About the Design Awards

Each year the BSA, often in collaboration with other organizations, sponsors awards programs to honor design excellence in Massachusetts, throughout New England and elsewhere. The BSA Design Awards program celebrates exemplary projects of innovation in the built environment, investment from committed clients, and the unique power of architecture to not only design buildings and spaces, but also transform communities and shape the way we live through excellence in design. By honoring the outstanding achievements of our peers, we are reminded that all building industry professionals have the opportunity to positively make an impact.

The BSA honors projects that embody critical design excellence values—the principles of the AIA Framework for Design Excellence, and the BSA vision of building a just and sustainable Boston, together.

AIA Framework for Design Excellence

The AIA Framework for Design Excellence sets standards for buildings that demonstrate progress toward a zero-carbon, equitable, resilient and healthy built environment. The BSA believes that innovation in the build environment is key to tackling the greatest challenges facing Greater Boston, including the rising threat of climate change, and have adopted this requirement with our design awards program.

About the BSA

The Boston Society for Architecture’s (BSA) mission is to improve the quality of life for Boston-area residents by championing innovation in the built environment.

We deliver on our mission through two connected streams of work:

• Enabling architects to excel in their profession by offering education and networking opportunities, and advocating for the profession at local, state, and national levels.
• Catalyzing and collaborating on innovation initiatives aimed at addressing equity and sustainability challenges in the built environment.

These streams of work are synergistic: architects apply their skills to collaborative initiatives, which in turn inform their knowledge and capabilities. Both are designed to ensure a thriving architectural community that is tackling the issues of our era.

Our vision is to solve critical equity and sustainability challenges related to the built environment.

We aim to realize this vision by activating our network of architects, engineers, developers, policymakers, community members—and new partners—to work together to design and test solutions to today’s most demanding problems. Our goal is to lift these solutions up as models that can be adopted locally, nationally, and internationally.