AISC IDEAS Awards 2027

Competition Brief

The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) has officially opened entries for the 2027 IDEAS Awards, presented in partnership with Building Design+Construction magazine. The IDEAS Awards are the structural steel industry’s highest design honor in the United States, recognizing projects that demonstrate innovation and excellence in the use of structural steel across architecture, engineering, sustainability, adaptive reuse, and constructability. AISC has operated award programs recognizing landmark steel structures since 1960, making this one of the longest-running built environment recognition programs in the U.S.

The 2027 cycle introduces a new addition alongside its five established categories: the IDEAS|next award, which is specifically designed for projects still in progress on the boards. If a concept has a real client and a designated site, it is eligible for recognition before a single piece of steel is erected. This expands the program beyond completed structures to include forward-looking innovation at the design stage.

Intent

The award seeks projects that advance the use of structural steel either technically or in architectural expression, demonstrate how architecturally exposed structural steel or coordinated steel elements elevate aesthetic impact, apply innovative design approaches to connections, gravity systems, lateral load-resisting systems, fire protection, or blast protection, and leverage productivity-enhancing construction methods such as modular or prefabricated design, 3D building models, and early integration of steel fabricators. The program evaluates the full project team, not just the architect, recognizing owners, structural engineers, contractors, fabricators, detailers, and erectors.

Purpose

The IDEAS Awards serve as a prestige and visibility platform for AEC project teams working with structural steel. Winners are featured in national publications, across AISC’s digital platforms, and in NASCC: The Steel Conference. The award is not a design competition in the speculative or student sense — it recognizes completed or in-progress built projects and is directed at professional project teams. For architecture firms and engineering practices with outstanding recent steel projects, it represents a meaningful and well-documented industry honor. You can explore related recognition programs in our coverage of architecture competitions and awards on ArchUp.

Requirements

Any member of a project team may submit. However, fabricators, erectors, detailers, or other firms eligible for AISC full or associate membership who submit independently must be AISC members in good standing at the time of entry.

Eligibility requirements for the 2027 cycle include:

• Projects must be located in the United States
• At least 50% of the structural steel must have been produced and fabricated in the U.S. by a company eligible for AISC full membership, or a unique or distinctive feature must have been fabricated by such a company
• A significant portion of the framing system must use wide-flange or hollow structural steel sections (HSS)
• Pedestrian bridges must be an intrinsic part of a building, not standalone structures
• For the IDEAS|next award: projects must have a real client and a designated site and be currently in progress

Submission requirements include:

• Contact information for all companies that made a substantive contribution to the design’s innovation
• Between 5 and 20 photographs, drawings, or renderings illustrating what makes the project innovative
• Must include a site plan, floor plan, and one or more sections
• For completed projects: at least one photograph (not a rendering) clearly showing the finished structure
• For IDEAS|next: shorter roster of team members currently involved is acceptable
• All images must be high-resolution (at least 300 dpi), at least four inches wide, submitted as JPEG, TIFF, or EPS files

Jury

The 2027 IDEAS Awards jury has not yet been announced at the time of writing. For reference, the 2026 IDEAS Awards jury, announced in October 2025 in partnership with Building Design+Construction, comprised the following five named members:

1. Paul Evans, SE, PE – Structural Design Specialist, Turner Engineering Group; formerly nine years at Silman (now TYLin); adjunct professor at Manhattan College teaching steel design courses from 2014 to 2023
2. Melissa Gradecki, SE, PE – Senior Engineer, Innovations, AISC Steel Solutions Center; 19 years prior in private engineering practice; Milwaukee School of Engineering alumna; reviewer for Engineering Journal and secretary of AISC Task Committee 11 on nuclear facilities design
3. Courtney Lilly – QA/QC and Shop Supervisor, Southern New Jersey Steel; AWS welding certified; career spanning fabrication quality control since 2013
4. Thomas Robinson, AIA – Founding Principal, LEVER Architecture; research-based practice recognized for material innovation and pioneering work with cross-laminated timber (CLT) and other structural systems
5. Bethany Whitehurst, SE, PE – Senior Structural Engineer, Clark Nexsen; SE 2025 Embodied Carbon Champion; leads the firm’s SE 2050 team in life cycle assessments and emissions reduction strategies

The 2027 jury will be announced separately ahead of the submission deadline.

Fees

Rewards

Dates

✦ ArchUp Competition Review

The IDEAS Awards are organized by AISC, the American Institute of Steel Construction, a not-for-profit technical institute with over six decades of documented award history dating to 1960. This is among the most institutionally credible recognition programs in the U.S. built environment sector. The award is presented in partnership with Building Design+Construction, a nationally distributed trade publication, which adds a meaningful media layer to the recognition. The jury for the 2027 cycle has not yet been named, but the 2026 panel, comprising a structural engineer, an AISC innovation specialist, a steel fabrication quality specialist, a research-based architect, and a structural sustainability engineer, reflected a genuine cross-section of AEC expertise directly relevant to the award categories. The program carries no cash prize, but the professional standing of the award within the U.S. architecture and engineering community is well-established, and the NASCC conference presentation represents a meaningful industry visibility platform. The requirement that at least 50% of structural steel be domestically produced and fabricated limits entry to U.S.-based projects, making this a national rather than fully international award despite its prestige. The IDEAS|next category for in-progress projects is a notable addition that extends recognition to design-stage innovation, which is directly relevant to architecture practices with outstanding steel work still under development. There is no entry fee, which removes a financial barrier entirely. For U.S.-based architecture and engineering practices with completed or in-progress steel projects of genuine innovation, this is the most credible available recognition platform in its category.

Final Thoughts

The AISC IDEAS Awards occupy a distinct position in the architecture and engineering award landscape: they are not a design competition, a student exercise, or a commercial credentialing program. They are a peer-recognized industry honor for built work, administered by a non-profit technical institute with a 65-year track record.

The five award categories reflect the full spectrum of what makes a steel project exceptional: architectural expression, engineering innovation, sustainability, adaptive reuse, and constructability. A single project can be entered across multiple categories simultaneously, which recognizes that the most significant work often excels in more than one dimension.

The IDEAS|next award is a thoughtful expansion of the program. Restricting prior editions to completed structures excluded recognition of innovative concepts at the design stage, where many of the most significant decisions about steel integration are made. Requiring a real client and designated site, rather than accepting speculative proposals, maintains the program’s commitment to built-world relevance.

The domestic fabrication requirement reflects the institutional reality that AISC’s funding base is the U.S. steel industry. This is clearly stated and understandable, but it means the program is fundamentally a U.S. industry award rather than a global recognition platform. International firms with U.S.-based projects may be eligible, but the requirement effectively limits the competitive pool to domestically executed work.

For architecture firms, structural engineering practices, and project teams in the U.S. who have delivered outstanding steel work in recent years, the IDEAS Awards represent the most substantive and institutionally grounded recognition available in this material category. You can find more recognition programs and architecture competitions on ArchUp for broader comparison.

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