facing pages counts as two pages. Please do not include any external links.

The jury will review each portfolio in its original digital format. During the deliberation process, jurors will see a grid of the submitted portfolios’ cover pages. In this view, the cover pages will be automatically cropped to small square thumbnails. To facilitate jury review, the first page of the portfolio must be formatted as a square (1:1) and should feature a representative image of the work. 

If relevant, please upload collaborator acknowledgment and/or partner acknowledgement form(s) to the submission portal. 

The competition theme is given as a basis for young architects and designers to reflect upon and reevaluate their work. A written statement not to exceed 250 words that defines and considers the work under the rubric of the competition theme is required. Significant weight is given to how an applicant’s work addresses the theme. The written statement must be on the first (non-cover) page of the portfolio. 

This is an anonymous competition. Submitted portfolios may not contain any form of identification. Including an entrant’s name, firm name, or photograph anywhere in the portfolio is grounds for disqualification.

ENTRY FEE
The entry fee is $35 per submission, to be paid via the online competition portal.  

COMPETITION DEADLINE
January 30, 2025, 11:59pm ET
There will be no exceptions to this deadline.

SELECTION
Winning entrants will be notified by early March 2025.

PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Anne Rieselbach

PROGRAM MANAGER
Zoe Fruchter

QUESTIONS
Applicants may email questions to Program Manager Zoe Fruchter, fruchter@archleague.org.