2026 Excellence in Design Awards
2026 Excellence in Design Awards Submissions will open in June of 2026!
Submission window is from June 202 through July 2026. Below is a listing of the many award winning projects of our 2025 Awards.
REVIEW SUBMISSION CRITERIA AND SUBMIT YOUR DESIGNS HERE
2025 Excellence in Design Awards Winners
Good Design is Good Business Award
To be considered for this award, the project shall utilize Good Design to achieve strategic business objectives. This award is intended to recognize projects in which design excellence elevated the resulting benefit of a project to the business, institution, or community, which it serves. We are proud to award the 2020 Good Design is Good Business Award to:
West End Market
Tippetts/Weaver Architects
Jury Comments, also awarded a Merit Award
Good Design is Good Business Comments: Merit Award Comments:
- The jury loves this project!
- This project does a great job of reusing the building and bringing in spaces for the neighborhood.
- We love everything right down to the name of the bike shop, the fabric on the barstools, and the hand drawings in lieu of another CAD file.
- A comprehensive, well done design all the way through the submission materials.
- The design team did a great job approaching this adaptive reuse with a light touch, leaving the character of the original architecture and letting it be what it is.
- They didn’t destroy the original building, they enhanced it.
- The adaptation is in the spirit of the original use, right down to the retained cracked black and white tile floors.
- The super-graphics and signage is tastefully done. The furniture fits the architecture. We’d hang out there!
Member’s Choice Award
York County History Center
Warehaus
Jury Comments, also awarded an Honor Award
- This project rises to the top above all others and the jury is unanimous in selecting this project for the top “honor” award.
- The building and the exhibit design play thoughtfully off of each other; it feels like the building was designed for the exhibits, rather than the other way around. Both components work nicely together.
- The architecture is restrained and elegant and supports the program well.
- This is a wonderful reuse of an historic building and insertion of new elements.
- The new addition is tastefully done and respects the historic character well.
- We love the retention of the old paint on some of the structural members.
Honor Awards
York County History Center Honor Award
Jury Comments –
- This project rises to the top above all others and the jury is unanimous in selecting this project for the top “honor” award.
- The building and the exhibit design play thoughtfully off of each other; it feels like the building was designed for the exhibits, rather than the other way around. Both components work nicely together.
- The architecture is restrained and elegant and supports the program well.
- This is a wonderful reuse of an historic building and insertion of new elements.
- The new addition is tastefully done and respects the historic character well.
- We love the retention of the old paint on some of the structural members.
Merit Awards
Keystone Kidspace | Merit Award
Jury Comments –
- This is a fantastic adaptive reuse!
- There is skill in the light design touch on this existing structure.
- It is great to see a 2nd life for a community facility; playful, fun, invites creativity without fear of making a mess; seems easily adaptable to other uses.
- Clearly a few interventions to add defined spaces within a larger space, which marries perfectly with the old.
- We love the signed beam at the head of the partition wall also.
- Even though this is a space for kids, the design team does not over-use color and pattern. That design approach gives more credit to kids and their specific sensibilities and creativity. Well done!
- Overall, a great project!
Pennsylvania State Library | Merit Award.
Murphy & Dittenhafer Architects
Jury Comments –
- The jury loves the historic detail preservation and that the submission includes an emphasis on the craftmanship of the process.
- This is a beautiful restoration; an elegant “piece of jewelry” clearly executed through a labor of love.
- The jury feels that the furniture selections enhance the architecture.
- We appreciate the exposing of the flooring detailing
Thurgood Marshall + Legacy Hall | Merit Award.
- This is a huge project and a nice solution for its scale.
- The connector could have been a boring, straight element but it really knits the buildings together; the fin detail is excellent. The connector piece is what it’s all about!
- Being a P3, the design team chose well where to celebrate the architecture in the context of a very repetitive program.
- The towers are very large but design team did not overdo it trying to break up the expansiveness of the scale; they did it in a tasteful way that didn’t push the envelope. It’s just enough.
- The jury appreciates the campus circulation study and the new facility’s impact on it. They also appreciate the diagrams of how the design team laid out the buildings and how the buildings meet the organic circulation flow and the grid of the buildings.
- The jury likes how the design team pushed some of the public spaces to upper floors, taking advantage of the views with the scale of the building.
- The inserted pops of color are enough to make it warm and inviting but still include a little color play.
West End Market | Merit Award.
- The jury loves this project!
- This project does a great job of reusing the building and bringing in spaces for the neighborhood.
- We love everything right down to the name of the bike shop, the fabric on the barstools, and the hand drawings in lieu of another CAD file.
- A comprehensive, well done design all the way through the submission materials.
- The design team did a great job approaching this adaptive reuse with a light touch, leaving the character of the original architecture and letting it be what it is.
- They didn’t destroy the original building, they enhanced it.
- The adaptation is in the spirit of the original use, right down to the retained cracked black and white tile floors.
- The super-graphics and signage is tastefully done. The furniture fits the architecture. We’d hang out there!
Citation Awards
Manheim Central High School | Citation Award
Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates
Jury Comments –
- The jury loves the priority placed on the visual presence of the exterior; what a transformation with a simple intervention; great job working with what you have (budget and existing conditions).
- The design team took something that was a very typical school from the 1960’s and made it very current.
- The jury loves the idea of the Main Street and how the programmatic arrangement pulls in daylight.
- The program is quite complex. Looking at how the plan is reorganized and how spaces are used to make things less congested is a great use of hierarchy.
- Good design without being fussy.
Solomon Solis Cohen Elementary School | Citation Award
Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates
Jury Comments –
- What pushes this project to the top for this jury is the way that the project addresses the surrounding context.
- This is a great four-sided building, open at all edges. It is active, fun, and delightful.
- This is a sprawling building that seems to be more about giving back to the community than about the architecture itself. We love the openness it offers for the exterior playgrounds.
- It looks like the surrounding context is housing and that the campus opens well to the community.
Steele Elementary School | Citation Award
Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates
Jury Comments –
- The jury appreciates the fact that the design team was able to restore this building and give it back to the community after sitting so long unoccupied.
- We like how the design team inserted the central box element to get light into the core. This also provides natural surveillance that does not feel oppressive.
- This is a great use of glazing to keep the interior spaces feeling open, connected, and full of daylight.
- One element that sets this project apart from other elementary schools is the handling of the corridors. The jury likes how the corridors open on each side and tie back to the originality of the building, letting the historic bleed through each space.
- We do appreciate that it isn’t primary colors everywhere, though.
