2023 Edition

Design Awards 2023

Nine projects honored, judged by Paul Masi, Anne Fougeron, and Matthew Hufft. Winners announced May 5, 2023.

2023 Honorees

Cara Mullio and Jennifer Volland

2023 Community Design Advocate Award

Long Beach, a metropolis of almost a half a million residents and larger than the cities of Atlanta, Miami, and New Orleans gets very limited architectural press due to its proximity to Los Angeles. Cara and Jennifer have contributed three important publications that highlight the design profession within Long Beach. These include:

Frank Bros.: The Store That Modernized Modern, 2017. This book describes how one furniture store in Long Beach influenced a post war lifestyle that educated the public on good design across the entire country.

Edward A. Killingsworth: An Architect’s Life, 2013. Architect Edward Killingsworth whose office and many of his projects were in Long Beach, had been an unexamined genius of Southern California modernism until the writing of this book.

Long Beach Architecture: The Unexpected Metropolis, 2004. Beginning with an illustrated essay on the history of the built environment of Long Beach, it documents one hundred of the city’s most important built, unrealized, and demolished architectural projects.

Cara Mullio is principal of Root Development, LLC, a real estate development company based in Long Beach and is a freelance writer and curator specializing in contemporary architecture projects. She teaches at the University of Southern California and is invited to lecture on intersections of architecture, urban design, and real estate development. Cara holds a Master of Real Estate Development from the University of Southern California and a Master of Arts in Architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Jennifer Volland is an independent curator, writer, and researcher whose projects have chronicled important moments in the cultural history of California. She has been researching the life and work of ceramicist Edith Heath. Jennifer’s previous research focused on two architectural typologies: the cabin and the hotel. In collaboration with the Vancouver Art Gallery, she co-curated two exhibitions Cabin Fever (2018) and Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life (2013). Volland received her Master of Arts in Architecture from the University of California, Los Angeles, and she is currently completing her Master of Library Information Science from San José State University.

Dean Nota, FAIA

2023 Lifetime Achievement Award

Born, raised and educated in Southern California, Dean Nota received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI ARC) in 1976, where he was a founding student and a member of the first graduating class. He interned, and over a period of ten years, rose to the position of senior associate architect in the internationally acclaimed office of Raymond Kappe FAIA, prior to opening his own office in Los Angeles in 1982. Concurrent with the establishment of his practice, he served on the design studio faculty at SCI ARC from 1982 to 1988.

His professional experience includes architectural, planning, transportation planning and urban design projects. He is the recipient of national, regional and local design awards from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and has served on design awards juries sponsored by the AIA. His built work and drawings have been published and exhibited nationally and internationally.

In 2010, the American Institute of Architects elevated Dean Nota to its prestigious College of Fellows (FAIA), one of the highest honors the AIA can bestow upon a member for contributions to architecture and society on a national level.

Dean Nota’s professional career includes over 40 years of experience in the design of client, site specific, residential and commercial projects in Southern California, the western United States and Central America. The work continues to be guided by a design methodology rooted in the belief that context, structure, natural light, and spatial experience are the essential ingredients of architecture.