Koning Eizenberg Architecture

28th Street Apartments, USA

Why did you enter the WAF awards?We had ideas to share about design and it seemed like a great way to investigate their validity with juries that we respected.

What did it mean for you to be shortlisted?It was great to have the projects acknowledged, great for our clients and great for us.

How was your experience at the festival?The interaction is really the best part, seeing how your colleagues think and communicate ideas is really illuminating and forming new collegial friendships very rewarding. Hearing judge’s feedback first-hand was very useful to understand what did and what did not create resonance in our architecture.

What did it mean to you to win at WAF?We won the housing category for a supportive housing project that restored and added to an historic building. That win, in a global venue, gives us more credibility in taking on the restrictions of the historic preservation code and ability to argue more effectively for the value of architecture for this marginalized user group.

“Hearing judge’s feedback first-hand was very useful to understand what did and what did not create resonance in our architecture.”

Case Study:Winner of Housing Category 2013

Has entering and winning at WAF benefited your practice? This aspect is hard to measure but awards like these, at the very least, add to a cumulative credibility that I do believe enhances opportunity to secure new work.

“Give it a go, you have very little to lose and much to gain.”

What advice would you give someone who is thinking about the WAF awards?Give it a go, you have very little to lose and much to gain.

Koning Eizenberg Architecture

28th Street Apartments, USA

Case Study:Winner of Housing Category 2013

Tell us a little more about your practice?We are a team of architects, observers and thinkers based in Santa Monica, California, that explore the commonplace to engage people and context. A collaborative process

led by Principals Hank Koning, Julie Eizenberg, Brian Lane, and Nathan Bishop draws on the pragmatic and strategic to unravel convention and find opportunity hiding in plain sight. The firm’s well-known body of work has been published extensively in the

US and abroad, and earned over 100 awards for design, sustainability and historic preservation across a range of building types. See www.kearch.com

Julie Eizenberg, KoningEizenberg