Tag: Design Awards

2025 Presidential Honoree Award

This award honors an architect within our chapter who has meaningfully influenced architecture and the practice of the profession in a lasting way. This individual’s influence spans beyond the built practice of architecture and exercises expertise in multiple facets relating to the profession of architecture.

Michael Bohn, AIA

STUDIO ONE ELEVEN and PAST PRESIDENT, AIA LONG BEACH / SOUTH BAY

Michael Bohn, AIA is a partner with the firm Studio One Eleven. As a licensed architect with over 30 years of experience, his focus has been on repairing communities through architecture, landscape, and urban design. His urban design work ranges in scale from the visioning of 200 blocks in downtown Long Beach and peer review for over a dozen cities to smaller urban interventions that incorporate street decks, bulb-outs, bike facilities, and medians. He is also a strong advocate for establishing a Downtown Long Beach Design District.

His expertise in housing comprises over 3,500 units complete ranging from market rate and affordable that support seniors, students, families, veterans and the unhoused. His focus also includes mixed use urban infill, frequently located adjacent to transit leveraging retail, office, hospitality and residential. Innovation has always been central to his work completing the first parklets in Southern California, six modular housing developments utilizing wood, shipping container, and metal stud construction and the adaptive reuse of over two dozen buildings including the firm’s office in downtown Long Beach and recently five office-to-housing conversions.

He currently serves on the board of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and is actively involved with the Downtown Design District Council and Urban Land Institute Affordable and Workforce Housing Council. He Co-Chairs the Housing Steering Committee for AIA California, is a member of Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing, and Long Beach Heritage. Michael was the 2017 President for AIA Long Beach/South Bay and volunteered as a Director from 2014-2024-the longest serving member in the chapter’s history.

Click here to watch the Second Studio interview of Michael where he discusses his background; befriending case study architect Edward Killingsworth; moving to India; the mission of Studio One Eleven; their approach to community-oriented projects; integrating urban research, analysis, and studies to projects; the impact of public policy on architecture and urban projects; and more.

Return to main DA25 page

2025 Community Design Advocate Award

The Community Design Advocate Award acknowledges a community member that consistently contributes to the enhancement of the built environment. The awardee is contributing within our chapter boundaries and is not a licensed architect or affiliated with our professional organization.

D. J. Waldie

CULTURAL HISTORIAN, MEMOIRIST, AND TRANSLATOR

In books, essays, and online commentary, Waldie has sought to frame his suburban experience as a search for a sense of place. Often using his hometown of Lakewood as a starting point, Waldie’s work ranges widely over the history of suburbanization and its cultural effects in Southern California and the nation.

He is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir; Where Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles; and Becoming Los Angeles: Myth, Memory, and a Sense of Place. Forthcoming in September, 2025 is a new collection of essays: Elements of Los Angeles: Earth, Water, Air, Fire.

In collaboration with Diane Keaton, Waldie provided the text for two photographic explorations of home: California Romantica, dealing with homes in the Spanish Colonial Revival Style of the early 20th century, and House, examining post-modern interpretations of domesticity.

In 2007, the New York Times described Waldie’s work as “a gorgeous distillation of architectural and social history.” In 2017, he was awarded the Dale Prize for Urban and Regional Planning administered by Cal Poly Pomona.

He began his career in public administration in Lakewood in 1977. He served as the city’s Public Information Officer between 1981 and 2009. He retired as the Deputy City Manager of Lakewood in 2010.

For additional information visit: https://www.djwaldie.com/

Return to main DA25 page