Ja Architecture Studio, the Toronto-based practice co-founded by Daniels Faculty assistant professor Behnaz Assadi with architect and alumnus Nima Javidi, has been singled out as one of 2022’s top Emerging Voices by The Architectural League of New York. Every year a jury assembled by the League chooses eight emerging practices as winners of its by-invitation Emerging Voices competition. Landscape architect Assadi co-founded Ja with Javidi, a former professor at Daniels Faculty, a decade ago. Their work was cited by the League for representing “the best of its kind,” addressing “larger issues in architecture, landscape and the built environment.” 

“We are extremely honoured to have been named one of the eight 2022 Emerging Voices by The Architectural League of New York,” says Assadi. “No other recognition could have given more meaning to the past decade of our practice or make us look forward to the next.” 

The Emerging Voices award spotlights North American firms and individuals “with distinct design voices and the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape design and urbanism.” The jury reviews significant bodies of realized work and considers accomplishments within the design and academic communities as well as the public realm. Among the illustrious practitioners recognized by the League as Emerging Voices in the past are Steven Holl (in 1982), Toshiko Mori (1992), Jeanne Gang (2006) and Tatiana Bilbao (2010). 

This year the selection process involved a two-stage review of work from approximately 50 entrants invited to submit their portfolios. Paul Lewis, a jury member and the president of The Architectural League, was struck by the breadth of the submissions. 

“Rather than indicating a fracturing of our discipline,” Lewis noted, “this year’s winners were united in how they each clarified new types of agency and new notions of value motivated by an optimism about what an architect could and should do.”  

Assadi and Javidi’s work, which explores “how iconographic, geometric, formal and tectonic pursuits relate to broader contexts such as politics, construction, landscape, and urbanism,” ranges from creatively executed residential and commercial projects on tight city plots to ambitious international competitions that draw on the collective repertoire of their multidisciplinary firm. 

Ja Architecture Studio's 2015 design for the Bauhaus Museum in Germany came in fourth out of hundreds of submissions.

Over the past several years, Assadi has been teaching and coordinating two of the foundational core studios in the Daniels Faculty’s MLA program, as well as a number of graduate and undergraduate courses in both the architecture and landscape architecture departments. Former Daniels Faculty member Javidi is currently the Gwathmey Professor of Design at Cooper Union in New York City.

As part of the Emerging Voices program, winners are invited to present their work through a series of lectures. Assadi and Javidi are to join fellow winner Tsz Yan Ng of Michigan to discuss their projects in a moderated Zoom discussion on March 17.  

Revitalizing streetscapes is a Ja specialty. The cafe/bakery at left is housed in a former mechanic shop on Toronto's Queen Street West.

Among the other practices recognized by the League this year are Estudio MMX of Mexico City, Borderless Studio in Chicago and Felecia Davis Studio in State College, Pennsylvania. 

For details on the Emerging Voices award and lectures, visit archleague.org. To learn more about Ja’s work and principals, visit jastudioinc.com. 

Banner image: For a residence on a quiet Toronto sidestreet, Ja proposed a sinuous yet sensitive brick addition. The work of co-founders Javidi and Assadi (pictured) combines "the rootedness of a local architecture firm with the broad interests of an international design studio."