Today, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has announced winners of the 17th Annual National Design Awards, which recognize excellence and innovation in 11 categories.

When he was named director of the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena asked curators to focus on projects that “improve the quality of the built environment and life and consequently people’s quality of life.”

Reflecting on the impact of the architect’s visionary work and larger-than-life persona.

It was 60 years ago, at the start of his career, but the architect and educator John P. Eberhard remembers the very moment the idea came to him for what would be his seminal creation: the modular church.

When it was founded in 1935, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) occupied one, then two floors of the War Memorial Veterans Building in the Hayes Valley neighborhood before moving into its purposebuilt, Mario Botta–designed home in nearby SoMa in 1995.

The New York-based architect moved to the city on a part-time basis after winning a 2004 competition for the master plan and development CityLife, a new residential and commercial district just outside of Milan’s historic city center.