Every year since 1982, the Architectural League of New York’s Emerging Voices program has identified up-and-coming architects, landscape architects and urban designers who promise to make a lasting impact on the field. Considered one of the most important honors in American architecture, the annual lecture series and award is celebrated for its foresight in recognizing individuals and firms destined for worldwide influence. These have included Brad Cloepfil, James Corner, Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi, SHoP and Jeanne Gang, among many others.
Emerging Voices' remarkable legacy is commemorated in a new book, 30 Years of Emerging Voices: Idea, Form, Resonance, out now from Princeton Architectural Press. Designed by Pentagram, the book is a richly illustrated compendium of almost 250 of the most innovative North American architects of the past three decades.
The designers worked closely with Rosalie Genevro, the League’s executive director, and Anne Rieselbach, its program director, to develop the book’s structure. The challenge was to develop an organizational structure that would accommodate all the information with depth and clarity. Densely packed with profiles on 237 individuals and firms and over 1,250 images, the survey is equal parts yearbook and encyclopedia. The Emerging Voices are arranged chronologically by year, and the book is broken up into five-year segments. Each section is introduced with a short commentary by a journalist or architect who looks at the contemporary issues of the period.
Each individual or firm is highlighted on a single page, with a portfolio of project images from the period in which they were originally honored in up through recent work. The designers developed a strong grid for the profiles that places the project images at left and organizes all the biographical information at right. The image grid motif extends to the book’s cover, which features a kaleidoscopic pattern comprised of one project from each of the individuals or firms designed around the time of their Emerging Voices award. The book’s typography is set in Atlas Typewriter.
Ashley Schafer, Reed Kroloff and Karen Stein contribute essays on the themes of idea, form and resonance, respectively. Period commentaries are written by Suzanne Stephens, Alexandra Lange, Paul Makovsky, and others. Rieselbach writes the book’s introduction, while Genevro provides the afterword.
