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RECORD’s long-running annual Best of Products competition heralds the leading building materials and furnishings introduced to the North American market within the last year, ranging from high-performance facade systems to eco-friendly and ethically produced ceilings and wall coverings, and more.

Winners of the competition are determined by an independent jury of five professionals, who select the best new products based on a criterion of innovation, usefulness, and aesthetics. The competition is open until August 14, 2024, and applications can be submitted here.

The Editors of RECORD are pleased to introduce this year’s selection of jurors, each of whom has a broad range of expertise, including landscape and industrial design, enclosure detailing, and affordable housing. Winning products will be published in the December 2024 issue of RECORD. Coverage of competition winners from prior years is available here.

Susannah Drake |  Principal, Sasaki

Susannah Drake brings over 30 years of experience as founder of award-winning DLANDStudio, which was acquired by Sasaki in 2022. Drake is a landscape architect and architect who specializes in complex projects that require a synthesized, analytical, and research-based approach. Drake is a leading expert on resilient urban design and has taught at design schools across the country, including Harvard, the City College of New York, and the Cooper Union. Her work titled “From Redlining to Blue Zoning: Equity and Environmental Risk, Liberty City, Miami 2100,” detailing the relationship of historically marginalized black populations of Miami with sea level rise, was exhibited at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Drake has been recognized as an Architectural League Emerging Voice, an AIA Young Architect Award winner, and as the recipient of the ASLA’s Community Advocacy Award. Her New Urban Ground project, developed with Architecture Research Office, detailing climate adaptation strategies for Lower Manhattan, is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum. In addition, her Gowanus Sponge Park won the inaugural Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Climate Action.

Victor Body-Lawson | Principal, Body Lawson Associates

Victor Body-Lawson is a Nigerian-born architect, educator, and artist based in New York City. In 1993 he founded Body Lawson Associates Architects and Planners, an acclaimed architecture, interiors, and urban design practice operating in the United States and globally. Recognized for responsive, collaborative community solutions as well as its unique design signature, Body Lawson Associates is known for its ability to “empower people in under-resourced communities through their public spaces and buildings.” Leading the certified Minority Business Enterprise, Body-Lawson is an active member of the American Institute of Architects and the National Organization of Minority Architects, and he is associate professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. He was recognized this year as a leader in housing by the AIA New York Chapter.

Ruchika Modi | Principal, Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU)

With a background spanning industrial design, economics, and journalism, Ruchika Modi brings a multifaceted understanding of the ways in which cities function to her architectural practice. Modi’s experiences living and working in Mumbai, New Delhi, and San Francisco have also influenced her nuanced view of urban planning and design, inspiring her passion to find architectural solutions to a range of relevant issues, from sustainability to inequality. At PAU, Modi helps set the firm’s vision, including shaping the firm’s diverse portfolio of projects, and overseeing all aspects of the design process.

 Currently, Modi is leading the design team for the FAA’s new sustainable airport traffic control tower prototype, which will be adapted to replace over 100 aging towers in regional and municipal airports across the nation. She is also project lead for Princeton University’s newest residential college, Hobson College, as well as for the master plan and design of 41 buildings as part of a new mixed-use development in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. She spearheaded the design of T in Brooklyn, an adaptive reuse project transforming a historic 19th-century factory into offices with a mixed-use ground level, which opened in the fall of 2023. 

Tucker Viemeister | Founder, Viemeister Industries 

Tucker Viemeister is known for his groundbreaking work in the field of industrial design, including the creation of OXO Good Grips, a pioneering example of Universal Design products. With a diverse portfolio, Tucker has contributed to projects ranging from voting machines for Microsoft to exhibition curation for the Shanghai Planetarium. He co-founded Smart Design, established frog design's New York office, and led the LAB at Rockwell Group, leaving a profound impact on the design industry. Tucker's extensive achievements, 32 U.S. utility patents, and inclusion in prestigious collections like the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian, exemplify his outstanding contributions to the field.

Mayine Lynn Yu |  Principal, Davis Brody Bond,  a Page/ Company

With Davis Brody Bond, Mayine Yu has collaborated on projects across a range of program types including healthcare, research laboratories, performing arts centers, and academic buildings. Prior to engaging with the John A. Paulson Center team in New York, she was involved with projects for New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Northwestern University, and the University of Connecticut. She has experience with complex urban projects that serve multiple constituencies.

Drawing on her background as an exterior cladding, curtain wall, and glass consultant, Yu brings expertise in the detailing and construction of exterior systems into the design and planning of interior building systems. She is the author of Skins, Envelopes, and Enclosures: Concepts for Designing Building Exteriors, a textbook based on a course she taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.